Half-Baked Thanksgiving

Here at Clear Creek Ranch we are realists. While we grow our own vegetables and bake our own bread, there are some things we know from experience we are just not destined to do. Like bake an edible pumpkin pie. This small flaw can be overlooked 51 weeks of the year, but come late November, I start scouting the town bakeries and other spots where pastry sightings have been reported.
I really should go shopping more often . . . or maybe less.
I successfully dodged the dozen towering teenaged skateboarders who apparently are required to live as vagrants on the sidewalks near all supermarkets, where they practice 360s until they lose consciousness and their skateboards careen wildly into the unsuspecting anklebones of innocent bystanders.
I quadruple-bypassed, without surgery or insurance, the gauntlet of obscenely overweight sample-servers, each clad incongruously in running shoes and jogging outfits, and who offered me skewered tidbits of dietetic cheese-food, meat-food, fruit-food, and cola-food.
I chided myself for thinking of all the laws I'd like to pass to make my visits to town more enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing. Laws that don't exist, but maybe should? Can etiquette or good taste be legislated?
For example: Should all men, regardless of stomach size, be required to wear their belt horizontal to the ground and finally admit they don't still have the 30-inch waist they once had in high school? Should skin-tight jeans be banned on most women over age 18 who weigh more than 120 pounds? Should all restaurant diners have their 49er baseball caps lopped from their heads by roving bands of machete-wielding hat police?
Ah, perhaps I expect too much of people.
I found my pumpkin pie neatly sealed in plastic and held in a disposable tinfoil pan (just like the Pilgrims!) and headed for the checkout counter. Against my better judgment I chose the shortest line.
The only customer ahead of me was a grizzled cowboy with a belt buckle the size of a hubcap. His shopping cart was filled with beef jerky strips and cigarettes. The clerk was a trainee and having trouble with the bar code scanner. While I waited patiently, the cowboy repeatedly whistled an absentminded, tunelessly annoying few bars of whatever notes he remembered of Johnny Cash's old hit "Folsom Prison Blues."
Meanwhile behind me at knee-level, I heard what sounded like silverware being dropped down the garbage disposal. I looked down to see a small sniffling urchin loudly inhaling his own mucus while his mother changed his baby sister's diaper in the shopping cart. She scolded the boy in high-decibel babytalk and handed the soiled diaper to the novice clerk, who ran it over the scanner. Then, using the same hand, she fished a tissue from somewhere and held it to the young boy's nose. He obligingly repeated his incredible noise while disgorging several gallons of vile slime into her hand. She handed that to the clerk too. I made a mental note when my turn came to run the pie over the scanner myself.
The whistling cowboy wanted to pay for his purchase using a combination of out-of-state checks, postage stamps, pesos, and what he claimed was the dried ear of a bull. While the clerk got the manager's approval on this bit of international finance, the cowboy continued his tune, consistently missing the same notes, over and over. My pupils dilated and my pulse began to race.
"I shot a man in Safeway just to watch him die," I sang in perfect time to the cowboy's music. "When all I really wanted was to buy a pumpkin pie."
While others stared, the little coughing mucus machine was unimpressed. "I gotta go potty now," he announced to everyone.
I realized I did too. But I was able to hold it (and my pie) until I got back to Clear Creek Ranch. And for that I'm very thankful.