...last Monday and bought sheets and shoes and spectacles and seeds, thinking all the while what a fun thing it was to have an alliterative shopping list. Of course, the shoes and seeds were not on the original list, but let's not be picky...they did start with the letter of the day! And does that mnenomic device for remembering lists remind anyone but me of a long ago, half-forgotten childhood game? But that's probably another story.

For whatever reason, Monday's trip to the store reminded me of other shopping experiences over the years, and later that day, I spent time recalling some of them.

Forty-two years ago, I went to the store on my bicycle one hot August day. I had finally become the owner of a bicycle when I was about twenty-three, a sadly used machine painted a wretched shade of bluish-gray, but it was MINE!

The new supermarket was a few long blocks from our little yellow tract house in Panorama City, so I decided to take the bike, putting my good-natured son in the basket seat on the handlebars. Bill was six months old, a happy baby who loved to go places and do things. I even remember the blue corduroy overalls and red shirt and cap he was wearing, while I, as I recall, was in capri pants and a loose shirt of my husband's.

We wheeled our way to the store (was it a Safeway?) where my intent was to pick up some milk and a package of hamburger buns for our supper that night. I parked the bike outside and picked Bill up from the basket seat. We wandered all through the store, enjoying the air conditioning and selecting the things we had come to buy.

Somewhere along the line, I lost track of the fact that the bicycle had a very limited load capacity. I happily picked up the milk, the buns, a big dill pickle from the barrel near the meat display cases, some lovely tomatoes for slicing, a head of lettuce, and a small watermelon. After paying at the checkout stand, we went back outdoors where reality set in!

It was a long hot walk home, pushing the bicycle, with Bill in the basket seat, grinning happily, surrounded by paper bags and holding the watermelon on his lap! It was one of those times when a camera would have captured a wonderful picture.

Then my thoughts went on to an earlier expedition. The small store near our home on River Street in El Paso was the forerunner, I think, of the modern "convenience store". It was quite small, made of adobe brick painted a dazzling white on the outside.

The inside was so dark, that if you came in from the bright sunshine glaring off the whitewashed adobe, you were blind for a few seconds! I remember an "L" shaped counter, with all sorts of interesting things in the display cases. Whenever we had collected enough pennies from returning soft drink bottles for the deposit, we would head down the street to the little store, where we could buy a lot of candy for 10¢. Tootsie rolls were a big favorite, but the ones I remember most vividly were the small paraffin mugs with colored liquid in them...I don't recall exactly how they worked, but I remember drinking the minute amount of liquid and then chewing the paraffin, all of which seems faintly disgusting to me now! Mother ran an account at the little store, but had given strict orders that any candy we purchased was to be on a cash basis only! And the steely-eyed man behind the counter was not one to try and convince that this time Mother said we could have candy, along with the loaf of bread and can of spinach!

I still like to go grocery shopping, but am not to be trusted wandering up and down the aisles. I always want to try this or that new gadget or snack product, so have had to exercise some control by taking along a limited shopping list, which only occasionally becomes elastic - usually because of cookies!