The grocery store on a Friday night is busy. It’s always busy then. The parking lot filled to capacity, the shopping carts all in use. The carts with the wobbly wheels, usually tucked into the abandoned corner of the foyer, in the space between the outside door and the inside door, shoppers are filling those with bread and brats and beer and chips and those little cracked wheat crackers that are terrific with cheese but dreadful on their own. The aisles are busy, the stocking boys that want to impress the managers are busily stacking and arranging, refilling and reorganizing. The stocking boys who don’t care are texting their girlfriends, emojis and abbreviations mostly, or entirely. Cardboard boxes, so many of them, piling up in the warehouse space. And the carts are overflowing and the half and half needs replenishing. Chips? Good luck finding the crispy variety made from red beans now.
It’s like this on Saturday, too. The late arrivers, the ones who thought they might be able to make the weekend count if they could get to the lake before Saturday evening. The ones who shopped on Friday and by Saturday needed more. Thursday, now that’s the day the store might be as busy as Friday, but only now. Only in the middle of this summer. The summer we dream about in the winter and we pine for in the spring, that’s the summer that makes us take a Friday off, or all of them off, and we shop on a Thursday night because we made it to the lake and we’re buying the provisions that must last through Sunday.
The morning was rainy on that Sunday. Stormy, even. During a summer with few clouds and fewer rain drops, that morning was unexpected. The forecast called for it, but still, no one believed it. When the storm pushed through and dropped its payload before heading to the east and a ways to the south, the sun peaked out and the wind whipped. By mid-afternon it seemed as though everyone had left for home. The lake was busy with wind but absent the revelers. The roads were clear. The yacht club, nearly empty. The people had gone home to brace for another work week, leaving because they must, only to return when they can.
But by Sunday night the grocery store was busy. The wobbly wheeled carts were in use. The stocking boys were stocking. The checkout girls, by this time this late into the weekend, were weary, smiling weak, forced smiles. The bean chips were running low, the carts burdened with the beer and brats and the buns and the steaks. It was a Sunday night, the Thursday and Friday and Saturday shoppers had gone home. This was the new round of shoppers, the group whose week was just starting at the grocery store and would last through the forecast sunshine. It’s summer after all, mid-summer to be exact, and if there ever was a time to take a break from the work week it’s right now.