Visiting Walmart
A few days ago I went to Walmart to buy some Jazz apples, my favorite variety. These days the only stores that carry them around where I live are Walmart and Trader Joe’s. Another thing I wanted to get was a certain kind of dental floss.
While I was at Walmart I noticed some extraordinary outfits. On people, not for sale on the rack.
The first outfit of note was on a young woman with long purple hair and very dramatic makeup, and a few rings here and there (nose, for example). But that wasn’t what caught my eye. She also had on what I can only describe as some sort of S-and-M costume. It consisted of – I didn’t want to stare although perhaps that’s what she wanted, and so I’m not sure of every detail – some sort of shiny black bra and panties, a little black leather bolero with metal studs, metal armband bracelets, black fishnet stockings, black shiny high-heeled boots, and a whip.
No, just kidding about the whip.
The store was also full of the usual strung-out and wasted middle-aged and older people. Drugs? Poverty? Mental illness? Some combination of all of them?
As I was leaving, ahead of me I saw two women walking. I only saw their backs, so I’m not sure, but I think they were identical twins because they had the same very unusual body. They weren’t especially fat – maybe just a bit overweight, although nothing special – but they had the largest posteriors I’ve ever seen on people whose shape was fairly normal otherwise. These women made Kim Kardashian look very modest in that arena. They had long flowing straight hair, tiny waists, and their legs tapered down rather quickly to thin ankles. None of this would have been so very strange, I guess, had they not been wearing completely form-fitting multi-colored tights of some sort of sparkly shiny stuff, to draw attention to the entire area.
It was – unusual. sort of like horses, from behind. It reminded me of something, and for a moment I couldn’t figure it out. Then I realized it was this:
I left Walmart, went to my car, and unloaded my small bag of groceries. And then I noticed that I’d left the dental floss in the cart and and had never taken it out to buy it. The price was ninety-eight cents, but I just couldn’t bring myself to put it in the trunk and take it. So I thought I’d leave it in the cart and let the store put it back.
At that moment the young woman who worked for Walmart collecting carts came by. “Is that yours?” she asked, pointing at the lonely dental floss in my cart. I explained to her what had happened, and she looked at me in complete puzzlement. “Just take it,” she said. “Nobody’s going to care.”
This was a store employee, and I’m virtually certain she was correct. But it struck me how things have changed; stores have so much theft now that it’s factored in, and the loss of a bit of floss is a joke to them.
I just shrugged and made a sort of hands-up gesture of futility, got in my car, and left.
A genuinely interesting post Neo!
Did you take it or not? I’m betting you left it in the cart. Our local Walmart has people at the door checking sales slips. The two who have checked me on my last few visits appeared to be illiterate and of sub-par intelligence. (Am I allowed to say that?). I usually fold my sales slip in half and stick it in my shirt pocket. I handed my sales slip to one of the checkers and he did not unfold it. When he handed it back I could see he had been looking at the half that did not have the numbers from my purchase.
If you can get Macs where you live, you should be enjoying those. Jazz doesn’t cut it.
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We live in a shameless age, so you encounter people who have no regard for appearances and people who are trolling you.
If I’m early enough to stake out my favorite café window seat, the old guy two stools down is a Walmart employee, getting his coffee and bagel before catching the bus to work.
He’s a quiet man, somewhat overweight, not attractive, not too bright. You can tell he’s not invited to a lot of parties and people are not nice to him. His best friend, another seat down, frequently makes fun of him.
Yet he shows up each day to have his bagel and coffee, then catch his bus. I’ve never heard him complain. From his Walmart earnings he saved up enough to buy a gamer-level Mac laptop as a gift for his best friend’s son.
I admire this man. I’ve tried to be friendly but he has been driven so deep within himself that I don’t know what it would take to reach him and I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy to do it.
I wonder how much money Walmart loses because “nobody’s going to care”. Walmart still managed to rake in $611 billion last year. But they also closed some stores…
People watching at Walmart. It’s a choice. You can be grossed out…or entertained!
I see very peculiar outfits, especially, very revealing female outfits, at my local upscale grocery store. I cannot imagine leaving my house looking like that, even if I still had my 20-year-old body.
Walmart was a great place to shop until Sam died. One can tell how much they wanted him gone by the alacrity with which they tossed his policies in the dust. One was to buy American when possible and help small manufacturers. That was tossed for China China China. Another was to never build in urban areas; out on the edge was okay, but Walmart was not an urban retailer.
