Gone shopping

(With plenty of other posting options, this post is a few weeks past its due date. It was supposed to have a photo from Michigan in it and that just never happened. Funny to write about Durham while no longer there. Oh well. One last one before we get to our European roadtrip. Read away!)

Other than a few years membership in a co-op where we obtained bulk goods in absurdly large quantities, my family did its grocery shopping at Huizenga's, the local grocery store on Main Street. It wasn't large by American standards, but certainly stocked almost everything a Michigander could want or need. Quite a few years ago now, it was bought by a chain, and although the name over the door changed, everything else primarily stayed the same. Then it was bought by another chain. And then that chain built a brand new store one and a half miles outside of town in one of those areas surrounded by beige look-alike 90's subdivisions with roads that curve for no reason and names like Sunset Meadows and Waverly Bluffs. And that was the end of Huizenga's. I was reminded of this fact when I saw the sad, empty building on our Christmas visit. A very small amount of interior partitioning has been done, and it looks like something strip mall-esque is on the books.

I recall feeling a nostolgic sadness when the store first closed. I fondly remembered the swans and ducks in the retaining pond next to the parking lot, the tall carts the teenagers used to carry out our groceries, and the lanky balding man, a store manager (owner even?), who always smiled through his neatly trimmed beard and said hello although I don't recall if he and my mother knew each other by name. Now, having been forced to change my shopping habits the last few years through non-car-ownership, city living, extreme budgeting, traveling, and the tiniest refridgerator you've ever seen, my sadness has grown into frustration and disbelief.

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Six thousand people live in my hometown of Zeeland. Yet I find it puzzling that a grocery store couldn't be supported in its lovely, walkable city center. My sister lives in downtown Zeeland and drives 5.3 miles to a grocery store that tends to be cheaper than the 1.7 mile option. I don't know that she would want to walk and then carry the food she needs to feed her family of six on a regular basis, but the option would be there. People all over the world do it daily. Speaking as someone who has lived in some drastically different places in the last few years, it's amazing what you get used to and what becomes normal.

Less you think this is solely an American dilemma, we have a similar situation here in Durham. There are two enormous grocery stores a few miles outside of Durham proper, while the one store in the city centre closed last August. Around the same time, a Tesco Express opened, Tesco being like Walmart and Express meaning a 7-11-size store jam-packed with all the essentials, all-be-they rather student-oriented ones. There is still the covered market where, along with an incredibly odd assortment of hair clips, overstocked make-up, cheap sweaters, and yarn, there still exists a butcher, a fishmonger, a cheese booth, and a green grocer. If one could find a more consistent place for bulk goods than the Weigh and Save, which has closed and reopened no less than five times since we've lived here, the city centre may provide enough to get by. As all these shops close promptly at 5pm, most employed people would have to save their shopping for the weekends.

What we do, though, is spend our £5 bus fare to the grocery stores on delivery instead. Order online and have your groceries delivered to your door. It's a fantastic luxury I thought only existed in New York. And since the food is delivered to and stored in warehouses, it's actually considered by many to be more efficient, greener one could say, than heading to the grocery store individually.

Now what's in downtown Zeeland that could provide such foodstuffs? There's a seed store, a jewelry shop, a few artsy gift shops and a floral shop. The coffee shop just closed, I hear, although the bakery, community restaurant, and diner could maybe get you by for a week if you chose to solely dine out. The lovely post office is still there and still small town-y. It just seems to me that cities exist to efficiently concentrate goods and services for those who live in them. They make things convenient. So what's with moving basic services to the peripheries of those cities and forcing everyone to transport themselves back out to find them? It all just seems silly, doesn't it?