The Season for Men to Harvest Groceries

We’re at the Great American Grocery store, checking out this new gust of inflation that’s threatening to sweep the nation--eyeing the boneless rib eyes and the Norwegian salmon, two of my favorite economic indicators.

“How about some salmon?” I ask my wife.

“Too expensive,” she says, sounding like Greenspan.

I push the grocery cart onward, leaning low on the handle the way husbands do, slow-dancing the cart past racks of pastries and bags of Halloween candy.

It’s harvest time, a bad time for inflation to make a comeback, with taffy apples everywhere and big bags of walnuts. Gourds. Raspberries. Stove-top stuffing. Fixings for a Sunday feast.

“How about some stuffing?” I ask my wife.

“No,” she says, not looking up from the list.

I am here to help, though I am not much help. At one time, when the children were very young, I did all the grocery shopping. Now, the most I usually do is run for milk.

But hobbled by a broken foot, my wife needed someone to push the cart. Unfortunately, the boy and I volunteered.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“Cream soda,” I say.

“Cream soda’s good,” the boy explains.

“Did you have lunch?” my wife asks, worried that I’m trying to buy everything I see.

“Dad ate lunch twice,” the boy tells her.

“Oh, my God,” she says.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

They say you shouldn’t shop when you’re hungry, but I am always hungry. Not constantly ravenous or anything. It’s just that I could always eat a little something. At all times. Except for the 25 minutes after Thanksgiving dinner, I am always hungry.

So to turn the boy and me loose in a store like this is not the wisest move. You want inflation? We’ll give you inflation. Just hand us a shopping cart.

“What’s that?” I ask the boy as he sneaks something into the cart.

“Pistachios,” he says.

“Smart choice,” I say.

“Thanks,” he says.

*

My wife and I turn down an aisle. The boy follows close behind. When his mother’s back is turned, he slips in boxes of blueberry Snak-Stix and Hungry-Man Dinners. When his back is turned, I put them back. Not all of them. Just the stuff I don’t like.

“What are you two doing?” my wife asks.

“Overstimulating the economy,” I say.

“What?” the boy asks.

“Just push the cart,” I tell him.

The boy proves to be an eager shopper. He stops to squeeze the plastic pumpkins. He stops to sample the free breakfast sausage. For five minutes, he browses the chocolate fudge.

“Fudge?” the boy asks.

“Why not,” I say, grabbing a jar.

Eventually, my wife is able to herd us toward the vegetable section, where we are less of a threat to the family budget, sheep-dogging us with her crutches, elbowing us with her elbows.

She’s a small woman, but quick and surprisingly strong, like Walter Payton in his prime, mixing speed and power and incredible grace in a way the world seldom sees. Even on a pair of creaky wooden crutches, she is a formidable player.

“Ouch,” the boy says.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“She stepped on my foot,” the boy says.

“Over there,” she orders, throwing me a shoulder.

“Where?” I say.

“To the eggplant,” she says.

For two minutes, I squeeze the eggplant, not really knowing what to feel for but concentrating just the same, my fingertips raw and sensitive from too much remote control. Red Sox. Braves. Bears. They’ve all taken their toll.

“This one feels pretty good,” I tell my wife.

“Try another one,” she says, not knowing the pain I’m in.

“Over here, Dad!” the boy yells, waving from the deli counter.

As most men know, there are certain magnetic fields at work inside a grocery store. Beer pulls you one way. Beef pulls you another.

But the deli counter is strongest of all. Chicken, tamales, three kinds of potato salad--all ready to go, all stuff we could eat on the way home.

“We don’t need any of this,” my wife warns us right away.

“We need it all, Mom,” says the boy.

*

The boy stares at the baked beans and the smoked sausage, his nose nearly touching the steamy glass.

“Have the kids been eating the bologna?” my wife asks.

“I’ve been eating the bologna,” I tell her.

The deli clerk looks at her. The deli clerk looks at me.

“It’s very good bologna,” I assure the deli clerk.

“Thank you,” the deli clerk says proudly.

And finally we make it to the register, where two cashiers are discussing the best place to shoot a misbehaving boyfriend, in the leg or in the hip, finally deciding on the hip for reasons that are unclear to us.

The boy and I stand there uncomfortably, shifting from one leg to the other as we start to unload the cart, careful not to offend anybody.

“Yeah, the hip,” one woman says, and they both laugh.

And little by little, the stuff rolls past my wife, the stuff she didn’t know we had. Cans of Easy Cheese. Boxes of crackers.

It is harvest food, the kind of stuff men gravitate toward in October. Food for fall Sundays and festive Monday nights. Packers-Bears. Vikings-49ers. For them, we buy this food.

“Easy Cheese?” my wife asks as a can of processed cheese whizzes by.

“It’s easy. It’s cheese,” I say. “Easy Cheese.”

“Perfect,” says the boy.

*

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is [email protected].