But the Bentonville elite looked at those EBT cards in the pockets of the badly dressed, and knew there was so much money to be had. So stores went into the urban areas. Theft in these stores was outrageous. Service was terrible. But oh, the money they sucked off those EBT cards made it all worth it–because Walmart’s groceries are not inexpensive and they do not have sales on groceries.
So it’s a mixed experience. Here in Phoenix metro, go to the store on Bethany Hills Road. It’s one of the busiest in the West Region. One sees much of what Neo describes. Then visit the store up in north Scottsdale. Clean, friendly, products in stock, service. As the bird flies, ten miles apart.
And both are much better than the store in Brooklyn Center, MN. Theft happens in front of you. Managers have that thousand-yard stare veterans talk about. They’re hoping to stay sane long enough to be transferred out. The shelves look like no one’s sorted them in weeks.
That Brooklyn Center store is closed now. One full on looting and two prevented only by stacking pallets in front of the entry doors will discourage retail. Eventually the theft was too great for even the vaunted EBT revenue to overcome. I suspect Bentonville is thinking, “Well, we made good money for a while, but Sam was right, I guess.”
The three CVS stores closest to Arizona State U in Tempe have all the makeup locked in cabinets. This despite higher staffing levels and security guards, and police willing to respond to shoplifting calls. The self-service model of drug stores is dying before our eyes.
Any sensible country would be investigating George Soros the way the Democrats investigate Republicans. But I guess the Democrats think they can wall themselves off from the consequences of their actions. They cannot, but they have not learned that lesson yet.
Kate, the wealthy coeds at ASU (it even extends down to high school in the wealthy areas) dress like hookers. I am talking about outfits that would make Julia Robert’s character in Pretty Woman blush.
I wondered: how do the actual hookers distinguish themselves? The answer is, the area they work, and the quality of the outfit. The ASU girls have leather thigh highs, the hookers have vinyl. Tube tops made of silk vs rayon. Better teeth and skin.
One sees it in the downtown Scottsdale nightlife area too, and it can be spotted here and there in the more outlying burbs.
I never saw this around the University of Minnesota. Little black dresses and thin jackets in below zero weather, sure. But not hooker chic.
“…..I didn’t want to stare although perhaps that’s what she wanted,……..”
A very interesting point you have made.
Some time ago, I was in a mall’s “food court.” At the adjacent table was a “Goth” family; the mom and dad appeared to be in their mid 20s and they had their baby with them.
The parents were all-out Goths; jet black spiked hair, an assortment of chains dangling from their belt, heavy / thick boots, black jeans, etc,; the full Goth regalia.
The baby was “normal;” it was not dressed as a Goth.
It was impossible not to keep looking – surreptitiously of course them – at them. There is no way they did not know their mode of appearance would not attract stares.
But why did they want people looking at them?
Why did they feel they had to stand out from the hoi polloi?
Why did they feel it necessary to attract attention?
Are these types of people “normal” or do they have personality / identity issues?
I have no idea.
Speaking of Walmart; recall the comment of that former top FBI agent, Peter Strzok, who in a text to his fling, Lisa Page, said “I can smell Trump supporters at WalMart.”
Maybe WalMart shoppers are mostly smelly Trump supporters; who knows?
But I am pretty sure these smelly shoppers, as an example, can define what is a man and what is a woman (unlike Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson), and understand very clearly that gender is not “assigned” at birth.
A revealing collection of observations about the human scene today. The themes? America in decline — shock for awe, wasted and strung out, and moral degeneracy.
This segues to Victor David Hanson’s fresh 8m clip days ago, entitled
“Final Warning: America’s Last Chance Before Collapse”.
As a preparatory reminder, recall that President Obama prepped the Battle Ground of today’s Biden-Democrat conflict. He was not the Great Uniter as advertised by the Praetorian Media. Instead, Obama was the Great Divider.
His haranguing lectures pitted the rich against poor, whites against blacks, police against the dispossessed, men against women — all of the elite moralizing of the past decade descends from his reign, combined with the elite judgement shaming us “we deserve it!” (Which illuminates today’s new catcall “DIE=Didn’t Earn It”)
VDH recounts the passing scene of decline: the regime weaponization of the law to detail and silence its designated enemies, and the apparent yet absolute urban lawlessness that’s become the new order signaling our decline.
