At the Co-op

Yesterday we dug out. But first J. had to fix the snow-blower. He had done that already, in the fall, in preparation, and was expecting to take it out and have it start up and run perfectly, slicing through the eighteen inches of heavy wet packed snow like...oh, a hot knife through styrofoam. But no. The motor turned on, but the auger didn't. So instead of a strenuous but relatively painless snow-blowing job of forty-five minutes, I shoveled the front walk while J.'s entire afternoon was devoted to diagnosis, then telephoning and running around after parts, then the two of us wielding vice-grips and pliers and socket sets and a shop-light on its long cord as we stood over the bisected halves of the snowblower, lying lifeless on the cold shop floor. It ran, eventually, and we discovered we had just enough gas left in the gas-can and would be spared yet another trip in the car. Today the cleaning-out was finished; paths created to the compost bin and garbage barrels, and the snow roof-raked off the difficult places where ice dams are most likely to form. C'est...Vermont.

This afternoon I went over to the local food co-op to see if there were any edible organic vegetables. In Montréal everything we buy seems so fresh and healthy, even when it's not biologique - I'm convinced the produce is much less treated than what we get in Vermont because it tastes fresher, and yet spoils much faster. Here, the supermarket produce looks good, but tastes...not. It doesn't taste, in other words. It is becoming as much for show as the wax fruits that used to decorate my grandmother's winter table.

When I arrived at the converted industrial building that houses the food co-op, a train stood on the tracks beyond the scrubby trees. A thin mother in a hugely oversized one-piece canvas work overall was on the steps, shepherding two little black girls in identical pink snowsuits into the store. I picked up a basket and went over to the small vegetable display after checking the prices on the cans of Muir Glen tomatoes, and giving a quick once-over to the bins of rice, dried beans, pasta and couscous. There were beets, turnips, rutabegas, and daikon; mesclun salad mix for an exorbitant $8.99/pound; some decent lettuces; wilted scallions and very sad-looking fruit. I felt the potatoes in their bushel baskets; the red ones went into my bag along with some Empire apples and some fat carrots from an organic farm in Canada. On the other side of the aisle a man in dreadlocks was taking yogurt out of the cooler; I went to the spice rack and shook out a small paper bag-ful of peppercorns and he came and stood near me, staring, as if he had just come in from somewhere spices didn't exist.

I stood at the check-out counter while the clerk weighed my purchases and rang up the bottle of vitamin C, the tincture of echinacea and goldenseal. Thirty years ago, when I first moved here, the precursor of this store stood on the main street and served as a gathering-place for hippies and back-to-the-land types. A few years later, this building became the headquarters of our main client, a manufacturer of one of the world's most advanced music synthesizers, whose president was, himself, one of those hippies. The close friend who had first introduced J. and me was a vice-president of the company and had gotten us our first work there. In the newly-renovated building, he'd chosen a corner office near the tracks because he was such a train buff.

I looked out the window, covered now with twining green vines, while a woman at one of the café tables in the corner read a story out-loud to a child. I turned back when the clerk handed me my receipt. David had died of multiple myeloma at 40, more than twenty years ago, not long after J. and I married, not long after the company had moved to this building. It had eventually gone under after a meteoric rise in the 1980s; the brilliant crew of programmers and hardware engineers had scattered all over the country. The food co-op had been here a long time now -- it was people's memory of this place -- but I was standing exactly where the president's old office had been, buying carrots, picked from a bin a few feet away from David's old office on the other corner. Outside, the train whistled once, and pulled away.

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Comments

[Dave]

Wait. You were a hippie? :o

The last big snofall we got here was a similar scene. My dad tried for two days to get his tractor-mounted snowblower to work, without success. Ultimately he had to use the bulldozer instead. The road's still a mess. In fact, I got the car stuck down there this very evening. Shoulda walked.

[Zuleme]

Synclavier? New England Digital?

[leslee]

The Whole Foods here was selling these "Evert-fresh green bags" that are supposed to help keep produce fresher longer. I bought some to try out. They're not cheap, but can be reused for some unspecified number of times before they lose their effectiveness. Might be worth it to keep stuff that actually has flavor around awhile (hard for me since I'm the only one eating it).

[dale]

(o)

[CdV]

I think Triks would love a snow blower. Well, snow would be a start! I'm sure it is hard work having so much snow but it sounds good to me.

[butuki]

This year Japan is having it's lowest amount of snow in recorded history. It's going to cause major problems for farmers, water tables, wildlife. This is the first year in my life that I haven't seen snow. What a strange notion.