Sam and Heidi

Growing up back in the bygone days of the 1950’s, supermarkets were just taking hold. On Elmora Avenue in Elizabeth, not too from my home in Roselle, New Jersey, was an A & P my mother occasionally shopped at. But mostly she went to the fish market, the meat market, Dugan’s bakery, Goodman’s Deli and Sam and Andy’s produce market. (Milk was delivered to our milkbox on the side of the house.) Whenever I went with her to Sam and Andy’s, Sam would select a ripe peach or juicy apple or tangy pear for me to eat while my Mom shopped and they chatted about their families and the latest news. I never did meet Andy, but Sam was always jovial and alongside the necessary shopping and my gifted treat was the pleasure of friendly conversation. Business with a face and a smiling one at that.

 

Down at the end of Sheridan Avenue where I lived was a small little cluster of shops and almost all with a name. I spend my 25 cents allowance at Debby and Irv’s, buying candy and comic books. I got my haircut at Jack’s, but then switched to Nick’s because his lollipops were better. There was Lorraine's Pharmacy (though don’t think I ever met Lorraine) and Burt’s Hardware, run by the father of my classmate Arlene. Commerce was not just consumption, but also conversation and community. 

 

Fast forward some 25 years to me as a young parent in San Francisco. There was another shopping district five blocks away on Irving Street and there were still shops with names—Pasquale’s Pizza, Noah’s Bagels, Art’s Café, Uncle Gaylord’s Ice Cream, Heidi’s Bakery. Never met Pasquale, Noah, Art or Uncle Gaylord. But Heidi was a charming Austrian woman who, like Sam, always gave a little treat to my two daughters when we shopped there. 

 

In light of the corporate takeover in all corners of our culture, those days feel far behind us. But there is a resurgence in Farmer’s Markets where you come to recognize and greet the farmers at your favorite stalls. San Francisco still has the tradition of the corner store and though it has changed hands three times since we’ve lived here, the one a block from our house is still thriving. The 5th Avenue market, equivalent of Sam and Andy’s, is now run by two friendly young men and a quick conversation while checking out is par for the course. 

 

My next podcast is titled “R Is for Relationship” and though the theme is about education and how the teacher’s rapport with the students is more essential than the expertly crafted curriculum and the “perfect” lesson, the necessity for warm human contact in every avenue of human endeavor is irrefutable. We have sold out soul to the devil of big business, opting for the cheap and convenient and over-stocked gigantic mega-stores in faceless malls with people we will rarely come to know who also know little about the goods they are selling, a dynamic well-captured in the classic film You’ve Got Mail. Many don’t even go to the Mall, preferring home deliveries from an Amazon driver they will never meet. 

 

It’s a Faustian bargain, for as the culture more and more centers around the impersonal, we grow increasingly lonely and disconnected. We might ride in the driverless Waymo car to the supermarket where we opt for the self-check-out and then have lunch at a restaurant where we order from our phone and a robot serves us. And then pay a lot of money for a Zoom therapy session and wonder why we feel so alone and isolated. 

 

I can feel Sam and Heidi rolling over in their graves.