Hanson cite Livy on the fall of the Republic of Rome, to parallel our own dire situation. Hence, his ominous title “Final Warning” against our fall.
https://youtu.be/5Aq2xd6ccgE?si=WaLS5f9jzjgBCuKd
huxley sees the kinship of outsiders. “Good on ya Mate” to toss out a bit of Australian.
Near th top, huxley reflects on a dedicated Wal-Mart worker who dhows up at the same cafe before work.
hux says, “I admire this man. I’ve tried to be friendly but he has been driven so deep within himself that I don’t know what it would take to reach him….”
That’s OK. Just be your friendly self and remind him of the open door you’re offering, from time to time. He’ll come to you when he needs your friendship.
The same advice applies to everyone else in similar social binds. Just be happy because you may have planted a seed that still may sprout.
Relatedly, a report on the ongoing social recession in the US and Canada. Last year, their was the first report from the Center for Cities at the University of Toronto. Like in that report, comparing cell phone traffic in over 70 core urban areas pre-pandemic and since then.
The new findings show a median rise from 60ish in 2022 to 75% last year. And thus, reveals a range converging on that from 50% to 100%. (Just web search for details.)
In short, we’re still suffering, but the trend is clearly upward towards normalcy.
And this data ameliorates the sting of decline from VDH’s message.
You can be too casual when you go shopping i think
“I wondered…”
Actually, the hookers look like graduate students….
(Gotta be practical if you’re going into Business Administration. Show some entrepreneurship. Innovation….)
– – – – – – – – –
Thanks much, Huxley, for that moving Edward Hopper vignette…
It occurred to me that you might try to persuade the fellow to start studying French…spice up his life a bit. Don’t forget to use Francoise Hardy…as an incentive…
…But then that might be jumping ahead of the game.
Maybe use the great NY bagel vs. Montreal bagel debate to break the ice…?
Gordon Scott, my husband says the girls were dressed like that at ASU when he did his graduate degree in the late 1970s.
I don’t see such scenes in the local Walmart. I did note that they are adding back more human checkout counters.
Kate, a local guy who attended in the late 80s said they were like that then also. All I know is, when I have to pick up or deliver food in the area, I get a thorough eyefull. And I know with zero doubt which girls wear panties.
Joan Rivers used to do a “Starlet or Streetwalker” segment. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Generally, the streetwalkers dressed a little better. They were professionals after all.
I’ve never heard of Jazz apples. Do the growers play saxophone solos to the trees, or do the pickers all have … jazz hands!
Anyway, so long as they aren’t the big Red Delicious ones that taste like cardboard.
We live in a Twilight World.
Its the rebecca demornay seminar from risky business
One of my friends and I were having coffee one morning and he told that he really appreciates Walmart. I asked him why and he told me that he had been shopping at Walmart that morning and had to have help in the electronics area. He said the creature who waited on him had unusual pink and green hair, lots of extra piercings around his/her head, he was never really sure about the gender and the ability to actually help my friend with his purchase was marginal. Having said all of that my friend told me that Walmart really helps the community by hiring the unemployable, they hire strange, weird people and that keeps the unemployment numbers down.
My observations have been about the same and this time of year here in South Texas the female Walmart customers have been showing a lot of skin with a lot of ink on it and none of it is pleasant or becoming, especially on some of the older women where the ink has not aged well. Maybe I am just an old curmudgeon but I do know right from wrong and I dislike seeing wrong.
These same scenes are repeated all over the country at urban Walmarts. People looking like walking caricatures or cartoons. To me, the first question isn’t does it happen, but “why now”? What has changed over the past 20-30 years for society to get become so degraded? The second question is ” Will it ever end”?
The tattoos get ubiquitous after a while.
Frequently patronize three or four Midwest big box stores including Wal-Mart. Everything seems pretty normal.
In re the questions of ‘why now’ and ‘will it ever end’, I believe the bizarre dress code, plus the repulsive tats, comes out of the great decline that started with our Woodstock generation. That mindless group smoked weed, took many different drugs, rolled around in the mud, literally, at rock concerts, screwed each other wherever and whenever, and reveled in the breakdown of normalcy in attire, manners, and sexual abandon. They f*cked not only themselves and their children of a decent set of standards, but they f*cked several succeeding generations. They grew up on ‘anything goes’ and ‘no standards’ and its become part of everyday life and the subsequent take over of academia, journalism, media, entertainment, and politics by real evil-hearted, self-indulgent people who run our major political parties and major institutions.
