The Alabama Chronicles Part 3 - Supermarkets, weapons and 'double-barrel-isms'

When we weren’t roaming freely around the local bookstores, my sister and I often accompanied our mother to the local Winn Dixie or Bruno’s.  For some unknown reason in a lot of America's southern states, supermarkets, drive-throughs, cafes and restaurants are called the weirdest things.  ‘Mae’s Wings and Things’ leaves much to the imagination, ‘No Way José Grill Cantina’ suggests a serious character flaw, ‘Talk of the Town Cafe’ is too arrogant for its own good, ‘Back Yard Burgers’ sounds like the owner has gone in search of road-kill a la Top Gear and ‘Fat Man’s Smokehouse’ sounds like a place you might go to for a large side order of lung cancer.  The Americans also seem to have a fetish for double barrel words, as though a lone name simply won't suffice.  Not only is this the case for supermarkets and restaurants, which have names like Piggly-Wiggly, Hobby-Lobby, Bama-Fever, Chick-Fil-A, Big B’s Bar-B-Que and Chuck-E-Cheese, but also for children; Chucky-Lee, Dorothy-Jane, Ruthie-Anne, Louisa-May, Ana-Leticia, Lila-Rose, Candy-Kay, Bobby-Joe, Bobby Ray.  

Anyway, our local supermarkets were Winn Dixie and Bruno’s (thankfully avoiding any such double-barrels).  We also frequented a tax-free precinct on the Military Base called the BX Commissary.  Down one aisle you could find rows of fresh baguettes and round the corner of the next you could buy a shotgun and many brands of pistol.  That’s what the ‘Deep South’ is like.  I’m fairly sure that two thirds of Americans living there own some sort of self-preservation weapon.  Once I asked my father whether we kept a gun in the house in case we were burgled.  He told me no, but one day he happened upon a lethal knife lying on our drive way and he stowed it away in a drawer in our Bar.  From time to time I would creep in to have a peek, scrutinizing its every inch for blood stains as it was clearly a murder weapon that had been tossed onto our driveway as the killer fled the crime scene.  Reality and a decade more of maturity tells me it was probably no more than a fishing knife that had perchance fallen out of some moving vehicle, but a sense of morbid curiosity still filled my mind at the time.  After all, I suspected that America, and particularly Alabama where we lived, was a dangerous place compared to charming little England. 

The best thing about going to the supermarket when you live in a state as hot as Alabama is the air conditioning.  Getting into the car was never a problem because we could exit the house through the garage, allowing the remnants of air-con to travel with us as we clambered into our Dodge Caravan (called Dodger).  The journey itself was also fine because you could either position the air so that it blew directly at your face, or lower the windows to entice a breeze into the clammy interior.  But during the brief crossing of the car park, you would discover that the tip of your pony-tale was suddenly dripping beads of sweat and your shorts clung to your legs in a very distasteful manner.  You panted like a dog as the heat wrapped itself around your skin like a hot wet flannel.  And then you were greeted in the doorway by the most pleasant thing imaginable; cold, fresh explosions of ventilated air.  It was like a rich, cool heaven.