I'll miss my Kroger
By John Hearn

Businesses, especially supermarkets, come and go. grew up in the A&P in Rock Hill; the embarrassment of my mother's recurring requests for hearts of palm forever seared into my brain. It's old history now, though my daily Eight O'clock 100 percent Columbian carries that torch for me.

And Kroger, well, there is still one less than a mile away, both from home and from my office. It's not like I can't get my Big K diet cola by the vat any longer; I just have to drive a little further for that particular Jones.

But, I've lost a good friend. You see, at my house, if it gets into the pantry or the refrigerator, it's because I put it there. (I cook and do the groceries; she does the laundry and minor things like replacing toilets or reshingling the roof.) And for the last 12, I've lived within a baseball throw (assuming my wife does the throwing; I'd need a mortar or RPG) of the Fort Jackson Kroger. I was in that store an average of five times per week, I suppose. Kroger was so much more than my grocer. It was my pharmacy; my florist; my lottery ticket vendor.

I knew how to shop there. My taste buds had adapted to all the house brands, from the Big K diet orange to the frozen veggies, to my morning English muffin spread with Kroger peach preserves. That muffin costs me about 30 cents per day. (Try taking four bits into your fru- fru coffee shop and see what you walk out with.) I knew all the deals. My annual Kroger Plus card savings are $908.04 year- to- date.

I've even got a Kroger Master Card, and with the help of a card promotion this summer, I now await over $200 in Kroger gift certificates that will arrive in early December. Will I celebrate that good fortune with Denise, my cashier? Fat chance. She's relocating to some foreign land known as Sparkle Berry. It might as well be Manitoba.

And I guess that's really what I'll miss most of all; the good people who I came to know all these years: Kenny Alston, Laura Sharpe, Betsy, Miss Betty, Catherine, Emmett, Kris with his encyclopedic command of all things meteorological. Dawn and Steve in the pharmacy. A dozen others that I could call by name; dozens more that I exchanged waves or nods with every week. Gone. All gone.

I went back last night; the shelves are emptying fast, now. I can't go back in there again; it's just too hard. It's time to move on, and I will…to Wally World, or another Kroger.

I'll miss you, old man. Fort Kroger shall not be forgotten by this shopping soldier.