A La Cart

           By Ralph Maltese

I miss walking.  I really do. Now in my sedentary lifestyle I often try to recreate my favorite walks.  My father liked to go deep in the woods and camp by a lake in the Adirondacks.  One such trip was a six hour hike to a lake we liked to fish was that guarded by St. Regis Mountain.  To get there, we needed to climb two mountains.  It was always a sweaty exercise, carrying our Adirondack packs, but, when we struggled to the top of one of those peaks, we knelt down beside a small stream and we could see our breaths as we sipped the icy cold water. We would camp near a wooden lean-to, make a fire, and take a well earned nap in the grass and later watch the loons do their crazy routines. The challenge and the reward made that walk special. When I was with my Dad…everything was special.

Another favorite trek happened many years later as two of my colleagues and I flyfished the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park. As always, Mike and Jim and I separated on the river, and I found myself alone under the big Madonna blue sky. Two banks of desert grass and sage brush guided the pool I was fishing  I looked upstream and was tempted to fish a pool that seemed promising. I fished upstream casting a parachute Adams fly, when I arrived at a small canyon.  The river narrowed and deepened and the water would be over my head.  I stepped out of the Madison, shook some stream debris off my wading boots and began the hike along the river.  A trail parallel to the river took me up to the top of the canyon wall and through a small forest of Aspen and Cottonwood trees.

Cottonwood trees along the Missouri River in fall. Loma, Montana

 I could hear sounds of the rushing water of the Madison mingled with the chirping of the evening grosbeaks reminding me of my trespassing as they flittered from Ponderosa Pine to Ponderosa Pine.  Magpies judged me from their perches in the branches of a Larch.

The canyon was longer than I first thought, but that was okay.  I was enjoying the leisurely stroll. The trail ended in a downward slope, and I walked down to the stream and stood in the middle of the Madison again.  There was no one in my range of vision upstream or downstream.  I was alone, silent, and happy.  I made a few casts and looked forward to my return walk.  Nature can refresh the soul.

The last favorite amble I will share I owe to my teaching colleague and friend Mike Beagle. Mike showed me one of his preferred flyfishing haunts– Loyalsock Creek in Sullivan and Lycoming Counties. We would fish the Catch and Release Only section, gearing up and walking to what became my favorite fishing hole, “the confluence.” Fly rod in hand, expectations racing through my veins, I enjoyed the stroll upstream; birds showing the way, the occasional deer looking up from her grazing to frown at us disturbing her breakfast.  There were areas on the trail that were carpeted with ground lichen which would soften my steps, and on some trips the Canadensis were flowering.  The experience surpassed any Disney nature film.  Sometimes we stopped fishing after dark and found our way back in pitch blackness. Even that was a thrill.  As Iremoved my flyfishing gear and got back in the car, I was always saddened at leaving the
Sock.  Thank you, Mike, for sharing your treasured Loyalsock.

I miss walking.  Parkinson’s is robbing me of that rapture.  So you see, I am not lazy.  I like to wander and my legs are largely responsible for my walking..  But, like everyone else my age, I have to adjust to certain realities.  When Polley and I go shopping, I have to make a choice….to walk or ride in one of those electrically charged carts.  

I usually choose to walk.  Why?  Because if I don’t use my legs they will suffer from disuse.  But there are days when the Parkinson’s wins.  Maybe I am tired, my body already aching from the exercises I force myself to do, or because it is just one of those bad days that Parkinson’s patients have and the store we are in is large, I would have to walk a long distance. So I take the cart. I would have preferred a cart with stereo sound speakers, and a rear view mirror plus a cup holder, but perhaps in the future.

I never thought I would be one of those shoppers who rode in a cart, but, as the saying goes, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making plans.” 

I unplug the cart if I need to, climb in and press the reverse lever and back up, initiating the Beep! Beep! Beep! sound warning fellow shoppers of my presence.

It is not that easy being an electric shopping cart shopper (ESCS).

For example, it is obvious that my shopping height is a great deal shorter.  And when I get out of the cart to stand up and reach the top shelf for a jar of jalapeno peppers, some shoppers give me that look of negative judgement—“Aha!   He is faking having a halt!!”  Sometimes I stare these critics down and then fake limp back to the cart. 

There is an inferiority complex that sometimes accompanies an ESCS.  I mean, everyone towers over me.  And little children strapped into a normal cart look down on me, sometimes in envy and sometimes in snootiness.  And to read the signs above the aisles which explain what is in that aisle means either I strain my neck, or I back up to get a better perspective.  Beep! Beep! Beep!