I avoid Walmart at all costs. Unfortunately, they carry a particular brand of salt for our softener that works great. I think the multiverse theory has to be correct every time I enter.
Ahhh, the memories . . . a Peter Strzok text message to his woman friend, July 2018:
“Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.”
Hanson is seeing the future in most of America, played out by unbridled leftists now. It’s coming to a blue state near you.
I was thinking recently that although Washington state legislature is firmly controlled by the left, we didn’t seem to feel the effects as much in the mostly conservative east (Washington). Then bam new laws doing away with the traditional bar exam and legalizing illegal aliens in many professional jobs.
Walmart here has closed all but four self-checkout kiosks in the store and gone back to checkers. Too much theft. The state outlawed plastic bags (that’s not entirely true since Safeway is still selling 8 cent plastic bags. They are sturdier than the old-fashioned plastic. I would estimate they use 10 times the plastic that the old bags did. So much for environmentalism.
But Walmart doesn’t offer those on their reusable bags so most folks would just scan an item and put it back in their shopping cart. Apparently too much merchandise wasn’t getting scanned.
We started using free home delivery (same day). My daughter uses the outside pickup. Walmart keeps track of what you buy and it’s only a click away from putting in your virtual shopping cart.
Along these lines, my first wife knew a store security guard for Target in Orange County, California. The number one most shoplifted item? Baby formula.
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.” Robert A. Heinlein, 1982
WalMart is very well known for having various people in questionable forms of dress, including flip flops with actual pyjamas hanging low on the hips and thong panties… on a woman weighing in excess of 200#.
I’ve largely stopped going there because all too often, since they stopped being open 24 hours, it doesn’t matter when you go there, the lines are 10 minutes long, including the self-service lines. It’s not worth my time, for the most part. I just get stuff off amazon if i’d have to go to WM.
Art Deco:
Macs are probably my least favorite apples.
On the Jazz apple.
F:
I left the floss in the cart.
One wonders how our society became such a freak show.
Where did all of these fuc##d-up squalid walking human wrecks come from?
Did they spring forth originally as psychologically healthy and normal specimens produced by successful human lineages only to be seduced and degraded by a mere 2 generations of “if it feels good do it” social entropy embracing programming?
That cannot be the explanation. There has to be some “taste” for this insanity in the first place.
Though, an already borderline or susceptible population stupefied and degraded by drugs, alcohol, and a hedonic nihilist Zeitgeist may be part of it. Meaning, that if these mostly feeling rather than thinking beings were funneled through ordering and anti-anomic institutions, then they might have better personal outcomes on average.
Now, are there those who despite their history suddenly decide to swim upstream? Apparently.
A video from the following YouTuber mysteriously [maybe triggered by watched gin and Bourbon reviews] appeared in the offerings, and eventually I clicked on it out of curiousity : Some mid 20 something kid, who gives the impression of being the love chiid of Boris Johnson and a late 20th century copy of Esquire Magazine. My impulses to gape and laugh, eventually included a vague appreciation of what he was trying to do. Insofar as I could grasp it.
His parents must have left Mad Men running 24/7 in front of the playpen.
Wait, that cannot be correct. 5 years ago he was “goth”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rNW9EeLpQjk
[By the way kid, try, “from whom we may learn a lot”]
I worked at Walmart (in Colorado) you’re trained not to confront thieves, there’s LPOs for that. You’re also trained for checking slips at the door, it’s very easy to steal.
Huxley @ 1:55, I think that’s me you’re describing. Yeah I can be a little closed off at times.
Tomorrow bring an airline bottle of Jack Daniels for my coffee and I’ll smile at you.
Oh, Welcome to Wal-Mart!
To the comment or who noticed them removing self checkout to replace them with manned checkout lanes, I think you’re right, anyway that’s the rumor.
By the way, I am definitely not for instituting dress codes or for humiliating those who do not conform closely.
The neurotic attention to frivolous details, labels, and styles is oppressive.
Those of us who were kids in the 1960s remember not only how our [ in this case middle class] parents had an almost star quality look when they dressed for events, and even dress-casual occasions, but also how some people quickly took it to extremes as part of what used to be called “social climbing”.
