Papa's Market

Last Wednesday night I was awakened by a coughing and soon to be barfing baby. The barfing isn’t really that unusual for Victor—but when he continued to throw up every hour almost the entire night I knew I was in for it. The next day was more of the same until he finally took a nap around noon. After his nap he seemed better and didn’t throw up for several hours. Since I was getting stir crazy I decided to brave a trip to the library before we went to get Vida from basketball practice. Thankfully nothing traumatic happened in the library—I’ve had my share of public vomiting, restaurants, grocery stores and the JCC and there is nothing more embarrassing since all you can really do is slink out the door as they insist that they will take care of it.

After the library I decided that maybe he was ready for a snack—it was already almost time for dinner and he hadn’t eaten a thing all day. We drove around the corner from the library to Papa’s Market on Church and 17^th. I have been reluctant to go to a corner store with Vic at night because I didn’t think I could get a good picture but then I it occurred to me that while many corner stores are ones where you want to get your half and half in the morning others are definitely creatures of the night. There are many corner stores that don’t even open until late morning. The big neon sign at Papa’s Market was a clear indicator that it was in the latter category.

We walked into an unremarkable Papa’s and the first thing I noticed was a large quantity of sale price items with red tags scattered amongst the disorderly shelves. Although they, like many markets, advertise with large signs that they make sandwiches the deli case was mostly hidden behind boxes and home only to a couple of salami and some cheese---didn’t look like much sandwich making was happening currently. We wandered over to the beer case and I picked out a Corona in 24 oz can. What a ridiculous concept. Take a bad beer in a skunk producing clear glass bottle and pretend it’s a beer worth putting in another container. I asked Victor what he wanted he kept repeating, “What do they have here” with little upturned hands as a punctuation. It cracked me up because Victor and Vida will be at my work and hungry and keep asking me what there is to eat and I always answer, (much to their frustration) “it’s a store pretty much whatever you want”?

We wandered around and discovered a teenager doing her homework behind a cardboard cigarette advertisement. We didn’t mean to spy on her but Victor was getting curious as to what was going on behind the sign. Vic was happy wandering around but couldn’t find anything he wanted so I picked out some Smart Food cheese popcorn and grabbed a couple of diet cokes for good measure. When I was at the register I noticed some cookies that Vida likes on sale and I was tempted to buy them but before I did I decided to check the date and sure enough they expired months ago. I randomly picked up some potato chips that expired last year and quickly realized that all the “sale” items were expired. I don’t know the legal implications of purposely selling expired products but it didn’t make them look like a viable business. Victor was singing “little puffer train” quite loudly as we made our purchases.

We left the store and took a few pictures before heading back to the car and to the JCC to pick up Vida from basketball practice. Since the barfing had stopped and the fever gone down Victor and I had a pretty nice day together. I was counting my blessings that I didn’t get whatever horrible virus this was and Vida was thankfully well. My good fortune didn’t last since Victor ended up throwing up his Smart Food in the middle of the night. The following day Victor was well enough for school but Vida came down with the same horrible, bedding destroying virus that night. It would be another 36 hours of madness before we could go to bed without fear of vomit.

My treat---Diet coke Vic’s Treat—Smart Food Beer of the Day Corona 24 oz can.