My mother, my sister, and I live in an apartment complex that's directly behind Ralphs supermarket. Across the street from the Montalvo Square Shopping Center, which is basically our address, is Walmart directly ahead, and Trader Joe's to the far left side of that lot. I know all of them very well, as we go to Ralphs and Walmart for our basic necessities, and Trader Joe's when we're feeling adventurous once in a while.
Vons, which is further down Victoria Avenue, and actually sits closer to Telephone Road (which intersects Victoria at the Government Center complex), is more expensive than it's worth, and it's really only for the occasional fill-in that we can't find anywhere else.
But I know Ralphs and Walmart all too well. In the times I don't go grocery shopping with my mother and my sister, my sister calls me from certain parts of the store, asking if I want this or that, and I know exactly where she is. It shows up clearly in my mind, right down to any display racks that might be nearby, such as in the bakery section.
Both Ralphs and Walmart feed my interest of finding out where products are from, usually turning them over to read the company name and the city and state, especially Walmart because it feels like a more casual place to do it. I don't go up and down the aisles turning over every product, though, just those that catch my eye. I don't remember how it began, but it's been with me for years. Maybe I'm curious about what these cities and towns might look like, or maybe I just like their names. It may well be a combination of both.
Neither Ralphs nor Walmart offers a sense of imagination, because I know all those products quite well. I don't buy them all, but I see them often enough. It's not their fault, though, that I'm well familiar with the names and styles of the publishing companies of word search puzzle magazines. Nor that I remain disappointed that Walmart still hosts the Jif vs. Skippy peanut butter battle, with no other peanut butter valiantly trying to fight for their space on the shelves. That's all there is in my Walmart. Nor that I lately walk the aisle of canned tomatoes at Ralphs, not finding the Hunt's low sodium diced tomatoes with Italian seasoning, the only canned kind I really like, and so I mourn. In these two stores, what mostly occupies my mind is what we need to get, and what else I might want that's right there. Both are the stores of day-to-day living. You get what you need swiftly enough because you have other things to do.
There is a contrast here in Ventura, one that I hope is true of other cities and towns. That contrast is the 99 Cents Only store, which retains its novelty by changing its stock far more often than Ralphs and Walmart tend to.
It's hard not to notice that anyway, but it's even more acute when you lose something there that's important to you. Case in point was yesterday when we were at our local 99 Cents Only, also on Victoria, and I found that the shelves where peanut butter is had been rearranged to basically show that Peter Pan peanut butter, my absolute favorite, is not there anymore. It might be back the next time we go, but chances are, the way those shelves looked absolutely certain, I don't think there's a chance. Before we went to 99, I had one open on the counter to the right of the stove, and a spare on the larger counter to the left of the stove. The only thing I could think to do in that circumstance was put in the cart a jar of another peanut butter I'd seen many times, one made in British Columbia, Canada, just to try it after I finish my Peter Pan stash, and see if it's anything worthwhile.
99 Cents Only offers an expedition. You have to linger there. You can't treat it like your local supermarket, where you're in and then out as fast as you can. There are often unusual things here, or even miraculous things. For example, the last couple times we had pasta that we bought from Ralphs, I found the spaghetti---well, mostly spaghetti anyway---to be too starchy. Last night, my sister made a pasta bake with a brand we found at 99 Cents Only called Pastaio, which apparently comes from Italy, and might be from Sardinia, if the company's website is any indication. It was rotini, and it was the first pasta I'd had in so long that tasted like pasta should, not starchy at all. After all those times, I had forgotten pasta could be like this. It was miraculous to me.
Curiosity also blossoms in 99 Cents Only. The more time you spend in 99 Cents Only expands one's sense of wonder. A minor example from yesterday is when I found three stacks of DVDs on shelves near automotive stuff, and spotted a lone copy of <i>The Leisure Seeker</i> starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. I was amused because I had bought a copy of the novel it's based on from this exact 99 Cents Only a few months ago. And here was the movie. I bought it, of course, for whenever I can get to it, most likely after finally reading the novel, which is sitting on my nightstand. But I wondered about the journey of this one DVD to get to this 99 Cents Only. Who had negotiated such a deal? Who had determined that the movie wasn't likely to sell any more copies by traditional means? And how is it that there only ended up being one copy? Were there other 99s that received more than one? I wondered.
The real curiosity for me came early on in our shopping, in the same aisle on the same side as the Pastaio brand pasta. I spotted a longish box containing what looks like one of those old-time toothpaste tubes, with a small green twist cap, and it looks like you have to aim the tip of a sharp-enough knife just so to pierce the metal top. There's nothing to pull off from the covered top. That's your only choice.
The front of the box announced "De Rica Double Concentrated Organic Tomato Paste," also made in Italy. Immediately, I wondered what made it double concentrated, what the process to make it double concentrated is like, and wondered where in Italy it was made. Looking at the box right now and leaning on Google, I find that it's Cremona, Italy, in northern Italy, known for its violin-making heritage.
