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Kmart

Walmart Layaway

September 16, 2014 by robertforto Leave a Comment

 

It’s that time of year again. Walmart layaway!

Just when you thought it was safe to shop on every other day of the year EXCEPT that Friday after you have gorged yourself on bird, the worlds largest retailer has brought back memories of Christmas past when you could load up a cart and take it to the back of the store and pay with change you found in the couch. Well, at least figuratively.

I remember those days back in the 1970s when my mom loaded us kids up in the family truckerster and head across the river to the K-Mart store in Chesapeake, Ohio.

It was a day trip back then. It wasn’t a quick stop to the neighborhood corporate behemoth like it is today. We would almost always go with the Dunn’s from down the street…

Ah, the Dunn’s. Dovie, the mom of the clan reminds me of Janis Joplin in bellbottom cords and flip-flops. Greasy, dirty (and I mean dirty) blonde hair and breath that reeked of Virginia Slims. Her husband Scott terrified me. When I went over to “play” he was always laying on a flowered davenport encased in fabric so rough it would give you rug burn. He would lay there in his cut-off jeans shorts and nothing else. He would prop one of those tall, glass bottles of Pepsi on his wide girth of a belly.

I was smitten with Michelle. Mitchy to her friends and forlorn prepubescent suitors like me. She was a year older than I and looked like Marcia Brady to me. Well, not really. She always had a rats-nest of hair that seemed to always be tangled and she wore terry cloth sorts and tube tops and sandals with socks pulled to her knees.

Then there was Cathy. This little girl was three or four years my junior, about the same age as my brother, Ryan. This girl had a set of lungs on her like you wouldn’t believe. Every time I met her she would round the corner at the top of the stairs and start to cry that would lather into a scream. Within minutes she would embattle herself under the dining room table amongst a gaggle of half eaten Frito’s, long forgotten Legos and brussel sprout or two. She would stay there until we were long gone.

This was in West Virginia. Yes, that place. Does that not explain things? No? You have never been there then.

Back to the K-Mart adventure. As we entered this fotress of solitude, bookmarked by Waldenbooks and a Radio Shack, we entered into a world only known by those of the middle class with little discretionary income. In the 70s it was a big deal to get out. It was an even bigger deal to have to traverse the unknowns and cross state lines to get there. As we grabbed our buggy, that’s what my mom always called them, us kids scattered like flies with mom or Dovie screaming, “meet us at the cafeteria for lunch in an hour!”

Amongst omnipresent announcements of blue light specials and Victoria Principal displays, us kids grabbed toys, school supplies, jeans made in China, toothbrushes, car batteries, and bags of those disgusting orange peanut candies, onward as we rushed towards the cafeteria for lunch.

At the back of the store we all unloaded our arms of schwag into the buggies and headed around the maze of barriers to the serving line. The cafeteria was a destination when we went to K-Mart. Only on the most special occasions (ie. layaway day) would we get to eat in those hallowed halls.

I would always order the same thing: a burger with mayo and shredded lettuce. With that I would get a cold order of fries and a 16 ounce drink I still had to hold with two hands. As lunch ensued we would disgorge our experiences of the morning shopping extravaganza and patiently wait until all finished their meals.

After lunch we would head over to the layaway desk. In reality it was just a doorway on the back wall, and the clerk in her smock would tally up our wares and collect a meager deposit from mom.

As I look back on our K-Mart layaway experiences it is a funny thing. I do not ever recall ever seeing those purchases we so diligently collected again. I don’t know if they were lost in the vast warehouse in the back of the store or they just never made it home because mom didn’t have money to retrieve them from the Big K. I guess its sort of like binge drinking in college. You know what’s going on when you go in, you know what’s happening for a period of time while its going on, but you just don’t have all the facts when you are done. But, boy it sure was fun!

I think mom might of tipped the clerk-in-the-smock to just push the kids purchases aside. “We won’t be needing those,” she would whisper under her breath and she whisked away an errant feathered bang, pointing to the cap guns, matchbox cars and yes that 12-volt car battery.

