A trip to the grocery store is not as simple as it used to be

Once a week, usually on a Monday, I make my foray to Food Lion. It's both a social adventure and an archaeological dig. First of all, I get to reap some of the rewards of being a writer for the Cape Gazette. Readers come up to me while I'm waiting at the deli and help me pass the time there by telling me how much they love my Around Town with Pam column. I also encounter lots of Lewes friends who must come over here to Milton to shop. Some even turn their carts around and follow me down the aisles, asking if it's really me.

Then as I'm unloading my cart in the checkout aisle, someone will swoop down and say, "We really enjoy reading your column. I have an idea for a story." Yes, it's very nice being a local celebrity! Even as I push my cart to my waiting Alien-green Kia, someone exotic with a New York accent asks if it's really me.

At the deli counter, I really should be paying attention instead of preening, because sometimes the workers seem to be hard of hearing. I say, "A half-pound of Food Lion cooked ham, chipped, please!" I realize that chipped is a rather unusual request. I heard another customer ask for it, saw it, and it looked good, so now Jeff is hooked. The chipped request doesn't seem to bother them as much as the amount. I'll say a half-pound, and they'll say, looking down, "You said a pound?" No, I said a half-pound! But when it's finally slapped on the counter, it's a pound.

Then I ask for Food Lion Swiss cheese sliced thin. They have a funky sign showing different slice sizes in a graph-like line. No one ever seems to pay any attention to that. If they’re really ambitious, they'll hold up a sample slice and wave it around, so I usually eat it right then and there because by this time I'm famished. They say, "Never go to the grocery store hungry," which is wise advice, because by the looks of my cart upon leaving, I was starved.

Anyhow, Jeff says I should make signs to hold up saying what I want and its poundage. People today seem more visual, or should I say digital, so maybe he's right. I should go easy on them, since they mostly have to wear shower caps all day. There's one fantastic lady there who seems to run the whole show, whirling like a dervish. She even manages to compliment me on my kooky wool winter cap and my watches, and she has avoided the hair-covering problem by wrapping headdresses of Kente cloth alluringly around her head in a turban.

I saw her pushing a huge tray of glistening chickens into an oven one afternoon. I had always wondered about this process. Up north at the Shop Rite in Newport, the chickens turned in a glass rotisserie on spits, golden brown, emitting a tantalizing, mouth-watering aroma. Here, they appear mysteriously bagged on a deli shelf like a stork just dropped them there. Who bakes their own chickens anymore? I used to do this in a crockpot, via advice from my mother-in-law, and it amazingly worked. It was the next best thing to just picking them up at the deli.

I once saw a sign on the Perdue Roasters that said, "Be brave. Roast your own chicken," with a coupon to nudge you on to attempting this archaic feat. But speaking of being brave, you'd better be both bold and quick to win one of those store-roasted chickens. They disappear fast! Everyone in town must grab one on the way home to avoid cooking. We were returning home one evening from Wilmington and Jeff just had to have one! Good luck, I said, since it was 7:30 p.m. Of course, there were none. They said they roll them out all day, and I can reserve one in the future.

The grocery store is enough of an ordeal anyway for a vertically challenged person like me, short but powerful, I like to say. For instance, these carbonated flavored water drinks that Jeff likes; one particular favorite is black cherry, and it seems to be everyone else's favorite also, plus it’s always on the top shelf way back. There are usually about four left that I can't reach. I have to find a man, tall woman or employee with a stepladder to reach them for me. I need some of those geriatric-specialty grabbers I've seen on TV.

Oh well, people helping people is what it's all about. I don't want Door Dash. I really do crave the adventure and ideas for new dishes I get by visiting this marketplace of life.