I can’t see around corners, so when I drive to the end of an aisle, I have to stop and inch slowly out so I don’t crash into the kneecaps of a walking shopper. 

When store workers are stocking the shelves, the aisles are necessarily narrowed, and I have to back up Beep! Beep! Beep!

and find alternative routes. 

There ARE accidents.  I misjudged a turn at the end of an aisle and bumped into a display showcasing jars of hearts of palm.  No real damage, except for a small…well, medium….okay! large dent in the cardboard box the jars were stacked in.  As my luck would have it, a worker was nearby and saw the incident. He stared at me for what seemed like an eon, and I ended the staring context by picking up a jar of hearts of palm and placing it in my cart.  The jar is somewhere in my basement.

This past June Polley and I were visiting my daughter Meredith in St. Louis and we went grocery shopping in Schnuck’s, a very popular store in the area.  My muscles were particularly feeble at that time, so I chose a cart and followed Polley and Mere around until I went my separate way to study the wine selection aisle.  I was going a little too fast, maybe 3 miles an hour, when I turned a corner and smacked into another ESCS.  We exchanged information and moved on. 

The first time I was an ESCS, I rode it to the cashier’s station, unloaded my items onto the conveyor belt, and everything was okay until I had to get out and walk around the front to pay with my debit card.  The cashier’s eyes followed me, and I got that same “Faker Faker Pants On Fire,” look.

The worst electric shopping cart event I experienced occurred back home in a nearby Walmart.  Walmart is a large store; I needed several plastic containers, and I knew I would have a difficult time finding a relatively rare item, a small bag of rubber bands, so I chose the only available electric cart.  I was glad I did because the bag of rubber bands I wanted was at the very back of the store.  As joyful as Balboa was when he spotted the Pacific Ocean, I put the bag in the cart and started to go back to the checkout where I would meet Polley and pay. 

I lurched once and then stopped.  I sensed earlier that I was moving more slowly, and, sure enough, my electric shopping cart was out of energy.  What was I to do?  I could gather up my items, awkward as they would be to carry, but could I leave the cart in the Stationery Aisle?  Should I shout for help?  Was this an incident that might be settled by using my Smart Watch?  Was this an emergency?  Should I call Triple A? Should I call Tesla?  Should I warn potential Tesla buyers?   I waited for a couple of minutes thinking.  And haughty politicians think they have big decisions to make! 

I pushed the lever forward and I moved about three yards.  That was it!!!  If I rested the battery for a few minutes, somehow, some way it got the energy to go a short distance.  Not only was this a solution; it was a scientific anomaly—energy from nothing. Would a Nobel Prize be in my future?   I waited a few minutes and moved out of the Stationery Aisle.  A worker carrying some cardboard boxes walked past.  Without looking at me, he said, “Stuck, huh.” He shook his head and continued walking.  A couple of centuries passed and I made it to one of the main aisles where I was certain I could flag down a greeter who would help me with the problem.  But this main aisle was narrowed by two women who were studying potential items to purchase, and I calculated they would be doing so until the next millennia, so I had to get off the major highway and take the backroads through other sections of the store.

I waited three minutes and moved another three yards.  This operation was repeated several times. To my great dismay, my progress stopped completely. No juice!  No Beep! Beep! Beep!.  I looked around and found myself in the Women’s Fashion Section…in the subsection which had racks of bras and panties and other garments which I could not identify.  Now what? It would only be a little while until I would be discovered.  In an all too short amount of time, two women, in their thirties, walked into the aisle I was in, unmentionables on both sides of me.  They were engaged in a conversation about buying something for their daughters.  I prayed to Saint Anthony, the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, to strike those women blind or make me invisible.  

I should have attended church more.  They both saw me simultaneously, and their vision of me abruptly stopped their conversing.  I smiled.  “Out of energy” was all that came out of my smiling mouth. The tall lady looked over her glasses and said, “Really?”  We just stared at each other for about twenty light years, their mouths closed tightly, and without saying a word they walked down the aisle farthest from me toward the Household Section.

I guess it was the twenty light years, but I managed yard by yard, minutes by minutes to ride my way to the main aisle.  I got out of the cart and loaded my arms with my still-to-be-purchased items and met Polley at the cash register.

I explained what happened and she laughed.  And again, I realized that my very very best and most favorite walk was the one I performed over a half century ago walking down the aisle with her.