The Appalachian Trail Figures Into My Daily Life

 Some people walk the 2,200 miles (3540.5 km for my metric friends)
(I SWEAR! I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!!)
from Springer, Georgia to Katahdin, Maine.
Thru-hikers - those addled souls walking all the way through from Georgia to Maine -
stop in the store throughout the summer.
 Most come in looking a bit dazed.
A few come in bouncy and manic.
They all smell.
Geography Lesson

An Example Of The Thru-Hiker Presence 
  This feller hails from just north of NYC.

He left Springer, Georgia 4.5 months ago.

He smelled ripe but looked fairly clean.

He seemed totally perplexed about EVERYTHING. He was so disoriented that it rubbed off on me and I forgot to ask his trail name.

Some come in with esoteric camping/hiking needs that we can't fulfill, like bulk stove fuel. But mostly they look for little things to make the last leg of their trek north feel more comfortable, like corks, odor neutralizer, ripstop nylon mending tape, jar lids, stove fuel canisters, bar shampoo (oh, am I ever ready for THAT request now) and, the thing for which Dan & Whit's is known on the trail, free day-old sandwiches. Those sandwiches don't appeal to me even when they are fresh, because I was a Deli Slave for an entire Year Of Deli Hell when I first started working at the store. But I digress. So... The End.

Rope and Chain

Rope and chain are next to each other on the way out to hardware.

Wretched heat and humidity finally abate

Five (5) weeks of hikes not worth mentioning, through clouds of bugs in sweltering heat and horrid humidity, gave me the resolve I needed to form a new Rule For Hiking Happiness:

Never hike south of the Berkshires.

Ever.

The trauma of the past weeks of heat and humidity also caused me to abandon one of my Rules For Creating Illusions Of Attractiveness: never wear shorts while hiking. Why did I ever care if my old knees showed or not? From what ridiculously self-centered, vain, delusional, self-concept was I suffering? Whatever... it's over now. Thank gods.

So Sunday was a beautiful day.

The kind of day that makes you feel like taking some pics.

(1) Wrong turn in Montpelier so I "oops-ed" past the lovely gold-domed capitol building.

(2) Got to feel like Awesome Scrambler on the rocks. Probably the rope was not necessary here but it enhanced my feelings of uber-ness, false though they were.

(3) Another pic of rope and rock becuase it was that much fun.

(4) Say hello to Camel's Hump, please. Bee tee dubs, I messed up in a previous post -- Camel's Hump is the third highest spot in VT, not the second. Killington is second and I have been up that one 3 x's, so I am not going to be interested in it anytime soon.

(5) Faires live in this col between the 2 mountains I hiked. They maintained a rule a Utter Silence and commanded that a cool wind blow in from nowhere to shoo the bugs away.

The End

Sometimes I Get Fun Messages On Monday Mornings

'Cause Verne still works a couple hours on Saturday afternoons.

Sad Things

Today is HG's Last Day.

Really.

I am not making it up.

He is retiring.

He is over 70 so I guess it is time and all.

Click here to remember HG.

Sigh.
He told me he worked 65 hours a week for the first 35 years.

Then he dropped down to 46 for the last 9.
He said back in the day they used to sweep the floors EVERY DAY,
first thing in the morning
WITH A BROOM -- the ENTIRE STORE!!
I just can't imagine the store without HG.
I went down special this afternoon to heckle him for the last time.
OMG I am going to miss him!!! (there... 6... tada!)

I told HG to look happy and wanted to retake the photo but he said that this was close enough. I told Verne to look sad. I think he did a good job.

Camel's Hump: second highest spot in Vermont, second time

Walkin' Blues by I forget who

Saturday, June 22:
same weather, same pants, different peak, VERY hot feet

Strawberries

They have finally arrived.

We accept the Strawberry family's regal arrogance

because old-fashioned,

local strawberries are

A W E S O M E!!

PSTVD: Long-winded self-aggrandizing self-centered hiking rant

I acquired Post-Swiss Traumatic View Disorder
while going over all the photos from last summer's Swiss hiking trip.

Did I really need 21 pictures of that cloud?

REALLY??

The Matterhorn is nice and all but 56 photos of it????

I DON'T THINK SO!!!!

So I decided I needed an adventure to cleanse my esthetic lens.

I was slow getting started because I also acquired

Post-Swiss Traumatic Hiking Clothes Disorder from looking like

Klutz Bag:

The Incredible Shrinking Hiker

soooooo....

I spent a lot of time rooting though my stuff looking for a pair of hiking pants that made me feel like

Old Lady Sexy Bod Tight Pants.

Note: PSTHCD is frequently confused with an obscure condition acquired from smoking too much Thai stick while on holiday in Switzerland.

