Somewhere Over the Giant Eagle Supermarket Salad Bar

It was a gray day. My coworkers were gray. My supervisors, gray. My clients were well into charcoal gray. My joy of life-- gray with a touch of blue. I paused in the middle of my workday to sing a song about how somewhere, over the optical illusion of the spectrum presented when sunlight refracts through moisture in the Earth's atmosphere, Sialia Currucoides flew.

My coworkers-- the unappreciative gray wretches-- hollered for me to "shaddyap already." So any therapy from the singing vanished.

And then, I dropped into the Giant Eagle supermarket to get some lunch, like always. A part of a gray routine. And as I stepped through into the Prepared Foods area, suddenly....

The sun shone through the building rafters (okay, that was just brighter overhead lighting, but still...)

And color appeared before my eyes in a zillion vibrant MGM Technicolor shades.

A small terrier ran to my feet-- how the heck did he get into the store, is that sanitary?-- and yellow floor tiles had sprung up. And from behind stacked boxes of fruit punch and souvenir Steelers' merchandise, very short employees stepped out to share, in song, their enthusiastic affiliations with various Food Guilds...

And that's when I saw it:

The Giant Eagle folks had installed an all-new salad bar!

Oh, it was beautiful... Magical! Wonderful! (Yes, I do need to get out more. I do, I do, I do, I do!)

But instead of dipping into semi-frozen vats in the dark forest of mystery veg, now, under the new golden lights, we could actually see whether we were getting pickled beets or spiced apples.

And a whole rainbow bounty awaited! Bright red tomatoes, deep orange carrots, Greek salads, fresh fruit, and different kinds of lettuces and-- sugar snap peas! Me, the queen of French fries and gravy, got excited about sugar snap peas. Then I spied the chilled asparagus and-- oh, I just had to try some of that, too.

My heart soared! In pulling together a conveniently-located to-go box without having to trudge back and forth in an unnatural flow, I poured out my joy of fresh food and user-friendly organizational structure into an impromptu musical number:

"Boxes here... lettuce there....
And a couple of tra-la-lars!
That's how we dine the day away
With the merry new salad bar!"

But then-- a booming voice over the PA system shouted: "You there, in Aisle One! Who goes there?"

I looked around, frightened. Me?

I called out, "Why, I'm a lowly office employee, sir, insignificant and meek-- looking for an artichoke heart, a little brain food, and some cabbage. Just to tide me over until I can get home, of course."

The voice echoed, "Well, will you PLEASE. STOP. SINGING?! It seems to be interfering with the UPC scanning system."

"Oh," I muttered. "Sorry."

Still, I can't wait to go back there today. The sequel's never quite as good as the original, mind you. But the scallions and 'taters and pears-- oh my!

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Grocery Store Graceland and the Burger Barn Boobyhatch

Elvis enjoys a good bowl of soup. Sure, fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches get all the press, but there's something about a nice can of Campbell's that apparently gets the King all shook up.

I know this, because I saw him in the soup aisle of the Giant Eagle grocery store a few years ago. He was considerably taller than I'd expected-- a good six-foot-four and lanky-- but with the spangley big-collared white shirt, sunglasses, and side-burned coiffure we've all come to know and love...

Young Elvis with Old Fat Elvis accessories, really.

As I'd turned the corner to get a can of chicken noodle, I admit, I was surprised to see the American icon with his basket of ten items or less. And, considering this supermarket was typically patronized by college students and elderly Jewish ladies, the rest of the clientele appeared to share my sentiment.

I could pretty much tell just where Elvis was in the store by the 20-somethings walking past giggling into their hands. Or the blinking, glazed expressions on Gladys and Zelda as they returned from the deli.

Of course, when you live in a city, to a certain degree you come to expect these sort of things. I currently work across from a restaurant we'll call Burger Barn, which René Magritte and Salvadore Dali could have drawn on for choice material.

It's an old building-- what was once a 50s gas station, I've heard-- which was transformed into a restaurant and somewhere along the way it seems to have become trapped in its own unique plane of space, time, madness and kitsch.

Initially everyone who joins my company considers having a fast food joint right across the street as a bonus. They approach it with rosy spectacles, naively anticipating a burger-and-fry experience like those found in shops of the same name around the globe. Little do they know that this particular restaurant emits some kind of unspoken, yet strongly-magnetic pull for the strange and unusual.

