'Jim's Community Market'

typing this one.

Usually, I listen to music, but this time I've got earplugs in.

Can I tell you a story about the Grocery Store in Seminole, Oklahoma?

When I arrived in Seminole, the grocery store was called 'Jim's'. The only other grocery store in town was a Homeland. Well, they had a Wal-mart, too. A Carl's Junior and Braum's Ice Cream, also if a restaurant was your thing.

I used to love going into 'Jim's Community Market'. They had pretty sweet deals on lots of food, including I think the whole product line of Shure-Fine, a company food-line I had never witnessed until I had reached Oklahoma. I used to buy fruit-glaze filled pies, sodas, and salsa with chips. They were good times eating those back at home, at a house I called Margarita. When I first moved in-to Seminole, a guy named Luke revealed Margarita (as I would later come to name her) down the road, by just pointing his finger at her and saying, 'You see that white house down there? Me and my friends sometimes sleep in there. No one'll bother you in there.' So I decided to sleep there, that night. And as I have said previously, what began as 1 night entitled squatting gradually became 5 months of squatting, entitled.

So, when I would bring home some apple butter and bread, and eat it while a ball game was going on across the field, and my windows were wide open as in to say they were completely broken out, I would just sit back, relax, and listen to the 'cheers' of the ball game, enjoying my food, and feeling very positive.

'This sandwich [which was made from Shure-Fine apple butter, and Shure-Fine bread] is Shure Fine!!' I used to say.

I used to love their retake on Mello-Yello. I always did say, I could survive, for a time, on a beverage diet.

...

But as always, this fun could not last. Jim's sold to another company. 'Jim's' is no longer 'Jim's'; it's the 'Seminole Community Market'. Not, I may say, a name as original as 'Jim's'.

In the purchase of the new store, with the adoption of new management, that new management had to bring in a brand-new Electronic Benefit Transfer system. This meant that, for almost a whole month, I had to shop somewhere else besides 'Jim's', or the 'Seminole Community Market', or whatever you'd call it. So, being on my bike, I would ride it about a mile (whereas to get to Jim's, I'd have to travel only a few blocks) to go to Homeland, in the center of town. They didn't have the good deals, nor the atmosphere that I loved so much, like, Ma & Pop, dark, narrow aisles, before Jim's became 'Seminole Community Market'.

Ah... Seminole, Oklahoma.