I will not describe how the day started, but sometime before noon we left home to shop.
“I’m going to buy you a new TV,” my wife said, “and get a printer for me. I’m tired of running to the library to print what I need.”
It had all the markings of a big day in the shopping district on the other side of town. Until I said this: “Dapper Ink is just one block off our route. I’m going to show you how to get there in case you need to help me with the order.” I was referring to the branded tee shirts I am designing and planning to sell to raise money for The Meetinghouse and my new venture, Sunday in the House.
I turned onto Shaw Street which, as it turned out, was a big mistake. “There is the printing plant,” I said, pointing to the repurposed building now advertised for “custom screen printing, embroidery, & headwear.” But she wasn’t watching. Instead, I heard her say with great anticipation, “Ooooooh. Restaurant Supplies Outlet.” She was pointing to the building I had passed multiple times without ever noticing. In smaller print were the dangerous words, “Public Welcome.”
I’ve been married more than 53 years, so I knew what to do: forget the tee-shirt print shop and park at the kitchen supply warehouse. Which I did without complaining.
It was for restaurants, mostly, with row after row of the kind of industrial equipment you know is back where all the food is prepared but you never see: stainless steel cabinets and eight eye gas stoves, boxes of plastic plates and long handled spoons for, I assume, stirring soup and chili and such in ten-gallon pots–they had those as well.
“What are we looking for,” I asked. “For starters,” she replied, ” the two things we don’t have: a broom and a toaster” raising the prospects of the kind of shopping spree I’d always dreamed of.
“I bet they have funnels, too,” I said, doing what I could to build excitement. She had been harping on my need for a funnel, every time I returned from Walmart with a refilled, five-gallon jug of filtered water. She insisted on such to make her coffee, and I used it also to brew my tea even though a million-dollar prize was insufficient to make me taste any difference between the Walmart water and what flows into the kitchen sink when I turn on the faucet.
“Here we go,” she finally exclaimed, holding up a plastic wrapped set of five funnels, all white, and selling for $9.49. What a find! What a bargain! What could thrill me more!
I stared at her for a few seconds, thinking quickly how my hopes for a new TV had dissolved into resignation and reality. Not a single drawer in our apartment was deep enough to store the largest of these funnels which was the only one I would use to pour the filtered water into the one-gallon plastic jugs suitable for kitchen use.
Maybe this represents an upgrade in our kitchen, I thought to myself, and maybe not. She found a few other things to make the shopping diversion more justified, and I managed to secure a two-pound beef press for $14.99. When I tried to use it the next morning (and I won’t explain that either), I discovered that not one of the half dozen skillets stored in our cabinets is big enough to accommodate that beef press.
Oh, well. It will work as a paper weight, I surmised, at least until our own corps of discovery makes another memorable trip to the supply warehouse where even the public is invited and where, I am sure, they have skillets big enough for my mostly unusable purchase.
It doesn’t sound like much of a day, does it? But at least such common episodes in an ordinary week divert our attention from all the chaos, cruelty, and corruption flowing out of Washington and through every smart phone and media stream into our incredulous souls. And that is something to be thankful for, and I am. Believe me, I am.
Except this Saturday, the Steelers play their first preseason game, and for that I will need a television, either in my home or at some sports bar. Maybe there is one down on Shaw Street, somewhere near Dapper Ink Printers and the Restaurant Supplies Outlet where the public is welcome. Dare I suggest it?
subscribe to my weekly commentary on religion and life. It’s free!
I will not describe how the day started, but sometime before noon we left home to shop.
“I’m going to buy you a new TV,” my wife said, “and get a printer for me. I’m tired of running to the library to print what I need.”
It had all the markings of a big day in the shopping district on the other side of town. Until I said this: “Dapper Ink is just one block off our route. I’m going to show you how to get there in case you need to help me with the order.” I was referring to the branded tee shirts I am designing and planning to sell to raise money for The Meetinghouse and my new venture, Sunday in the House.
I turned onto Shaw Street which, as it turned out, was a big mistake. “There is the printing plant,” I said, pointing to the repurposed building now advertised for “custom screen printing, embroidery, & headwear.” But she wasn’t watching. Instead, I heard her say with great anticipation, “Ooooooh. Restaurant Supplies Outlet.” She was pointing to the building I had passed multiple times without ever noticing. In smaller print were the dangerous words, “Public Welcome.”
I’ve been married more than 53 years, so I knew what to do: forget the tee-shirt print shop and park at the kitchen supply warehouse. Which I did without complaining.
It was for restaurants, mostly, with row after row of the kind of industrial equipment you know is back where all the food is prepared but you never see: stainless steel cabinets and eight eye gas stoves, boxes of plastic plates and long handled spoons for, I assume, stirring soup and chili and such in ten-gallon pots–they had those as well.
“What are we looking for,” I asked. “For starters,” she replied, ” the two things we don’t have: a broom and a toaster” raising the prospects of the kind of shopping spree I’d always dreamed of.
“I bet they have funnels, too,” I said, doing what I could to build excitement. She had been harping on my need for a funnel, every time I returned from Walmart with a refilled, five-gallon jug of filtered water. She insisted on such to make her coffee, and I used it also to brew my tea even though a million-dollar prize was insufficient to make me taste any difference between the Walmart water and what flows into the kitchen sink when I turn on the faucet.
“Here we go,” she finally exclaimed, holding up a plastic wrapped set of five funnels, all white, and selling for $9.49. What a find! What a bargain! What could thrill me more!
I stared at her for a few seconds, thinking quickly how my hopes for a new TV had dissolved into resignation and reality. Not a single drawer in our apartment was deep enough to store the largest of these funnels which was the only one I would use to pour the filtered water into the one-gallon plastic jugs suitable for kitchen use.
Maybe this represents an upgrade in our kitchen, I thought to myself, and maybe not. She found a few other things to make the shopping diversion more justified, and I managed to secure a two-pound beef press for $14.99. When I tried to use it the next morning (and I won’t explain that either), I discovered that not one of the half dozen skillets stored in our cabinets is big enough to accommodate that beef press.
Oh, well. It will work as a paper weight, I surmised, at least until our own corps of discovery makes another memorable trip to the supply warehouse where even the public is invited and where, I am sure, they have skillets big enough for my mostly unusable purchase.
It doesn’t sound like much of a day, does it? But at least such common episodes in an ordinary week divert our attention from all the chaos, cruelty, and corruption flowing out of Washington and through every smart phone and media stream into our incredulous souls. And that is something to be thankful for, and I am. Believe me, I am.
Except this Saturday, the Steelers play their first preseason game, and for that I will need a television, either in my home or at some sports bar. Maybe there is one down on Shaw Street, somewhere near Dapper Ink Printers and the Restaurant Supplies Outlet where the public is welcome. Dare I suggest it?
subscribe to my weekly commentary on religion and life. It’s free!
Recent Posts
Related Posts
Walk With Me, Jesus
The Red Letter Jesus
Joy to the World
Not Long Enough