Having some creep or f@g staring at your shoes and trying to figure if they were J&Ms or Aldens or Allen Edmonds is enough to make you want to punch somebody. Having your wife’s couture appraised by harpies with no higher purpose in life, is enough to actually push one over the edge. LOL
No wonder the wealthy end up in Hell. It’s not really the money per se. It’s the type of person ….
Cortland apples beat everything and they’re all over New England. I’ll eat my hat* if you don’t like them.
* My hat being an apple pie made with Cortlands
Where I live there are four Walmarts within 25 miles +\-. While we don’t have the grinding poverty that cities in the lower 48 have, we do have people with less resources. I really haven’t heard people denigrate Walmart. It does depend on which store you go to for a pleasant , or less than pleasant experience. There are people who seem to think Walmart is part of the ghetto and it shows. Other Walmarts are incredibly nice stores. I think it’s because we’re so isolated from the rest of America.
WalMart is proof of evolution
Macs are probably my least favorite apples.
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Can’t help you.
Cortlands are fine apples, but their shelf life is short. I stick with Fijis and congeners. Gotta be in NY State for Cortlands!
Macintosh apples are only really good when they’re fresh picked and off the tree.
Neo – you’re in New England, so you might have heard of these: Have you ever tried a McGouan apple? (sounds like Mac Gowen). Like many varieties, they are not conducive to controlled-oxygen long term storage, so you almost never see them in the supermarket, or off-season.
I used to pick apples as a kid for extra money, and when I first bit into a McGouan I couldn’t believe the flavor.
I sometimes think that people treat their Walmart trips as an opportunity to dress in costume. But then I remember the Houston ballet. My wife and I have season tickets, and a for a few years, there was a couple that would attend in full latex costumes, I mean the tight-fitting, all-zippers, batman-type head mask and everything. They had different colors, too – but seemingly preferred basic black. And for the lady, very high heels. Scaring the Squares.
In the Houston, TX ballet? That is not the Houston I know!
Former Biden supporter and fundraiser – now she enthusiastically supports Trump: Re-Post
https://commoncts.blogspot.com/2024/04/former-biden-supporter-she-now.html
The madness is on full display here–
See the “People of Walmart” website at https://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
There are others as well.
Remember Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot” sketch?
Well, here is a modern day version.**
** See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/04/bizarre-woman-takes-uncles-corpse-try-get-loan/
Lots of references to Biden in the comments.
P.S. I suspect that there are a lot of offices–of various kinds–here in the U.S., where this women might have been able to pull her little “Dead Parrot” scam off.
P.S.S. Walmart is an interesting case, a place where people apparently feel that–no matter how bizarre–they can “let their freak flag fly.”
Speaking of the woman wheeling the corpse of a supposed relative in to get a loan, I’ve read somewhere that, in ancient Egypt, Egyptians would keep the mummified remains of their ancestors in their houses–stand old granny up there in the corner, will ya–and that, when they wanted to get a loan, they would take the mummy over to the lender as collateral, only getting their cherished mummy back when they paid off the loan.
Long time reader, first time commenter here. When I read Sgt+Joe+Friday’s comment on the most commonly shoplifted item in the local Target being baby formula, I felt I might be able to provide some clarity. Baby formula is very commonly used to cut illegal drugs. Drug usage has also increased in the past few years. Might be a connection there. (I worked for a number of years in a private forensics lab, where I picked up all sorts of knowledge I could have happily lived without. I also never, ever use the microwave in a convenience store).
@Cicero, well I guess Montrose isn’t too far from downtown… Yep, I kid you not, right there in the Wortham Center. Haven’t seen them in a couple of seasons – or….maybe I have ! Just not in their latex though.
Just imagining having seats next to them for a season’s performances….I kinda looked forward to seeing them.
Now in another performance, we had seats near to an extraordinary woman. A little over 6 ft, copper-red hair, statuesque and in a tight, flowing, emerald green dress, very flattering. Beautiful hair, beautifully turned out – you would notice her during the Intermissions, standing up – she drew the eye from anywhere in the theater.
At the end of the performance, as people were filing out, she stood up at her seat there in Orchestra section, surveying the options, and finally turned to her date and pointed to the side exit at Stage Left and suggested they take that route. In a very deep, very basso voice ! Big Red! Coulda knocked me over.
Hi there, Kelly! Welcome.
That’s an interesting point about the formula.
