When my son was a baby, I was an impoverished young widow. I could not afford to buy traditional jars of baby food for him.
There was a little open air store about a block away from where we lived that sold primarily, bread, milk,sodas, beer and snacks. Occasionally a desperate customer would pop in for dog or cat food or eggs or sugar or another ingredient needed to complete a meal. For just such emergencies they kept a small supply of groceries on a few shelves which were hardly ever touched. In fact the dust was so thick on the tops of these items it obscured the paper price tags stuck on each one.
The lady who ran the place never moved from her folding chair in the back of the store. She was heavy set, sixty-ish, gray hair pulled back into an untidy bun. She wore a flowered house dress and a dingy white sweater over her shoulders. Her expression was sullen and she never smiled or spoke. She had a sparce black mustache gracing her upper lip.
I used to go in that store almost daily carrying my new little boy. I discovered they had a few jars of applesauce on the shelves, I wiped the dust away from the price tag and saw it was marked nineteen cents. I thought I would buy it for my son as an inexpensive alternative to baby food. I came in and bought another jar the next day. The third day when I came to buy more, the tops of all the jars of applesauce were dusted and sporting a new price tag of twenty cents each. All the other groceries around them were still dust covered as before.
Instead of being glad she had a customer for her old applesauce, she saw she had a sucker on the line and decided to make a bigger profit by raising the jars of applesauce one cent a jar. That applesauce probably would still be sitting there till this day if it weren't for a poor young mother and a hungry baby that just happened to stumble across it.
I hope that old woman enjoyed her few extra pennies...I wonder if they made her smile?
VXA©
There was a little open air store about a block away from where we lived that sold primarily, bread, milk,sodas, beer and snacks. Occasionally a desperate customer would pop in for dog or cat food or eggs or sugar or another ingredient needed to complete a meal. For just such emergencies they kept a small supply of groceries on a few shelves which were hardly ever touched. In fact the dust was so thick on the tops of these items it obscured the paper price tags stuck on each one.
The lady who ran the place never moved from her folding chair in the back of the store. She was heavy set, sixty-ish, gray hair pulled back into an untidy bun. She wore a flowered house dress and a dingy white sweater over her shoulders. Her expression was sullen and she never smiled or spoke. She had a sparce black mustache gracing her upper lip.
I used to go in that store almost daily carrying my new little boy. I discovered they had a few jars of applesauce on the shelves, I wiped the dust away from the price tag and saw it was marked nineteen cents. I thought I would buy it for my son as an inexpensive alternative to baby food. I came in and bought another jar the next day. The third day when I came to buy more, the tops of all the jars of applesauce were dusted and sporting a new price tag of twenty cents each. All the other groceries around them were still dust covered as before.
Instead of being glad she had a customer for her old applesauce, she saw she had a sucker on the line and decided to make a bigger profit by raising the jars of applesauce one cent a jar. That applesauce probably would still be sitting there till this day if it weren't for a poor young mother and a hungry baby that just happened to stumble across it.
I hope that old woman enjoyed her few extra pennies...I wonder if they made her smile?
VXA©
No comments:
Post a Comment