They stop in once or twice and encounter someone kneeling on the floor and speaking in tongues...

Or someone with hundreds of silk scarves safety-pinned to their clothing, forming a robe of satin diamond-shapes....

Or they order from the cashier who smiles, only to reveal a full mouth of bright brown teeth...

It sort of changes your perspective on a BarnBurger Junior with Cheese.

And on Friday mornings? I can almost set my watch by the barking. It projects from the street below to my third floor office. I'd thought this was a part of a regular dog-walking ritual, but the receptionist recently shared that it is a man. A man who barks, and whines and whimpers, every Friday morning as he takes himself for a walk.

This is not to be confused with the man who pushes his small dog around in an old-timey baby carriage..

Or the guy who used to stand outside Burger Barn with a teddybear bungee-corded to his upper thigh, spitting out epithets or beautifully singing to no one, depending on mood. (Don't we all have those days?) Well, I realize I haven't seen him for a while-- and I find myself hoping he and Teddy are okay.

I think some days if I sat, watching the street below, the whole tapestry of humanity would eventually unroll itself before my eyes. For good or bad, it is what it is, and it's never dull.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be hearing Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," Patsy Cline, or maybe even "Kick Me, Lord Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life" blasting up beyond my window at about 3:00. It's a motorcyclist who comes on through, sharing his tunes with the world. It'll probably be followed by the person who randomly shouts "Woo-hoo!" and the guy who drives the A-team van.

Yep, the only thing we can really expect in life is the completely unexpected.

And in case you were wondering? Elvis prefers Chunky Vegetable.

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Lettuce Dance

Here at Of Cabbages and Kings, we dig deep into life’s important issues. Like the disorientation, trauma and emotional scars I experienced at lunch yesterday because the Giant Eagle grocery store reversed their salad bar.

Oh, it’s not gone. Just reversed. Totally backwards. Bizarro-world. Salad and veggies USED TO BE on the side facing the store entrance, and now toppings, dressing and yogurt are in their place.

You would not believe the sort of mayhem this has caused.

Okay, okay, feel free to laugh. I’m aware how lucky I am that my biggest personal challenge is in not knowing where my mixed greens are.

Except I am not only a creature of habit, I am a creature of habit who was having a very “off” morning.

When I tumbled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen, and poured myself a cup of ambition, for reasons unknown to MYSELF-- let alone Dolly Parton-- I promptly poured myself a SECOND coffee, in a separate mug sitting right next to it….

A mug which I actually don't remember taking down from the shelf, and which I ALSO seemed fully-prepared to drink. Because, of course, there is no one else to drink this.

Yet, there it was. Coffee. Twice. Black and no sweetener. Just how I don’t like it.

When you find yourself having a two-mug morning for a single-mug beverage, and you don't recall how it is you take your coffee, you begin to wonder just how the rest of the day is going to fare.

You begin to wonder whether you might not just head off to work, but suddenly wake up in Peoria in your jim-jams, with bad breath, no cash, no ID, and no way to tell the boss you’ll be a skosh late.

So the Salad Bar Switcheroo seemed to be just one more extension of the muddling two-mug morning. My only consolation was, there were others just as confused as I was, and java had nothing to do with it.

Oh, how we bobbed. We weaved. We swept from one side of the counter to the other like candidates for Dancing with the Stars. Only, you know, with less showmanship and costuming, and more bad posture and business suits.

And as I boogied around the buffet, I realized it was like going into one of those Wal-Marts or Targets that's arranged in the mirror image from the branch you usually go to. You know the ones? You step through the automatic doors and while it essentially LOOKS like the store you know, something just feels a bit... off. Wrong. Unsettling. Like: here anything could happen.

Like you wouldn't be surprised if Rod Serling showed up to narrate your shopping experience. Or Stephen King stepped in to bag your groceries.

But honestly, it's not that big a deal in the Great Scheme of Things, and we humans, we're made to adapt. So if lettuce continues to exist on the COMPLETELY WRONG side of the salad bar, then I will learn from it, and change, and grow.

But if today, I step into that grocery store and Rod Serling sidles up and asks me to merengue? I'll KNOW I never did wake up right yesterday.

And if so, will someone please call my boss and tell them I'm running a tad behind? I hear Peoria is beautiful in spring.


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