I'm curious if anyone has noticed that's being charged for strawberries at farmers' markets.
Yesterday (Saturday), I accompanied the neighbor to the big city to buy some groceries.
His wife and the infants were in Omaha. The insurance company had paid for the truck wrecked by the Buckeye pothead, and they used the money to purchase a new sedan, and so she wanted to try it out. But before leaving, she left him with the grocery shopping list.
The neighbor and I went to the grocery store, and he did his thing, while franksolich did his thing of watching what are usually decent and civilized people, acting like primitives,
On our way back, we detoured off on a gravel road, as there is a well-known farmer's "market" there.
I'm never fond of "shopping," but this is summer in the Sandhills of Nebraska, and because it gets so sordidly hot and humid here, so as to lessen the stress on the body and temperament, I generally subsist on a light diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, generally chopped up with ice in the blender (not fruits and vegetables together, but all sorts of fruit, or all sorts of vegetables, together).
We came to the roadside stand. Everything was in good order; it all looked good.
Now, farming families are busy people, and so don't have time to sit around a shed waiting for the occasional customer to drive by. What they usually do is set everything up in the early morning, and then depart until evening, when they come to close up and determine what needs added to the inventory the following morning.
And so it's self-service for the customer, including the standard usual customary coffee can, where one puts his money after totaling up his purchases.
I saw boxes of strawberries. I have plenty of fresh fruits here, but alas at the moment no strawberries.
I blanched at the price: two bucks a pound.
"That's too much," I said, "and besides, next week, they'll be bigger, and they'll be a buck a pound. I can wait a week for strawberries."
The neighbor however had his own shopping-list, and did that.
When he got done, it came to sixteen bucks.
He had a $20 bill on him. franksolich had two $20 bills and one $1 bill.
So we looked into the coffee can, to find four $1 bills for change.
The neighbor pulled out a handful of stuff; currency, checks, IOUs, and telephone numbers, some metal coinage rattling on the bottom.
One of the bills was a $100 bill.
"Well," I said, "if one's getting two bucks a pound for strawberries, it doesn't take long to burn up a $100 bill."
The other currency was $5s, $10s, and $20s, with only two $1 bills.
Not enough to make change for the twenty of the neighbor.
So as to even it out, making the bill an even twenty bucks, the neighbor had to grab two pounds of strawberries, a little bit put out because even though excellent strawberries, they were overpriced, and nobody other than primitives shopping for marijuana, likes to pay more than he should have to pay.
I'm curious; that's the current price for number one grade A first-class top-notch strawberries at farmers' markets here in the Sandhills of Nebraska, two bucks a pound.
Has anyone elsewhere noticed what's being charged in their area?