It was a splendid Saturday morning in early spring, bursting with limitless optimism, perfect for learning a foreign language, training school-aged children to pick up after themselves or beginning large yard projects involving truckloads of poured concrete.
Three of our four kids were methodically insulting each other in the backseat as I managed the wheel of our beat-up minivan in the brilliant-white early morning sunshine. We drove past our emergency backup grocery store, where we usually shop on Christmas Day or Thanksgiving because our regular grocery store has closed.
Across the nearly empty parking lot, we saw large yellow and black banners draping the front of the store, advertising new and presumably more capable management and the day’s grand opening in huge black script, with door prizes, store coupons and a drawing to win a dazzling stainless steel propane-fired barbeque grill that gleamed in the sun near the entrance.
On this giddy morning full of extravagant promise, it seemed perfectly fitting that we might stop by our emergency backup grocery store, win a handsome stainless-steel barbecue and grill thick steaks for friends that afternoon.
We were greeted inside the glass doors by the new manager, a harried man in black glasses with a friendly smile and curly black hair, welcoming us to the grand opening and gesturing toward a stack of entry forms for the barbeque drawing to our left, mentioning that if we could wait, in minutes the store would be conducting a cakewalk.
I was in a cakewalk once. Tex Ritter’s “Turkey in the Straw” blared on a tinny portable record player, and two dozen kids and I walked around a circle of numbers until the music stopped, and I didn’t win a cake.
I noticed that the store had been re-
arranged and freshly cleaned and painted, and it hummed with renewed purpose and energetic enthusiasm after decades of slow decline. I scribbled our name on an entry form and dropped it into a slot cut in the top of a cardboard box. It was still early, and the store was mostly empty; clerks were scurrying around with armloads of stuff, straightening and sweeping.
There were numbered squares in bright green tape stuck to the scarred and yellowing linoleum floor. Our three kids stood inside the nearest square and waited, elbowing each other for advantage. I explained that their chances would likely improve if they each occupied their own squares, so they fought over one particular square near the cash registers, while I took a square over in produce, shushing them from afar.
Presently the manager beckoned to a pleasant woman who disappeared into a backroom off the bakery and without preamble, switched on a microphone and called out a number on the overhead speakers. “Number 19.” The cakewalk had begun. There was a moment of confusion when no one knew exactly where number 19 was, or if anyone was standing on it. As it turned out 19 was back by the beer. It was still kind of early for beer.
She called another. “Number 13.” I could see that square 13 was unoccupied from my spot near the tomatoes. Our youngest son patrolled the perimeter of his square near the cash registers, apparently prepared to defend it with force.
The pleasant lady called another number, six, which sat empty a few squares distant from our oldest daughter, standing by the Cheetos. “Number eight.” Empty. Things were going awry with the cakewalk game. “Number four.” Empty. Our youngest girl investigated the racks of tempting candy bars. “Number 10.” A couple of disheveled guys buying malt liquor stood unsteadily on square 19, grinning.
The lady calling the numbers reappeared from the back room looking exasperated. Surveying the checkout lanes, she found our youngest son vigilantly guarding his square. She returned to the room. “Number nine,” she declared flatly.
The manager with curly black hair and friendly grin grabbed our youngest boy’s hand and held it up like a champion prize fighter. I snapped a picture with my cellphone. One of the clerks clapped and whistled. Someone wooted. We were all just making it up as we went along.
The pleasant bakery lady presented our son his cake, chocolate with chocolate frosting in a snap-together clear-plastic package.
Before we left we bought groceries and a double-tall mocha to take home to my wife Maria. On the way home, I exclaimed, “We won a cake! Wait ’til we tell Mom!” Our youngest boy was silent for a moment. He said the cake was OK, but it wasn’t as good as the one he won last year. It didn’t matter. The morning was still young.
— Kevin Pottinger and his wife Maria live near Portage with their four children.