So I guess I have truly come full circle. Just the other day I walked into Wally-World and headed to the back of the store. I summoned a blue-smocked clerk, who I assume was working for the company only for its generous dental insurance benefits, and asked for some help. I left empty handed but something with my name on it was left to go “in the back.”

I just hope that by December 15th I have the cash…

Have you ever used layaway? Tell us your experiences.

 

Filed Under: Alaska, Daily Post, Fortos Fort Tagged With: Christmas, Kmart, Layaway, WalMart

30 Days About Me. Day 27: Worst Habit

August 28, 2011 by robertforto 3 Comments

I am participating in a blog challenge this month. It is 30 Days About Mefrom the blog a

Daily Dose of Toni.

We are nearing the end of this challenge. We have shared many things over the last month–our favorite books, songs, where we live, our favorite websites and clothing stores. It has been fun.

Today is what is our worst habit.

My worst habit is sippin’ the bubbly. No, I’m not talking about the aristocratic Dom Perignon type that you see doled out in Crunk cups on Hip Hop videos on a channel that no longer plays music.

I am talkin’ about good ole’ red blooded Americana–Coca-Cola. The drink of champions or is it the champions of diabetes? I don’t know, but I am addicted.

It is my only vice. My only real addiction. My worst habit.

Yes folks. My name is Robert and I am a colaholic. There I have completed step one. I am on the path to recovery.

My how the allure of that curvy 20 ounce bottle has one me. If you only knew.

All addicts blame someone for their shortcomings. In this case it rests solely on my mom’s shoulders. She tried to raise us boys well. She bought us school clothes every year at Sears, she sent us to the best public schools that money could buy. She let me play football at six, and she was happy that I was the first of her kids to graduate college even though I had to pay for it.

It all started innocently enough. My brother Ryan and I were allowed to drink the forbidden juice (coke) only on special occasions which included eating at the cafeteria at the local K-Mart, and visiting my aunt Bernice, and on Friday nights. That’s it. There were no Big Gulps. No super-sized cups the size of a party keg. No rooting around for spare charge for the vending machine. No trips to the corner store to pick up the carmel colored elixir.

On Friday nights is where this demon really grabbed hold. It stuck to me so hard that I could barely shake it’s sugary allure. My mom would let my brother and I stay up late to watch a show called Friday’s. It was Saturday Night Live’s twice removed cousin. It was a show so dreadful that they put it on late at night only to compete with infomercials hawking Japanese knives that cut through bricks and creepy dudes in plaid suits and cheap shoes telling us about weather systems on the fringe of Appalachia where we lived at the time.

It wasn’t the show that Ryan and I were interested in. It was the eight ounces of coca-cola in these little greenish glasses with flowers on them. Mom filled them to the rim. We were so excited. We positioned ourselves on the floor upfront of the big console TV, presumably so we wouldn’t spill our drinks on the couch–never mind sitting close to the TV would make us blind. Thank goodness it didn’t.

We would take the smallest of sips of our cola and the flavor was an explosion in our little mouths. It sent an immediate sugar rush through our bodies so quick it made out toe-heads spin.

We savored our little glasses double gripped with both little hands making sure that every last drop hit the spot. None of it was wasted.

That’s when I became a fiend. Not to mention my neighbor, Scott Dunn, who lived down the street. He would lay on the couch all day in cut off jeans shorts and shirtless with a belly the size of Mt McKinley with a a 16 ounce bottle of cola firmly resting at it’s apex.

But he was a Pepsi guy.

So that’s it folks. The therapy session is over. I admitted I am powerless over things that I can not change.

Change??? wait a second do I have enough change for a soda?

Hmmmmmmm Soda!

Follow my news and updates on Twitter, my whereabouts on Foursquare and  relationship status on Facebook. Or send me a telegram.

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Filed Under: Alaska, Daily Post Tagged With: 30 days about me, Appalachia, CocaCola, Kmart, pepsi, postaday2011, robert forto, Soda

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