Well, Neo, Walmart can be a somewhat interesting place from time to time, I guess. I don’t go there much; there are several Walmarts around here, some of which seem to me OK to be in. My two favorite spoons I got from there. The last thing I went to a Walmart for was last year, I think, to pick up some colored note cards. I find Walmart somewhat useful for little stationery things like that.
One time I pulled into my driveway after shopping at the local grocery story. I reached over for my bags of groceries and discovered the groceries were still in the little hand basket. I had completely forgotten to pay! The tricky part was sneaking back into the store with all those groceries so I could go through the checkout line.
Jeez, what a space cadet! And I was much younger then.
I really, really wish they were still open 24 hours. I am a night shifter, and I liked going shopping at 2:00AM.
Well, you don’t know what you don’t know.
I’ve told this before so ignore it if you know where it’s going.
Business associates back in the last of the 20th, used to fly in from out east to accompany us into the Big Three or major aerospace engineering or tool & die plant presentations; and outside of customer hearing remark offhand that they were heading over [ or had the previous night been] to the “Windsor Ballet” in the evening.
Nothing particularly wrong with Canada and there were a few nice restaurants and a casino over there, but what interest middle aged sales engineers from a not particularly elevated social class could have had in something as boring as a third tier Canadian city ballet, I could just not figure. And being completely uninterested, never asked.
Eventually a younger guy my age flew in town, and in passing mentioned it was his birthday and he had just gotten engaged. I offered to buy him dinner and drinks. He said as I was driving he would treat me. I asked him where he wanted to go. He mentioned a chop house across the river in Canada.
Drove over, had a good dinner and drinks and left. As we were walking along the sidewalk 30 seconds out the restaurant door, a fancy large van pulls up like a kidnapping is about to take place and three chicks in party or club clothes jump out and try to hustle us in; promising us as I balked, a free ride back to the car and no cover charge – for guys in suits and ties, I guess – to “the classiest place in the province”.
Eventually persuaded by his and their insistence, I found out just what kind of ballet it actually was that was so popular with the guys from Connecticut, over in Windsor, Ontario.
From what I understand such clubs have degenerated into in these more modern days, I suppose with all the expensive decor, high prices, the alert bouncers, and no nonsense protocols, it might have qualified as “classy” if the term could be applied to any such club.
I would not cross the threshold of the more modern versions.
I grew up on Macs, picked from an orchard five miles from my New England childhood home. Though I was partial to Ida Reds, also from the same orchard. Don’t believe I have seen Ida Reds here in Texas. Most of my apple purchases in Texas are Granny Smiths.
To each their own.
I make some purchases from Wal-Mart, as there is one a mile from where I live. Clothing: socks and underwear. Some groceries, but HEB and the Mexican grocery get nearly all of my food purchases. Regarding Wal-Mart locating in urban areas, there was one not far away that was located in a dodgy area, which closed years ago because of shoplifting. But that is the only one in the area that shut down, I believe.
Baby formula is a small, light package that costs a lot. It can be easily sold in any vibrant neighborhood at half of the shelf price. Liquid Tide detergent and Tide pods are also popular in the same places. The extra large packs of diapers now have security devices.
Some politicians hit the trough too hard.*
* See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7EsTcY3lgQ
huxley:
If I’m early enough to stake out my favorite café window seat, the old guy two stools down is a Walmart employee, getting his coffee and bagel before catching the bus to work.
He’s a quiet man, somewhat overweight, not attractive, not too bright. You can tell he’s not invited to a lot of parties and people are not nice to him. His best friend, another seat down, frequently makes fun of him.
Yet he shows up each day to have his bagel and coffee, then catch his bus. I’ve never heard him complain. From his Walmart earnings he saved up enough to buy a gamer-level Mac laptop as a gift for his best friend’s son.
I admire this man. I’ve tried to be friendly but he has been driven so deep within himself that I don’t know what it would take to reach him and I’m pretty sure I’m not the guy to do it.
God bless you and keep you Huxley. Now and forever.
Thank you for reminding us that though we may not be The People of Walmart–the entire premise of Neo’s essay, no?— The People of Walmart ARE us. Our brothers and sisters in Christ.
(and do keep on reaching out, recognizing him. As I’ve long reminded my children: You may think you are but one person in the world, but to one person, you may be the world.)
Naomi Wolf offers a substack that has her reflections on what had been her people, Brooklynites, based her recent time among them at what had been her home, but who no longer are as she’s been red pilled.
Even votes for the same guy Peter Strozk assumes those smelly WalMart shoppers likely do, if they vote!
