Groceries and Supermarkets

I went to the local Kroger store to buy some groceries and renew a prescription for Cindy and me. Our Kroger is getting rather tattered around the edges. They had no green onions. I couldn't imagine why they didn't have green onions. Some of the shelves were bare of certain items. I was kind of sad. They used to be the best grocery in Griffin.

They are not tattered around the edges like Piggly Wiggly. Piggly Wiggly is old school. Sure the lights seem a little dim. The produce seems a little worn for the ware. But at a Piggly Wiggly you find all sorts of variety on the shelves. It has a small town feel about it. And seems to include a lot of brands you don't find everywhere else.

This holds true particularly when you go to the beach. I love beach-side Piggly Wigglys. The Piggly Wiggly in Apalachicola is superb. And they smoke meats on the weekend. The Piggly Wiggly in Darien is cool as well. They even had sushi in their fish cooler. Imagine.

Anyway, I went to the pharmacy and most of the customers seemed to be elderly people buying a whole bushel of drugs. Their grocery carts blocked the line for pharmaceuticals. There was someone there who bore the appearance of an alcoholic or meth addict, trying to get blood pressure medicine. I guess if you are a meth addict, you need your blood pressure medicine to counteract the effect of the meth.

Supermarket chains are interesting to me. Publix is probably the cleanest and best stocked of the bunch around here, although I really like the ones in Florida better. Krogers used to be the best around here for a long time, but it seems like they have fallen by the wayside a bit. Ingles is getting bigger around here and I seem to shop more in there these days. Mainly because they are cheaper than our Piggly Wiggly and because it is the next closest of the supermarkets.

The configuration of the entrances into Ingles is a civil engineer's nightmare. U.S. 19 expands to four lanes at the same time the entrance from 19/41 takes a right turn into U.S. 19 at the same time you arrive at the first entrance to Ingles. The configuration of the traffic lanes at the intersection is as confusing as that sentence. As you drive south on 19, you have to look over your right shoulder and make sure no traffic is blitzing down from 41 on to 19. You have to drive relatively slowly and carefully, which is counterintuitive since you are driving in response to a green traffic light and traveling on a highway which is expanding from two lanes to four. If you are careful and don't veer into the path of an oncoming car or hit a car in front of you, you can work your way into the lane of traffic which enters into the Ingles parking lot. Every time I drive to Ingles I think about this. It is a continuous opportunity for disaster.

We used to have a Winn Dixie's in Griffin, but it is long gone. Winn Dixie's used to be a good chain, but they fell by the wayside as well. Apparently, the best grocery store in Griffin in the old days was an A&P. So I have heard. I don't think I ever saw an A&P since the one that used to be Clarksville. We used to shop at one in Indianapolis when I was a boy.

Well, that is enough about grocery stores. I need to go on to more important things at this point.