Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 29, 1994                   TAG: 9406300011
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A HAS-BEEN'S VIEW OF LIFE IN THE EXPRESS CHEECKOUT LANE

I usually don't go to these places except in the winter when there is ice and snow and we are out of lamp oil, cat food, bread and the milk that doesn't taste like milk.

On this visit I bought strawberries instead of cherries. Read a sign wrong and thought the strawberries were on sale at $3 for two boxes.

An alert young man on the express lane checkout reported that the strawberries were $2 a box - that the raspberries were selling two boxes for three bucks.

I didn't argue anymore. I also didn't tell him that I loathe raspberries.

A young woman in front of me wrote a check and discussed certain aspects of her career - I think she was an MBA - with another young woman in the adjoining checkout line.

I like these alert young persons who can handle checkout lines.

I think they are graduates of a very strict academy in which they are trained to handle old has-beens who misread signs and to ignore young women who stand in express lines discussing their callings.

These are the people we're going to have to depend on for cool heads when the final break-up of society and civilization occurs.

I saw a young female checkoutperson calmly handling a plastic jug of milk that was leaking all over the counter. I would have let the milk short-circuit the scanner.

I would like to say here, and pursue it no further, that when milk was packaged in glass it didn't leak unless you dropped the bottle.

As much as I admire these people, I never go into a supermarket that I don't get this dark vision of the future.

They're getting bigger before our very eyes, and they sell all kind of things.

You can walk around forever looking for lamp oil, which is always sold out anyway when you really need it.

I see the day when you go to the supermarket for same-day surgery and they wheel you into the express checkout lane behind a young woman who is writing a check and discussing her health plan with another young woman in an adjoining lane.

There will be church services daily in a chapel a mile away from the beer and wine sections.

There will be piano bars, one-act plays and psychics will be available to help old people to read signs better. Not to mention used-car lots.

Give me the old Piggly-Wiggly store in Radford any day.