Untitled Document

14 June 2004

Commissary Run

We were picking through the plastic bags, trying to sort out whose groceries were whose. There was a report of a car bomb in Baghdad, and the assassination of another government minister. The former wouldn't have blipped the scope on the daily violence here in the capital, except for the implications of the latter. But it all seems to blend in these days.

I had purchased the groceries, all of them, since my son's first paycheck was not going to come for another week. He is an intern for a prominent Agency in the alphabet soup of Washington-land, and I am very proud of him. He is going to get a taste of the family business, and we shall see where that goes.

He secured the position on his own merits, though I must say that having friends is a big help. No one can get anything done in this town all on their own.

He is anxious about doing well in the assignment, so there is a job offer after he is done with college. I told him not to obsess about it. I told him to show up on time, have a ready grin and a willingness to do what he is told and he will do just fine.

“You can always bitch when you get home. But don't let them see it at work. That is the whole deal in a nutshell.”

“I think you are nuts, Old Man,” he said with a grin. I thought I detected a certain affection in it, and I knew he was happy to have the food. I'll take what I can get.

We had specified plastic bags, since it was raining lightly, and the groceries would have to rest in the bed of the pick-up truck. Paper would disintegrate.

I bought the truck for them after my younger boy had decided that oil and coolant were for losers and finished off my old white Dodge. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment things, me being down at the heels with the legal bills and trying desperately to stay abreast of the college bills.

I was living in my second place at Big Pink. My landlord had thrown me out of the little efficiency as my one-year lease expired. She had issues with some evil step-daughters who wanted to sell off the father's house in McLean after he passed away unexpectedly. I had to acknowledge that it was her place after all, and in that phone call telling me to get out, found a resolve never again to not own the ground on which I placed my carp.

It was asses and elbows moving out of the little room with the big glass windows. It did not have a balcony, or any other amenity except the view of the lush foliage from the second floor. But it had been a refuge from living from the trunk of my car on whatever military reservation would take a homeless active officer for the night.

I moved up to the Fifth Floor that month, humping most of the stuff in a shopping cart, though I had some significant help. Friends are good. I had a balcony up there, and of course the Fifth Floor Big Pink Mafia of assorted malcontents and idealists.

I did the hurricane up there last year, conducting the wildly waving trees in the raging wind and horizontal rain from the balcony. If anyone was looking, I probably looked like Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.

When the place on the ground floor came open, I jumped at the chance to buy it. It was too small, of course, but nothing else was available and the real estate market was so super-heated that it seemed crazy to not do something, anything. The owner was long in Florida, and he was not aware just how nuts things were in the market. I got a contract without having to bid up fm the asking price to get it.

Based on the demand for units in a desirable building like Big Pink, I think I have made a couple dozen thousand dollars already.

I talked to a guy last night on the patio of his $585,000 eight-year old Duplex. He said the place next door, a smaller duplex, had gone for $650,000, sixty grand over the asking price less that a year later.

“The only thing that will cool this market off,” he said earnestly, “Is the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

I agreed with him, thinking that the most likely WMD we would see in the short term was Alan Greenspan's interest rate hike. Washington real estate is almost bulletproof, although I would like a Kevlar plate against what is likely to happen in the days just before the election.

Real estate has been good for the ex. She has done well on the former marital dwelling that her lawyer extorted from me. It was a nice house, though she did not like it at first, and we bought it sight unseen coming back to the area from California. It has doubled in value from the too much we paid for it, so I am serene that with her half of my pension and life-time healthcare, she has the means to be happy if she chooses to be so.

In the meantime, my son was looking for groceries. I had proven to the Military District that he was a full-time college student through the middle of next year, though he should graduate at Christmas. Accordingly, he had a dependent ID card and full access to the Commissary and the Class Six store for another year.

It is a wonderland. I shop there for economic reasons, normally taking a Saturday afternoon to socialize with the other old retired fossils and young families of the active duty force. It is a great benefit. I can't calculate the direct savings of shopping there, behind the gates and the armed troops, but call it 20% or so. It is worth the effort to go.

I asked casually if my son needed anything at the Commissary when we were driving out of the Club. He was driving, since the truck is his. I don't have my first-string car, since I loaned it to the ex for a couple weeks so that everyone could get to work.

I thought he might need some toiletries or something, and I needed to make my weekly run. I was eager to spend more time with him, and he instinctively started to say “no” when something seemed to strike him.

