Laughlin has a single grocery store that’s called, “The Market.” The Market has been aptly named because with 7,000 sq. feet of retail space, the “super” part of the term “supermarket” is sadly missing. Don’t get me wrong. The Market is a nice store. It’s clean. The employees are friendly. The store has a nice “good neighborly” vibe to it. It even has a deli that sells fried chicken, soft tacos, and other foods. It’s just not a supermarket and their range of offerings are quite limited as a result.

To give you and idea of how big the Market is, it’s smaller than a Dollar General which averages 7,400 sq. feet. It’s much smaller than a Smart and Final which averages 17,000 square feet. By way additional comparisons, a Safeway averages 46,000 sq. feet. A Walmart Supercenter averages 178,000 sq. feet and is over twenty-five times larger than The Market.

For those of us who live in Laughlin, the Market is convenient. It’s literally just a few minutes drive from most homes. It’s also the only grocery store in our rural area unless you were to count the Dollar General which doesn’t sell fresh meat or produce. We also have two gas stations which have attached convenience stores for snacks and beverages; three if you count the station on the native American reservation that’s on the outskirts of town.

The nearest real supermarket is just across the Colorado River in Bullhead City, Arizona. This store would be a 40 minute roundtrip drive from my home if I was willing to pay $50 for an annual membership to Sam’s Club. The next closest supermarket is a Safeway that’s a 50 minute roundtrip drive. Beyond that is a Smart and Final as well as a Smith’s. The furthest location that I’d be wiling to drive for groceries is a Walmart Supercenter in Fort Mohave. That’s a good 90 minute round trip drive.

Since The Market is tiny compared to other places that sell groceries, this store has never been very crowded. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than a dozen customers there at the same time. On most days, there have only been 6-8 customers present. Given its size, it has always had a feeling of quiet intimacy. Since all things culinary have long been a special interest of mine, I have never come close to having my autistic triggers pressed whenever I’ve been at the Market. My interest in foodstuffs have always taken precedence over the social anxiety that I feel whenever I’m around other people. This includes people whom I actually like.

Given how the Market is never crowded, the parking lot has always been filled with lots of empty spaces. In contrast, parking has been a bit more challenging at the Smart and Final. Even though I think that Smart and Final is more affordable than Safeway, finding a parking space at the Safeway in Bullhead City has been especially competitive. It’s always been a bit stressful to see other cars slowly driving up and down the parking lot as drivers search for the latest vacated spot. It’s especially annoying when I put on a turn blinker while waiting for another car to back out only to have somebody else pull into the spot that I was waiting for.

Crowds have also long been a problem for me in terms of my autistic triggers. I don’t care for the noise, the movement, being jostled by strangers, or having to stand in close proximity to others. Some people have no sense of personal hygiene and really smell. Others have drenched themselves in perfume and reek of concentrated floral scents.

From time to time, one encounters inconsiderate customers who have blocked a busy aisle with their shopping cart because they had to be in the center of the aisle instead of standing to one side or the other. Still others have been selfish and have hoarded favorite items. I was for example, once disappointed to once see a woman load a freezer section’s entire offerings of frozen breaded zucchini into her shopping cart. She must have taken 14-15 packages. When I asked if she had taken all of this product, she grudgingly gave me one package. While I would have liked a second one, I was grateful to have gotten any at all.

Even though the local Safeway is larger than Smart and Final, its price are higher. Although it’s been a few years since I’ve been there, the Safeway has always more crowded. Since their prices are roughly comparable with The Market, I rarely shop there now. The only reason I used to go there was because they were one of the few locations in this area that sold beef rib roasts and ducks.

Side note: The rib roasts that are sold at Walmart and Safeway are what a lot of people erroneously call “prime rib”. The problem is that the “prime” in prime rib refers to USDA prime grade quality meat. Safeway usually doesn’t sell prime grade quality meat. Both Walmart and Safeway sell choice and select grades, both of which are inferior to prime grade but are far more affordable. For that matter, the Outback Steakhouse which purports to sell prime rib, actually sells choice grade rib roasts.

Until prices started rising during the Covid pandemic of 2020, my interests in beef rib roasts and frozen ducks could usually tempt me into occasionally going to a Safeway, even though I didn’t care for the parking or the crowds.

Given my distaste for crowds, I have never been fond of Walmart. Since their low prices are hard to beat, a lot of people shop at this retail behemoth. In the United States, the average Walmart sees 7,000 customers per day. The busier stores see upwards of 10,000 daily customers. Anyone who has ever shopped at a Walmart can likely recall crowded parking lots and busy stores.

