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A Sack of Flour...
March 12th, 2020
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The coronavirus is here. Well, not right here where I'm sitting, but it
turns out that the county I live in is the hotspot for the outbreak in these
parts. Today, they announced that schools would be closed for the next two
weeks, public gatherings were strongly discouraged, March Madness won't
happen this year, and more significantly for this sports fan, hockey
season is suspended.
Judging from the supermarket shelves, people are freaked out. We have a
Wegmans supermarket near where I work, and I stopped by there on my way
home to see if I could bag a sack of Pillsbury flour ( - this is the only flour
we have found that is processed in a facility that doesn't process things
to which my daughter is allergic (peanuts, sunflower, sesame, tree nuts and a
whole host of other things.) We have to make all our own bread since finding
bread without any of the above is next to impossible). Wegmans was a mob
scene - parking lot streaming with cars, not a single cart or basket any-
where to be seen, so many people inside that lines stretched to the
back of the store in some places, and some aisles that were just wiped out.
The baking aisle and the pasta aisle looked like they'd been hit by a
tornado. I had no luck finding flour there - 4 shelves tagged for various
kinds of flour were just wiped out. Other areas had fared no better - all
that was left of the pasta were a few boxes of lasagna, and in a win for me,
the Barilla veggie pasta that my daughter happens to like (score!).
As I said, the store was mobbed - there were folks trying their best not
to look petrified as they loaded up on whatever they could think of.
Others aimlessly filling their carts with 3, 4, 5 of the same thing,
seeming for all the world like they had been given a license to hoard and
were taking full advantage of it. But really, who needs 4 boxes of
Cheeze-Its?! And there were others who either weren't fazed or just
didn't care because they were clearly there doing the same shopping they
always do. Interesting what a little pandemic panic does to folks.
Anyhow, I left Wegmans and a few miles up the road, I happened on a
Giant Supermarket. Not nearly as crowded, but still lots of empty shelf
space... a few carts and baskets left, more parking spaces. I headed
for the baking aisle and the empty shelves where the flour should be
were an instant disappointment. But this Giant kept most of the flour
on the bottom shelf, and the shelf was deep enough that I thought that
maybe there might be one bag hiding down there. Sure enough, there was
one bag of the ol' doughboy's finest down there!
My wife hugged it when I got home.s
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