Residual Thoughts

    I drove to the Greenwich area farm store yesterday, with the thought of buying fresh strawberries, the only kind worth eating, in my opinion. I had driven exactly nowhere in several days, and the scenery was as beautiful as can be only on a day in June. Everything was in full greenery, with no hint of the decay so soon to come.

  I drove into the parking lot of the store, a busy place for sure. Still sitting in my car, I was suddenly overcome by a mental image from long ago, based on something I hadn't even thought about for a long time. To my long-inert mind, the scene before me looked like an  image from the pages of Sinclair Lewis's  "Main Street." I was transported back to sitting in my college classroom, and being introduced to the true meaning of biting satire, both from the text itself and from the words of the acerbic and learned professor. My 18-year-old self had no idea of what I wanted to do in life, or where it would take me;  I only knew that I did not want to be like the protagonist of that novel, or, even worse, the town she was was attempting to transform.

   So I watched the countrified and self-satisfied-appearing customers engaged in what I perceived to be a spring ritual, looking through the abundance of produce and, shopping bags in hand, entering  the building to pay for their choices. My college education was an eternity ago, and a hard-fought experience, with minimal reward, but carried with it an  apparently powerful effect.  I drove to the impersonal local chain supermarket, and found some strawberries there. They were tasteless but free of the chains of satire.