project 365 #52: ingles parking lot evening

project 365 #52: ingles parking lot evening
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Went to see my mom tonight and took a whole lot of atrocious pictures on the way and then there. It was such a beautiful day and I didn't even get my shit together to walk around with the camera, more's the pity, because all the people with the giddy looks on their faces carrying their coats would have made for some good shots. Then this one, though, I thought turned out okay - stopping at the Biltmore Forest Ingles, which is where I go after I leave my mom's. Inevitably I leave my mother's house and have to get groceries and get home to make some kind of dinner which often doesn't turn out well and gets served at 8:30, which is to say, like 2 hours after you're supposed to eat dinner. Oh well, what the hell, and tonight was no exception and dinner sucked and every night can't be great, right?

I always feel kind of like an imposter at that Ingles, which is dumb, because actually even though it is large and lush and has one of those mega produce sections that inspire awe and envy in people like me, who shop at the truly ghetto Ingleses that are West Asheville's nod to supermarkets, it's actually in some ways more ghetto than mine. They have all that space and yet don't have all that much stuff in the store, whereas the small, grotty West Asheville Ingles is crammed with weird Mexican food and hillbilly food like pickled pigs feet and the occasional surprising pile of hippie food in a nod to the changing neighborhood. The people at the Biltmore Ingles, who you would expect to be called Muffy & Bob and wearing tennis sweaters, actually tend to be older black men buying dog food. I think all the genuine Biltmore Forest people shop up in Arden where everyone is white and has good teeth.

One thing I like about Ingles, though, even though it is a terrible monopoly and I have heard all the usual calumnies about the ultra tackiness of the Ingles clan, is that they always hire mentally or otherwise handicapped people to bag groceries and I think, somehow, that that is kind. Although on the other hand for all I know they're paying them like 12 cents an hour or something. It's always kind of amusing: the contrast between the terribly world weary teenage cashier in giant African earrings and the very earnest DD bag boy. And I like it and I like talking to the bag boys because it makes them both very happy and very serious, like, they're talking to a Customer now and they have to remember exactly what to say. I usually say things that are nonconsequential and so do they but you can tell that these conversations are important to them and they want to do them exactly right and I like that they are trying so hard to navigate these mysterious small talk waters.