We’re on the brink of the long-anticipated Labor Day holiday, a/k/a as Summer’s last hurrah, though it feels more like the 4th of July with these steamy temps and high humidity. The cars have been gassed up and are ready to go, as are their owners, and a little spin in my buggy was also in order. I’d not had the car out in a week so we ventured out together. I glanced at the odometer and have amassed a whopping 2,500 miles altogether on my car which will be four years old on September 23rd … can you say homebody? Someday I will write a post about my beloved Buick Regal which was twenty-one years old when we parted; how it ended up with as many as 64,000 miles on it I’ll never know.

I headed to Meijer because I am able to give the car a run, plus I walk in the comfortably air-conditioned store, and I did in fact rack up another four miles toward my ultimate goal.

I had hoped to beat the crowd and arrived early but I was not the only one with that idea. Well, round and round and round she goes and where she stops – nobody knows …. I did multiple laps around the perimeter of the store before I made my first pit stop and started filling my cart with a few groceries. It was a great people-watching adventure this morning and I’ll share a few sightings with you.

The way I see it, three factions of shoppers arrived this morning: the back-to-school crowd, the picnic basket procurers and the canners.

First I saw the moms and their offspring looking to buy back-to-school supplies. Really?! The school supplies replaced the 4th of July paraphernalia and right now Meijer employees wait in the wings, tapping their feet to put out the Halloween trimmings and treats. Unbelievably, Meijer is sorely lagging behind Kroger who already is advertising pumpkins … where is the house on fire to get pumpkins and harvest décor on your porch may I ask? The pumpkins will be moldy before the long holiday is over. I doubt anyone is slaving over a hot stove baking pumpkin pies or roasting pumpkin seeds with temps hovering around ninety degrees!!

At any rate, moms and their kids were busy pondering over and picking up necessities in the school supplies section. These moms were all about getting ‘er done and getting those kids back to school (and out of their hair) and the kids were wearing a dazed look (either from the early morning hour or just recognizing that their 2013 Summer sojourn was nearly in the books). I overheard moms quizzing their charges on what supplies they needed and for the most part I heard one- or two-word responses like “dunno” or “don’t care” or I saw the perpetual shrugging of the shoulders. Note to kids: best be thinking about bullet points for the inevitable paper or recitation on “what I did on my Summer vacation”, that is – assuming it is shareable information. Notwithstanding the lackadaisical answers by her brood, most of the moms were simply muddling along filling their carts with school necessities: thumb drives, external hard drives, printer ink cartridges, laptop cases or backpacks and perhaps at the last minute, tossing in a lowly package of loose-leaf paper and a pack of pencils or pens, the latter items hardly used by today’s scholars.

School essentials for me back in the day were a new leather book strap, loose-leaf paper, binder, pens and pencils and maybe a compass or protractor – heck, we didn’t even have calculators back then because we had to rely on our noggins for math. I always had my trusty paperback Merriam-Webster Dictionary with me. Way back then there was no Google, of course, to type in a word to see if it was spelled correctly. I surely won’t bore you with the rigors of researching for term papers, which necessitated a nightly trip to the Lincoln Park Public Library to immerse oneself in encyclopedias, then with the information located, queuing up at the sole copy machine with a pocketful of dimes and copying all your info “to go”. Mr. Schaefer, our wonderful Lincoln Park librarian when I was growing up, would help you with any inquiries you had, but only after you scoured the library index card catalog, and you’d better know your Dewey Decimal System and have meticulously searched each aisle of books before attempting to secure his aid! Nowadays, modern school kids merely hop onto Wikipedia or eHow as a starting point. These students have it soooooooo easy – and no, I wouldn’t want to go back and start school anew.

Another faction, present and accounted for at Meijer this early a.m., was the people packing their coolers with goodies for the trek to the Great North. The pickin’s were fresh indeed and flyin’ off the shelves. Cold salads and grill fixin’s for the holiday weekend were being scooped up as if there were a fire sale. Cantaloupes were getting thumped and gimongous watermelons that would break your toe if they fell on it were piled into nearly every shopping cart. Ears of corn were shucked on the spot as customers peeked to check out the cob’s integrity and trails of cornsilk followed nearly every shopper as they whisked around the store.

In the canning aisle, a few women were engaged in a lively discussion of pickling spices and exchanging recipes on the fly. A few of them had a pencil and the back of their shopping list out, taking notes. Pickles seemed to be the predominant topic where an animated dialogue ensued regarding the virtues of garlic versus dill on at least two occasions when I sauntered by. Canning supplies filled their respective shopping carts and I heard the tinkle of Mason jars slamming up against one another when the clique of canners eventually disbanded. I could not contribute to the conversation because I’ve never “put up” preserves or veggies, nor did my mom. Oh, she would regale me with stories of her youth when her family members would slave for hours over a hot stove making red and green chow chow as they referred to what you might call tomato relish. They also made corn relish. This relish-producing extravaganza occurred every August. They would return to Toronto with a cache of tomatoes, onions and corn from my great-grandparents’ farm in Guelph where they travelled to help bring in the crops the last two weeks of August every year. Mom would tell me that she and my grandmother peeled tomatoes, chopped up green and red peppers and stripped corn off the cob for endless hours. My grandfather was relegated to their cool basement with a bushel basket of onions to peel and chop, (and probably cry despite the matchstick held between his teeth), as this was his contributing effort toward the family tomato relish. He was banished to the basement to contain the strong onion fumes. It was a family event and they bottled up a great stash of tomato and corn relish to last until the next year’s harvest. It was slathered onto ham sandwiches or plopped atop fried eggs. My mom said it was alot of work and she vowed to never embark on that type of project again.

Her only exception for “putting up” fruit, was blueberries and this was very simple preparation. Around this time of year Mom would pick up several quarts of fresh blueberries. She’d wash them and line them up, one by one, on her cookie sheets to freeze them. then tuck a Tupperware canister full of blueberries into the freezer. Once we were knee-deep in snow, she would whip up a big batch of blueberry muffins. Ahhhh, the smell of cinnamon wafting through the house and sitting in your jammies eating warm muffins brimming with blueberries is still another image for the memory book.