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/letter-from-brooklyn-april-24?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Aggie, could you be thinking of Macoun apples? (At least, that’s the way my local supermarket spells it.) However you spell it, they’re my absolute favorite — and I love apples — so flavorful and still crisp. But as you say, you can only find them sometimes.
In the orange world, there are Minneolas, likewise incredibly tasty and available only at certain times of the year. However, I just looked them up and discovered they aren’t oranges at all, but crosses between tangerines and grapefruit. Still amazing.
As for WalMart, in our rural backwater, until recently it was really the only local option for many kinds of shopping, unless you’re willing to drive an hour to a small city. (Our area doesn’t have the demographics for,, say, a Target.) But now, Dollar General is giving WalMart a run for its money for general sundries, and it’s much more pleasant. Right down the road, not so huge and overwhelming as to give you a headache, with somebody you know behind the counter, and so far, at least, no weird outfits on the customers.
Jazz apples are the best.
Sweet and crunchy.
But I dont have to go to Walmart.
Maybe I should.
Well, since someone mentioned citrus, I’ll point out Duncan Grapefruit.
They aren’t popular, because they have little brown spots (the size of this period: .) on them, and the more of them they have, the sweeter they are. But they don’t have that “yellow gleam” that is so popular for grapefruit. But they ARE by far the best balance for grapefruit as far as sweet/tart goes. Again, the more brown spots, the sweeter they are.
My mother’s house when I was a kid had an old old Duncan tree in the back yard, and, in some ways, I hated it, because that bastard dropped literally hundreds of fruit every year. Which I had to dispose of, one way or another (the easiest was usually the lawnmower, but even that had its limits). But those were some damned good grapefruit, no question. We gave bushels of them away every year (this was back in the 60s/70s, when transport of fresh fruit was far more spotty, and anytime anyone went on a long vacation trip, you’d take bushels of citrus from Florida along as gifts. No one does this anymore. And it’s probably technically illegal, though exactly what disease citrus from Florida is going to spread in Iowa seems unclear…)
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}}} Ahhh, the memories . . . a Peter Strzok text message to his woman friend, July 2018:
“Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support.”
Ah, yes, the old lefty “Basket of Deplorables” view of anyone conservative.
Yeah, so the hypothetical there is defining.
The defiantly smelly cringe inducing American lumpenproletarian land-whales which are the subject of so much chagrined amusement on line, are not likely to be Trump supporters.
I dont personally know many morbidly obese people, nor any EBT card holders, but my encounters with them in public spaces convinces me that if they vote at all they vote as life resenting members of the government’s client class would be expected to vote.
The occasional plumber’s crack shopper excepted.
A guy with the glabrous face of a twisted elf claims to be able to sniff out Trump voters … The elf looking to the Democrat Party, as the neckbearded are to Islamists.
And never, ever, ever trust a guy with an ugly mistress.
It must be a real type though: Bart Stupak, Peter Strzok, Pete Butttigieg, and the American Gollum himself, James Carville.
Butkus51:
They come in 2-lb bags at Walmart. I got a bag that had about 5 fairly large ones, for $3.59. Pretty good price.
lee:
By the way, this essay describes some people I saw at Walmart. And I do see more people there who are strangely dressed, or otherwise strung out, than I would see in a local supermarket down the street.
But as far as “people of Walmart” go around where I live, most are pretty mainstream although not upscale. And I guess I’m a “person of Walmart,” because I go there with some frequency, probably at least once a month.
Before retiring, I worked near a Meijer–midwest competitor for Walmart–and would occasionally stop there to pick something the weekly trip had missed.
When we were expecting company for whom fair-trade, organic, free-range coffee flavoring was required, I went to an upscale deli. The other patrons looked as if they were training for a marathon.
Not so much at Meijer. My father surmised that when life isn’t going well for you, a belly full of comfort food might be the best you can manage.
My wife and I have been blessed. Nevertheless, it’s Walmart or its competitors. Sale items. House brand. Lower shelf. Day-old pastry (it doesn’t get any older) and so forth. Cleaning supplies. Saves maybe 5%, possibly more.. And going upscale…likely couldn’t tell the difference. So, other than thinking we’re so important that it’s WRONG to not pay top dollar for ordinary stuff, why not use the 5% on something else?
Hear me out on this – a Walmart observation mezzanine Waffle House that serves booze. You get to be the bartender, Neo.