OK, back to the matter at hand. I finally found a pair of black, hip hugging, stylishly belled hiking pants that I had dismissed years ago as being "too young" for me. WOO HOO!! Just what I needed for this adventure.

I decided to walk to the highest spot in Vermont. Long time readers with an intact organic google function in their wetware will recall that I had been close to that spot before. All others click here

===>  MOUNT MANSFIELD #1

Mt. Mansfield #2 Salient Points:

(1) Gorgeous Day

(2) GREAT PANTS !!!!!!
(Yes, I know that there are now twelve (12) exclamation points in this post, but so far I have not received any warnings from the Blogger Police regarding profligate exclamation point usage.)

(3) HUGE yummy gluten free cookie to think about on the uphill slog

(4) Enough uphill slog to provide respite from the daily drone of horizontal walking

(5) You didn't think it would be lonely at the highest spot in Vermont on a gorgeous day, did you?

(6) The reason I could get there this time was becuase I came at it from a different direction, so I hiked past the summit until I found the cliff that had stopped me 2 years ago.

I WIN!!

  

You Think You Know A Place But...

One Of The Things I Learned
From Got Dinner
On That Thursday He Took Me All Over The Cellar

Note:  

This information contributes to the development

of a deep understanding

of important stuff.

The cellar closet that was used for

secret banana box lid storage

used to be

THE ONLY BATHROOM IN THE STORE!

This pic serves a two-fold purpose:

(1)
to remind you of the weirdness of having a secret banana box lid storage closet in the cellar of a general store

and

(2)
to show you

THE GRAFFITI!!!!

You didn't know we have graffiti, right?

Well, we do.

Becuase we are special.

It is not the ONLY graffiti either.

But you will have to wait for the other graffiti

becuase this post

IS ABOUT A BATHROOM!

O N W A R D... 

LEFT OVER TOILET PAPER FROM THE OLD DAYS!!

How amazing is THAT??

Imagine this as your only bathroom option.

Not all that much privacy involved.

Those were different times.

Rhubarb

Rhubarb, Round 2

Most people with a little dirt in their yard grow rhubarb,

but there are those with no dirt who need to buy the annoyingly ubiquitous rhubarb.

Or those who can no longer cultivate the dirt they have.

Rhubarb,  Round 1

Just Sorta Creepy

The inside of the produce cooler.

Produce has to share with beverages.

Sometimes produce has territorial wars with beverages.

I find them very diverting.

It starts with some naive beverage guy moving his beer

into the Produce Only Zone.

I move it back.

And he moves it over.

And I move it back.

And he moves it over.

And I move it back.

etc etc etc

Until notes get posted

and lines get drawn.

BUT

no one can stand against my

persistence

and my

focus

and my

fervor.

And then?

I WIN.

Becuase I am vastly underemployed

and need lots of diverting 

to get through a day successfully.

Fiddleheads

It is Fiddlehead season.

Where Banana Boxes Come From/Intro To The Produce Department

There are lots of local people,
farmers, mini-farmers, and just plain regular folks,
who deliver seasonal produce to us.
So far, none of them have figured out how to grow
local, organic, artisan Vermont bananas.
So... 
We have two main produce suppliers
to bring us bananas.

One is a big restaurant/etc supplier out of Albany, NY.
They deliver a whole lotta crap,
like raw meat and fish,
towering stacks of containers for prepared food,
baked goods, cheese, drink mixes, sauces, dressings,
etc-etc-etc-they-seem-to-keep-everything-in-their-warehouses,
and, of course, produce.
Stuff from them often seems like it fell out the back of the truck
on the delivery run.

The other is a medium size produce supplier
based somewhere in Vermont.
Stuff from them is sometimes rotten,
like once last summer we got a case of rotten moldy broccoli.
YUCK!!!
It is not easy to forget something like that.

They both deliver through the red door.

(Remind me to tell you about the delivery doors sometime.)

The driver stacks the produce across from the Produce Room

next to the produce cooler.

Note the bananas on the bottom of the stack. 
Now you know where banana boxes come from.

The Staff Person In Charge of Produce (Anonymous By Request,) got tired of trying to explain to all our various produce suppliers which was produce cooler.

In this neighborhood of the store, there is the Produce Cooler, the Meat Cooler (sometimes referred to as the Walk-in,) the Dairy Cooler, and the Deep Freeze Walk-in, so she painted a chalkboard on the produce cooler door and chalked it up with pretty letters. She did that becuase she is clever and has initiative.

Bananas -- I Have A Lot To Say About Bananas

We get

LOTS

of bananas delivered.

They are pretty, aren't they?

And we sell them 10 cents cheaper per pound

than the nearest grocery store!

A Surprise!!

Of the MOST HUGE sort!!

It's a rare sighting

of the

former

Grocery Czar!
VERNE'S BROTHER!

 In spite of his abdication
he is still in charge of
certain fermented beverages.