Lately, I've been in a European mood. A couple weeks ago I spotted a novel on Amazon called <i>Scorpionfish</i> by Natalie Bakopoulos and wondered why I haven't read a lot about Greece, especially considering that I love Greek food (I put it on hold in the Ventura County Library system, and am just waiting for the person ahead of me to finish it). I looked at that box with the toothpaste tube of double concentrated tomato paste (we bought it, of course, because it's one of the many kinds of novelties to be found at 99 Cents Only, happening upon what you've never seen before), and wondered the same about Italy. I should read more books about Italy, novels and otherwise, since I'm fascinated with the culture there. And last night, I started reading <i>The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World</i> by Barry Gewen, Kissinger having escaped with his immediately family from Nazi Germany, but losing many relatives to concentration camps. My first reason for reading this book is because it's also governmental history, one of my passions, but Germany also interests me, namely because Peter Schilling, who sang my favorite song "Major Tom (Coming Home)" is German, and there's a kind of devotion to work I admire there, particularly because my mother and I discovered during the summer the Women's World word seek and crossword puzzle books, which are the best that we've had in so long. Both of them are published by Bauer Media Group, a German company.
Overall, this is what 99 Cents Only does. In your imagination, it takes you to places you either haven't been to in a long time or never been to yet. On one side of the store, to the left of the entrance, they're now selling flip flops, all hung up on the wall there. In another section of the store, in the cold case used to store fruits and vegetables, there were kiwi berries, which I've never had and might have been curious enough about to pick up a pack if I hadn't been spirited away by the discovery that Producers brand egg nog is there again, my favorite egg nog out of all that I've tried. They also have Rock View Pumpkin Nog, another favorite, but far less important than Producers, and as long as Producers is there, Rock View is dead to me.
I don't mind that egg nog is there already, just like how I don't mind that there were Christmas-themed word puzzle books in the book aisle. With the year it's been, I don't mind seeing all that before Halloween. More cheer like that is crucial, and I bought a quart of that egg nog and two smaller bottles of it. This 99 Cents Only will be my beacon until the end of the holidays because of that.
For me, a library generally does what 99 Cents Only is doing for me right now. But all patrons can do at our local libraries in Ventura County is pick up holds at the entrance. No one else besides staff is allowed in there. And my beloved Ventura College Library is still closed, just like the rest of my beloved campus. When things get to a point where we can lead a quasi-normal life, and more places are opening regularly, the first place I'm going is the Ventura College Library. And I'm never leaving. I work for the college anyway.
I know why libraries aren't open up fully again, and I respect that. Besides, from the way things are going, I feel like the Ventura County libraries may start cautiously opening back up in March, but not before. There's enough time for them to set out the policies necessary to open back up, along with planning for the contingencies that will undoubtedly arise from a restless public. That takes a lot of time and talent, and I've seen firsthand that they have the talent to do it.
But it's not the same looking up books on Amazon in order to fill out the "Tell Us What to Buy" form on the library website, or looking up books there, putting them on hold and waiting. This year has shown how important browsing the stacks is to my well-being, moreso in the college library. That kind of intellectual adventure keeps me whole. The books stay the same, but my interests shift, my priorities in reading change, and I go in each time looking for something different, but am always happy to bump into a different book at random.
So 99 Cents Only is where it's at for me right now. And I'm sure it'll be more often over the next few months as long as Producers egg nog is there. I need a place to let my imagination fly, besides my reading, and this will do. Also to see what changes, to see what interesting items suddenly appear that I'd never expected to see in a 99 Cents Only store, to wonder, for example, how Vons products somehow ended up here, including the three-cheese pasta sauce we had last night.
And maybe it works out better this way. In my college library, I generally know what to expect already, even though there are shelves in the stacks I don't see every time. I do know that the Leisure Reading section changes here and there as books that have been there for a while are moved to the main stacks, and new books, fiction and nonfiction alike, come in to fill the gaps (although I'm not sure how it's going to be when the campus opens up to some degree again, because budgets are not going to be friendly at least over the next few years). But whatever drives me into the library, whatever topic I want to read about, I know where it all is. I know which way to go. I know what books I'll pass if I go this way or that way. It's a kind of security for me, stability, my foundation that keeps me upright.
I do love that at 99 Cents Only, I absolutely do not know what to expect. I don't know what I'll see from one time to the next. Also yesterday, I found blackberries. No blueberries. Next time, it may well be blueberries, but no blackberries, which would have pleased my mother yesterday since she wanted blueberries. I know that all the aisles will retain their general shape, that certain products will always be in certain places. But how they change is what I'm after. Will I find Peter Pan peanut butter again? Or will it go by the wayside like those cans of Maxwell House cold brew coffee did? (Those were mistakenly priced at $0.99 each at the start, and I bought 6.)
Or maybe I discover something else to hold onto. 99 Cents Only is where I discovered Champion Raisins, which I like far better than Sun-Maid, mainly because in one small box, I found a piece of a branch inside, and it gave me a closer connection to the crop. I liked that, and the raisins are better anyway. The egg nog will be here for a few months and then it'll be gone again either right after Christmas or after the start of the new year. But right there, for a time, I have a big part of what I love during the holiday season.
Obviously the main reason to visit 99 Cents Only is to save money, and I think even if I got to the point where I was comfortable enough, I'd still shop at 99 Cents Only because there the sense of domestic adventure remains. Ralphs is reliable, but it can't do that. Neither can Walmart. It's the one place I know that makes necessary errands tolerable.