Prior to the pandemic, Walmart was open 24/7 and during my summer break from teaching, I’d go shopping to a relatively empty store between 2 and 4 AM. At that time of day (or rather, night), the night staff of stockers and maintenance people always outnumbered the handful of customers. In our post-pandemic world, the Walmarts in my area are now only open from 6 AM to 11 PM.

Large crowds at some of the larger supermarkets have also attracted some fairly aggressive panhandlers. Not content to stand on street corners while holding signs that say, “Am homeless, am hungry, please help,” these people will sometimes accost customers as they’re loading the contents of their shopping carts into their cars.

“Excuse me mister, but it’s awful hot and I’m powerful thirsty. Could you spare some change?”

Since it was a hot day, I gave the man five dollars.

“Hey thank you man. God bless!”

As I later drove out of the parking lot, I saw that the man who had been “so thirsty” was seated on a bench outside the supermarket. He was talking to another vagrant. As my car drew closer, the man looked up and saw me. He abruptly dropped his head and looked away. I realized at this point that the stranger had lied to me about his thirst because if had really been thirsty, he would have been in the store buying a beverage. I also belatedly remembered that Safeway had had a public water fountain just outside the restrooms.

In another incident that also took place in the same parking lot, I had this experience.

“Excuse me sir, but are you a Christian?”

The vagrant who approached me looked as though he hadn’t changed his clothing or had a shower in over a week. The man was also fidgety and his eyes kept shifting to one side. Both of these signs were physical “tells” that whatever story he pitched me was likely to be a lie. The only reason I knew this was because after my last experience with a pan handler, I had googled information about how to know when someone was lying.

“Hello friend! I’m a God-fearing Christian from Oregon come to the Southwest to preach the Gospel and to celebrate the love of our glorious Savior, Jesus Christ.”

I felt like pointing out that this area wasn’t a developing country and that we didn’t need an itinerant preacher who had likely never seen the inside of a seminary. Since I tend to be non-confrontational, what I said was, “Uh-huh.”

“As my Christian brother, I ask for your charity as a fellow believer in Christ to help me with lodgings. I am in need of shelter and the Comfort Inn charges $40.00 a night.”

I raised an eyebrow. “There’s a homeless shelter down on -“

The stranger interrupted me with a flash of anger. “I WILL NOT STAY AT A HOMELESS SHELTER!”

I thought about quoting Proverbs 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit.” Our modern vernacular has condensed this to, “Pride goeth before a fall.” I also thought about pointing out another relevant thought that had been penned by the English cleric, Thomas Fuller, in 1642. “God helps those who help themselves”.

At that moment, a sudden gust of wind blew the stranger’s baseball cap off his head. When the stranger went scrambling after his hat, I used that opportunity to shut the trunk of my car and to drive away.

Three month’s ago, I had this experience at Smart and Final.

“Country rooooaaaads, take me hooommmmmeee,

To the placceeeee, I belongggggg,

West Virginia, mountain mama,

Take me home, country roads.”

The man who had been loudly butchering John Denver’s song, Country Roads had the look of a vagrant. As with the other vagrants who have approached me, his clothing was dirty and he was filthy and unshaven. I resisted the temptation to place my hands over my ears, I remember wishing that he’d go home to wherever it was that he had come from so that I wouldn’t have to listen to his hideous caterwauling. It wasn’t just his voice that was at least one scale off key. The guitar itself had been badly tuned and was also off key. What made everything even worse was that his voice wasn’t even on the same key as his instrument.

The pan handler paused as I walked towards the supermarket. I could feel his expectant eyes following me.

I thought about saying that I’d pay him $20 if he would just stop singing for the duration of my visit to Smart and Final, but aside from the $20, this request would have been unkind because it would have been a passive aggressive way of disparaging what passed for his musical abilities. I then thought about how this guy was at least morally better than the people who stand on streetcorners with cardboard signs saying, “Homeless and hungry. Please help.” While thinking this, I found myself wondering if music could be used as a weapon. This turned my thoughts to Nazi Germany and how the German high command had their military bands play jovial beer-fest songs along the German side of the French fortified Maginot line as a way of showing the French Army that they weren’t a threat. When they finally did attack in May of 1940, they did so through the Ardennes forest; completely bypassing the French fortifications.

As I internally debated whether or not to give this man any money, I had continued walking forward. Since the panhandler assumed that I wouldn’t be helping him, he resumed screeching his song. The painful noise drove me forward through the store’s automatic doors which thankfully closed behind me, cutting off the horrendous sound.

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Given the rising cost of inflation, the last time I was at The Market, I spent $168 for two week’s worth of groceries. I didn’t buy tomatoes because at $2.00 each, they had seemed too expensive. I also didn’t buy bananas because they were selling for .79 cents each. Iceberg lettuce also seemed pricy at $2.50 per head. That Friday, when I had my weekly cheeseburger with fries, the meal felt vaguely wrong because the burger didn’t have lettuce or tomato.