He was hanging around all morning
doing Czar-like things in the office.
Most Mysterious.

Wishful Thinking

See? Someone even thoughtfully supplied a connection to...

The Power Box

Spy Cam

Dog Fish Head

Really??

Scratch and Sniff Beer?

Who are those people at Dog Fish Head?

Pearl Street Beverage

I get so used to seeing things in the cellar at work that when I actually do get out into the world...

... it seems sort of shocking to see these things.

like... EVERYONE knows about that stuff?

The Banana Box Thing

You would think it was a simple thing

to tell you about a banana box lid, right?

BUT

the story of Banana Boxes is a big story to tell,

because it involves

WOOD.

And the story of

WOOD,

in relation to the store,

IS HUGE.

It is so huge that I have been avoiding it,
although I find it endlessly fascinating.

I haven't even shown you all the stoves in the cellar, ffs.

See? I am starting to feel overwhelmed this very moment.

I guess I just have to go slowly, in parts.
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
Chapter I - The Glut
~~~ ~~~ ~~~ 

Once Upon A Time

there was a banana box lid surplus.

 They lived on the wide cellar stairs near the produce room.

 It was an impressive surplus.

There were banana box lids stashed in strange places, places about which, at the time, I knew nothing.

In fact, I knew very little about banana box lid usage, although, exhibiting signs of the premier human character flaw, I thought I knew it ALL.


You couldn't help noticing all those banana box lids choking the wide cellar stairs and stuffed in strange cellar closets. What was the destiny of all these lids? Was supply going to exceed available on-site storage?

I had my eye on The Situation.

Once in a while some noob would improperly dispose of a banana box lid. And we would all be like, "OMG! WHO MURDERED THE BANANA BOX LID?? Call the CSIs! Stay back! This is a crime scene!" Banana box lids are protected by Dan & Whit's Law, which is NEVER questioned. If you are supposed to save banana box lids then, no matter how many you see around you, you WILL save banana box lids.

Then gradually, without my really noticing it, the surplus began to dwindle.

And one day this winter, about a year after the glut, a Very Shocking Thing happened. The wide cellar stairs were empty. There were NO BANANA BOX LIDS ON THE STAIRS AT ALL.

NONE.

And THAT was a destiny moment.

Where had they all gone?
Why had they all gone?
Who was using them?
And for what?

Seasonal Selections

We are unloading ice deliveries again.
George asked me to make this sign last summer.
I tried to make it really nice
becuase I like him.

George is in charge of ice.

He puts on his heavy coat,

his green and black plaid wool cap,

 his gloves
and if someone is there to hear him he says,

"Time to count the ice cubes."

And into the walk-in he goes.

It is cold in there.
(You probably don't remember that George is Dan's father
and the original Dan's son.
George is semi-retired
so that means he only works about 60 hours a week now.)

We also have an ice machine.

It is by the green door so you have seen it lots of times,

you just didn't know you were looking at it.

Story of my life, right?

 (Click here to see it and please notice the huge scoop and scales partially hidden behind the door.)

Anyway, teenage boys have to bag up the 10 lb. ice bags

and then stock this cooler with them.
Ice is Taxable Grocery.
You have to know that if you are cashiering.

The 5 lb. bags come in the sleeves we get from

Associated Grocers of New England.

I will tell you about them sometime.

AG deliveries used to be very fun.

Now they are just -- 

in the Brave New James-less Post-Verne World --

annoying.

Soul Economy

You would not believe the number of expired power bars I found on the power bar shelf.

BUT... GUESS WHAT??

All the expired jello was SOLD!

I SWEAR!!

Not one box was left in the Half Price Gulag.

Cookie Cam: Up The Rabbit Hole

What it is like to be a Banana Box Lid full of cookies:

There is a lot of waiting involved.

The Story of Black James, the Necromancer

This is the cookie eating place.
It is right below the Jello Condos.

I inherited this place from James.
But James didn't eat cookies here --
 he drank vodka.

When he left I cleaned up after him and found several of his bottles. One was a 750 ml size and it was half full. Verne's brother took that one home.

I used to keep a guest crate here but when Verne left I took it away. Verne and I would hide out here together and do cool stuff like taste test the fake maple syrups and try to carve stuff into the wooden posts.

Boys are fun.

Anyway, I saved one of the vodka bottles so I would have something to remind me of James and all the fun times we had together.
This is how it looks now:

Last November it looked like this:

 but someone disappeared my cardboard intervention.

I think it was George.

 This is James and his diamond earring:

I inherited the cereal aisle from James. I still miss him.

James inherited the cereal aisle from Larry.

Larry worked at the store for 54 years.

He retired shortly after I started working at The Store.

Larry used to hang around the produce room telling me stories,

like the one about his dog named Heck.

I never took a pic of Larry.

I hadn't gotten that bored yet.