“Well,” he said. “I am brown-bagging this week and I could use some sandwich stuff.”

“Cool.” I vectored him onto Washington Boulevard and to the exit for Fort Myer. The ramp to get on the base can back up pretty quickly due to the enhanced security posture, but the troops have got better at their procedure. They come all the way out on foot to the junction where the boulevard and Second Street traffic merge, zipper-like, and we produced our ID's. The private waved us through, and since we had a current sticker on the windshield, did not have to turn left under the big white tent for a strip search of the vehicle.

Instead we motored past the PX plaza and stopped at the gas station. Regular was $2.05 a gallon, breathtaking, and I put it on my credit card along with some oil to top off the crankcase. My son takes pretty good care of it, since it is likely to be one of the last cars I will give him outright. He checked the tires, too, and I beamed at him as he hunched over the valve stems.

Then we drove back over to the Commissary. It is the coollest benefit, exclusively for the active a retired military. This is a nice new one, built as part of the regional consolidation that closed three others in the region in the first of the Base Reallocation and Closure rounds.

They closed the one at Cameron Station that was near the house out in Fairfax County. It was too bad. But the upside is that Fort Myer is just around the corner from Big Pink. I directed my son to the Fifteen Minute parking spots near the door, one of those little secrets that only the veteran shoppers know about. We got a cart and showed our ID's to the lady inside the door. We were headed for the produce section when I realized that this was a learning experience.

“Wait a minute. Look- see over there by the free coffee?” He looked up and saw a little passageway off the vitamin section. “That is where they put the damaged canned goods and discontinued items. Sometimes there is some fabulous stuff back there.” My son looked dubious, but when we got there he was genuinely surprised.

There were discounted boxes of macaroni and cheese, dented cans of spaghetti sauce, tasty garlic mayonnaise, and perfectly fine boxes of great flat lasagna noodles.

“Not bad, huh?” I said triumphantly. “I may cook a lasagna this weekend and eat it all week.”

“Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “Not too bad.” It was a mark of high respect.

He got apples and iceberg lettuce in the produce section, and a piece of salmon in the fish section, and a Pick-o'- the-Chix pack of Perdue's yellow chicken in the meat department. He snagged packs of luncheon meat, and a loaf of fresh hearty bread. He got bags of potato snacks and boxes of Triskettes, two-for-one. A two gallon plastic jug of milk.

When we finally were nearly done he looked al armed. “I don't have any pickles, Dad. Where is the pickle section?”

“Normally they would be in aisle one, over between the peanut butter and the condiments. But there is a secret place for the real pickles. It is logical when you figure it out."

“Clausen dill spears?” he asked hopefully.

“You bet. And slices and quarters and whole dill, if you want them.” I showed him where they lurked with the fresh sauerkraut in a dairy case between the bacon and the hotdogs.

“This place isn't very well organized,” he said.

“You just have to learn the terrain,” I said. “It is sorta like preparation of the battlefield.”

I goofed with the check-out lady, who knows me. My son is beyond being embarrassed with my antics, and we had a great time as our haul beeped past the scanner. We had a lot of articles that needed to be entered manually since they were from the discontinued alcove. She was impressed by our acumen, and said so, even if it was more work for her.

At the Commissary, the baggers are not on the payroll and not only bag the groceries but load them on heavy-gauge carts to haul right ot your vehicle. It is a tradition that was brought here from overseas long ago. They work solely for tips. Our bag-lady was a pert little kid from the Philippines with her red Commissary ball-cap worn carefully askew. I asked her if she was from Luzon, since she looked like she might be from Metro Manila.

“No,” she said. “I am from a little village near Mt. Pinatubo.”

“Whew!” I whistled. “Were you there when it erupted? That was a bad one.”

“You bet,” she smiled. “That is how we wound up here.”

We got the bags in the back of the truck and I tipped her $3 in singles. We drove off the base, zigging around the concrete barriers and bumping over the security humps.

We were back at Big Pink in a couple minutes and hauled the stuff up the sidewalk to divvy the spoils. When we had him loaded up, we carried the bags back to the truck and put them on the passenger's side so they wouldn't blow away on the Beltway going home.

He waved casually as he gunned the truck out of the lot. He said he would be back on Sunday when his brother has the day off from lifeguarding. I don't think he has had a payday yet, either.

So I am thinking they are going to be coming hungry. Might be time for another Commissary run.