I recently read that Publix is consistently rated as one of the country’s top grocery stores, with a level of customer loyalty virtually unparalleled in the USA. Like all kids who grew up in South Florida I have had fond memories of Publix for as long as I can recall. I can still remember when I was young enough, and cute enough, for the bakery ladies at Publix to offer me free cookies, and let me assure you that it is well over 40 years since anyone has considered me cute enough to offer me anything, let alone a free cookie. Although I know the odds are against it, the hope of scoring a free cookie keeps me going back.
My other fond memories of Publix involve the rare shopping trips there with my Dad. Our household had a fairly rigid division of labor, as did most households in the 60’s: Dad earned the money and Mom ran the house. My mother, for reasons unknown, detested grocery shopping and she was what we now call a “mission shopper:” she had a list, she had a certain amount of cash, and she was in and out of the store in a flash. Shopping was her responsibility and she was not about to shirk it, but neither was she about to be slowed down or distracted by taking the kids with her.
There were a couple times a year, however, when Dad had to shop. Generally this was in the middle of the summer when Mom would go North to escape the heat and visit her sisters. Dad handled dinners quite efficiently: He would gather up the kids and take us to the bowling alley for a burger and fries or for hotdogs steamed in beer.
If we ate at home, he would light the grill, quite a feat in the days when lighting a grill required charcoal, lighter fluid plent of time and infinite patience. He even made popcorn in those pre-microwave days when making popcorn required plenty of oil, a cast iron pot and, frequently, flak helmets. On Sunday morning, instead of taking us to Mass, he would make jelly omelets: these are omelets filled with grape jelly that turns the egg , not to mention your teeth, purple.
Towards the end of the week when the provisions Mom left were getting scarce he would improvise. One memorable meal consisted of Campbell’s Bean Soup into which we crumbled graham crackers since we were out of saltines. To this day my sister won’t eat bean soup any other way.
By this time, a trip to the grocery store was inevitable, and Dad always asked my younger brother and me to come along with him. Shopping with Dad was an adventure. For one thing, because he was wounded in World War II, he walked very slowly. This gave him time to look at things my mother would ignore and it gave my brother and me time to put things in the shopping cart that my mother would never buy. At the check-out counter if he was surprised to find his cart filled with Tang or Jeno’s frozen pizza or Fiddle Faddle or Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks, all things that my mother considered extravagant, he never let on. And when my mother returned from her trip, if she was surprised to find her kitchen stocked with modern marvels like frozen potpie or Lucky Charms or Hawaiian Punch, she never said a word.
There’s a lot of water under the bridge since my Dad took my brother and me to Publix, and as an adult I take after my mother: I detest grocery shopping. But I still remember when shopping was a pleasure.