After returning home I decided to do some competitive shopping. I googled the on-line sites for the Smart and Final in Bullhead City as well as the Walmart Supercenter in Fort Mohave. Both locations offered groceries that were far more affordable than my local store. Walmart beefsteak tomatoes ran $1.21 each while they were just 80 cents at Smart and Final. Walmart sold bananas for $2.02 for a bunch of 7 while Smart and Final sold them for .31 cents each ($2.17 for a similar sized bunch). Iceberg lettuce at Walmart was $1.94 per head while Smart and Final was just a penny less than The Market’s price of $2.50.

In looking at their websites, two other things caught my attention. Although I had been buying 20 pounds of kitty litter at $8.10 per bag at The Market, twenty pounds of a different brand were available at Walmart for $5.48. While Smart and Final also sold kitty litter, they didn’t have any twenty pound bags. The price per ounce for the smaller containers was too high in comparison to the 2.5 cents per ounce at The Market or the 1.7 cents per ounce at Walmart.

The other thing that caught my attention was that Walmart offered free curbside pickup. While I had shopped at Walmart using this service during the Covid pandemic of 2020, I hadn’t done so since the stay at home mandate had been lifted. I had, quite frankly, forgotten that Walmart still had this service.

Walmart’s Curbside Pickup Service

If you haven’t ever used Walmart’s curbside pickup service, it’s really easy. Shoppers go on-line, identify the supercenter they want to shop at, order groceries on-line, and pay for them through PayPal or a debit or credit card. They then select a time and date for curbside pickup. Walmart offers a 1 hour window for pickup. Each store has a designated curbside pickup parking area which is always on one side of the store. The parking spots are numbered. There’s a sign with phone number at each spot which lets you know the number to call so that you may tell an associate that you’ve arrived. The associate will then ask which parking spot you’re in and within 10 minutes or less, someone will wheel your groceries out to load them into your car. Since the groceries were already purchased on-line, no money had to be exchanged and nothing had to be signed.

It should be noted that unless you say otherwise, Walmart reserves the right to make reasonable substitutions. If an item is out of stock, Walmart will substitute a replacement for the same price that they would have sold you product that you had ordered. If the replacement product was cheaper than the item that you had wanted, the store will sell it to you for the lower price. Back during the Covid pandemic, I once ordered a standing rib roast. Since the store was out of stock, they substituted a larger beef tri-tip for the lower cost of the tri-tip. They also substituted two 20 lb. bags of cheap kitty litter with another product but sold the replacement litter for the lower price. Since the rib roast was more expensive than the tri-tip, they refunded the difference in price to my credit card.

Since I have now been out of work for over six months and have increasingly fallen out of the practice of interacting with people, after having paid too much for groceries at The Market, I took the path of least resistance and ordered groceries on-line through Walmart. Even though I prefer to go grocery shopping on Mondays or Fridays, due to my current study schedule and the fact that I had a major project that was due on Sunday evening, I arranged to pick up my groceries at 1 PM last Thursday so that I would have three uninterrupted days to work on my assignment.

My groceries cost $170. Although this was two dollars more than I last spent at The Market, I was also able to buy substantially more than I had spent at my local store. Pictured below is what my car looked like just before I unloaded, sorted, and stored the groceries.

When I last went to The Market, my purchases only filled half of the car. Not only was I able to buy roughly 1/3rd more groceries than I did in Laughlin, but my purchase included three bags of kitty litter compared to the two bags that I had purchased locally. It also included a replenishment of the frozen goods that I had previously used up. This included a box of forty frozen burger patties, two large bags of fries, a large bag of peas, two pizzas, and four Marie Callender chicken pot pies.

I also stocked up on sugar free sodas, canned goods like Ragu spaghetti sauce, corn, tomato sauce, kidney beans, boxed cereal, dried oats, a container of instant coffee, and a twenty pound sack of long grain rice.

NOTE: While Walmart has a free grocery delivery service for orders of $35.00 or more. Orders less than this amount will have a $7.00 delivery fee. Since I live well outside Walmart’s delivery area, I have not been able to use this service.

P.S. Sales flyers: The Market’s website recently posted a flyer about all of their on-going sales. Included among their offerings were pork chops for $2.59/lb. Since this was more affordable than Walmart’s $3.74/pound, I purchased a couple of packages for use in making hoisin pork. I also purchased a bottle of liquid dish soap that was on sale for $2.49 per bottle. The same brand at Walmart was listed for $2.94.

I resisted the temptation to purchase anything else.