The nearest town puts out a once-a-week newspaper covering regional stories and issues: Businesses, sports, schools, special events. We'll go in every few months and purchase bundles of older papers for $2 each for fire-starters or packing tankards.
I was helping Older Daughter pack some tankards for shipment this week...
...when the headline of a large and prominent article caught her eye: "[Name of grocery store] makes improvements."
Yes, it seems a local grocery store was undergoing renovations, including improved organization, additional shelving units, and new refrigerator and freezer units, which gave the store the opportunity to expand its inventory (kind of a nice thing when town residents are a long way from bigger chain stores).
Well, I thought it was charming to the point of adorable that this information made the newspaper. Stop the presses! A grocery store is getting new shelving and refrigeration units! There was nothing about drug busts, or strings of murders, or terrorist attacks. Nope, one of the biggest news stories of the week was the local grocery store was making improvements.
Just a slice of life in small-town America.
I lived in a small town that had a newspaper that refused to publish a picture or story of an event that did not happen within the county. If it was ten feet over the county like, they would not include it in the paper. Finally, they relented. Now, it is no more.
ReplyDeleteThe newspaper in the little town, just south of us, generally prints the news that the larger town printed the day before. But when we first moved to SW Missouri forty years ago, we were amazed to see that in the "society section" of the newspaper, they would actually list who's aunt "Betty" had come from North Carolina for a visit and such things. This was and still is a daily newspaper, but mostly on line.
ReplyDeleteIn my who dinky town we get the toss aways, called Your Nickel's worth and The Exchange for which you may be familiar with. They simply put a box at the bottom of the rack stating "free fire starter". Wished our supposed local paper had just stories within our county, they always seem to slip in neighboring counties.
ReplyDeleteI love it! When we were first married and for quite a few years afterward (married in 1990), every time we went to visit my parents in my small hometown of 500 people in Minnesota, we made it into the local paper, especially since we came from 1,000 miles away. :)
ReplyDeleteUsually when grocery stores "make improvements" it's to break shoppers patterns by shuffling all the aisles. Force you down different aisles in the hopes of making more sales.
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