The bushes are everywhere. Wilbo's jobless friend taught Wilbo how to eat in the bushes of Woodward Avenue. The Trader Joe's north of Eleven and Woodward has a small kitchen that serves up cubes of cheese, small cups of juice and even hot cubes of chicken or beef on a stick. When one is not working a heavy labor job, a few cubes of chicken and cheese go a long way. The Trader Joe's north of Fourteen and Eleven is a total bonanza. The store provides coffee in vacuum jugs; just pump yourself a three ounce sample in a Styrofoam demitasse. Wilbo never brought his aluminum car cup from Starbucks in for a fill, but his friend brought his and topped it off.
The store always has a vegetable tray by the soup deli, and next to the olive bar, a full selection of gourmet cheese cubes, all the varieties from brie to cheddar. Put a toothpick crowned with a cheese cube between each knuckle of your right hand ! In the fruit section, the trays offer fresh slices of apple and citrus sections, usually tangerines but sometimes grapefruit sections. Around the meat counters, the samples are infrequent. The meat is premium and it sells itself. Be sure to look for the woman dishing up crab dip next to the flower counter, as one enters the store.
If you are selective, by the time one reaches the check-out counter, one has consumed the equivalent of an United States Department of Agriculture sanctioned, balanced meal. Wilbo knew the French handled the custom of merchandise sampling better. Consider that the French word for sample is échantillon. If one is enchanted by the échantillon, one buys.
But Wilbo was ashamed. This kind of foraging was expensive for him. Hunter-gathers made their way through bushes on foot. Wilbo had to forage in the bushes of Woodward, driving a six-cylinder truck. Yet, he was driving Woodward each day, so gas cost was a wash. By the time he reached the check-out counter, Wilbo had always selected an item for purchase, if only the pizza slice special. It had to be special. It cost four to five dollars a slice ! In his mind he thought as he made his way through the aisles: "Sample without seeming to chew. Sample without seeming to convey morsels from tray to mouth. Sample without seeming to show a look of curious wonder, delight or pleasure upon ones face. Maybe it is easier to purchase food without loss of dignity from a fast food drive through value meal menu. Nobody knows what a peppy franchise food bag contains, right?"
In the summer of 1987, Wilbo had a data-input job next to the Joey Randazzo's open air market near the northwest corner of Mound Road and Outer Drive, just south of Eight Mile in Detroit, Michigan. He drove there in his beat-up but fully paid for Mercury Monarch to pick up some apples for lunch. He walked the aisles looking for apples, and an elderly man in worn clothing, once respectable street clothes, picked up plums from the stacks on wooden tables and crunched them in his mouth. He let the pits drop on Randazzo's cement floor. A woman with her hair up in a hair-net plucked grapes from a cluster, and set the cluster back amongst the grape clusters after picking a handful. The open air market closed far before the nineties began, and a chain-drug store built a corner superstore upon the real estate. No one walks into the store and samples the vitamin pills because that is clearly shoplifting. However, how are senior citizens in Detroit supplementing their diet with fresh fruit; not a grape cluster is sold in a super drugstore.
Wilbo likes a Good Pyramid Scheme that Recommends the Eating of Ice Cream.
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