Part 9 – Breadcrumbs and Ballyhoo
© Copyrighted by Doug Salem, 2004
In an attempt to avoid Mom having a showdown with Masha, Olga quickly set to work creating diversions. She appointed her project manager for the complicated and arduous task of getting Olga’s internal and international passports straightened out, a challenge that Mom embraced with enthusiasm. And, noticing that both Mom and Pop had gained a lot of weight since she left, Olga decided to try and introduce them to some healthy recipes she had learned in the West.
Mom took Olga over to the new supermarket, “Delvy.” Rumored to be a foreign venture by Italians, it’s an FSU attempt at Western style one-stop shopping, complete with push-carts, aisles, and a parking lot for automobiles. As she and Mom trudged from the apartment block across the field toward it, Olga watched in amazement as a young blonde “superstar” (as they are called by the locals) pulled up in a new BMW Z-3 convertible, parked it smartly, and strutted past young Russian guys in Rollerblades employed to collect empty carts. Inside, she was disappointed however; describing it as a small, Soviet-mentality “Food 4 Less.” Bitchy matrons assigned to each aisle watch the customers like hawks, constantly checking their shelf inventories lest somebody steal something and the loss be subtracted from their pay.
Olga wanted bread crumbs and almonds to cook Pop a baked chicken recipe that simulates fried but is much better for his heart. She learned it from the Good Housekeeping Magazine my mother sent her as a gift subscription, apparently to alleviate her guilt for rejecting her because she is a “mail order bride young enough to be my daughter.” When Olga inquired as to where she might find bread crumbs and almonds, the Delvy aisle matron attacked like a Pit Bull, snarling that she had never heard of such a thing and they weren’t in “her aisle” anyway, so go to hell. Mom, a 150-lb. Rottweiler disguised as a 20-lb. Pug, rose to her full height and bit the woman’s head off.
Turning down a different aisle, Olga told Mom that back in America at Vons (“Whons”) the clerks, both male and female, greet her with smiles, ask her if she is finding everything O.K., then scurry all over the store to find and bring her whatever she is looking for. She tries to explain the Western concept of customer service to poor old Mom, who was formally trained as a G.U.M. sales clerk when she was young. (G.U.M. was the “State” owned and operated “department” store for the Soviet elite.) Mom can not even begin to fathom such nonsense. The only Western economic principles Olga can see at the new Krivoy Rog Delvy are “supply and demand” and “give the people what they want.” Nearly one quarter of the store – both sides of two aisles - are given over to alcohol.
In other aisles, Olga is surprised to run into several of her old classmates from the Krivoy Rog School of Mining. With most of the mines closed, they are now sullen, abused Delvy employees who are not allowed to go to the restroom on company time. If they do, it is docked from their pay. To add insult to the injury, they are not allowed to use the restrooms in the store, which are for paying customers only. The prices at Delvy are high and the quality is low. The produce is not washed or organized like in Western supermarkets; rather it is thrown in a heap as if just wrested from the earth.
The only advantage Olga can see to Delvy’s is that it could save her poor old pedestrian Mom from having to wander all over town on foot, plastic “perhaps” bags in both hands, buying groceries one item at a time, then hauling them all home. You have seen them – the elder women of FSU, hunched over with the loaded bags in each hand alternately pumping up and down like counter-weights as they go along. There is a painful and beaten-down rhythm to their waddling gaits. Mom is not their yet, but Olga dreads the day she turns into an arthritic babushka. Especially now that she has seen how mothers and grandmothers in the West get to age with much more dignity and less hardship. But shopping all over town on foot – the hard way- is how it has been done for centuries. Will the citizens of Krivoy Rog be able to change? Will the modern technology of Delvy change their lives for the better? Right now, neither Mom nor any of the other customers at Delvy, least of all the management, are getting the hang of it.
One of the most difficult adjustments for Olga to make in the U.S. was shopping lists. In FSU, grocery shopping is opportunistic and spontaneous. If you see something good at a good price, you buy it. It will probably not be there tomorrow. Nobody makes a list. That is why those bags that seem to keep the babushkas precariously balanced are called “perhaps” bags. They hoard them in their homes, and bring them in their pockets whenever they go out, just in case they see a good deal.
In America, the good deals are constant and always there. Americans use time differently, for “recreation,” and to “catch up” on things. In America, Olga had to learn to make lists, to plan her meals for the week. Because in America we have big refrigerators and lots of storage space and we are always pressed for time. We need to be efficient about our shopping. I had lectured her about it until he was blue in the face. Having to run to the store everyday just to get dinner was cutting into our “free time.”
It was a terrible adjustment and Olga still doesn’t always do it, but she has changed more than she realizes. Mom doesn’t have a list or a plan, nor do ay of the other shoppers at Delvy. They wander around the aisles like lost souls, pushing empty carts, gawking at the products and infuriating the trigger-happy aisle matrons. Nobody knows what they want, but they are curious. Delvy is a novelty, a kind of Western theme park or wax museum. Olga is the only one with a list, but Delvy doesn’t have what she wants and Delvy doesn’t care. “To hell with it. To hell with Delvy, and to hell with the West,” says Mom. She dismisses the breadcrumb recipe as “bird food” that will probably cause Pop to riot and maybe even bolt. “Not a good idea,” she says, “Let’s go.”
To be continued…
Doug Salem
