I hate change, but it's inevitable. My bank used to be across the street, where I could get cash from the ATM and deposit checks, but it was closed by Capital One for being underperforming and now I have to drive to my bank and the service sucks.
I used to be able to walk to the main provision center of my HMO which was in my home town with 24-hour care, but Kaiser built new main center in Tysons Corner which I now have to drive to, it's impossible to find on the first try and traffic out there sucks. To pick up a prescription at my rump HMO center in town takes at least half an hour waiting in line.
My mortgage holder used to have an office across the street and I had overdraft protection linked to my home equity line of credit but Capital One sold my mortgage to a fly-by-night provider (who begins every phone conversation with an offsetting warning that this conversation is an attempt to collect a debt, unless you're in bankruptcy) and my HELOC to a different fly-by-night company so my checking account no longer has overdraft protection.
Next door is a drugstore which I walk to often to buy toiletries and incidentals, food, beer or wine, and to check my B/P, treating it like an old-time dimestore. Rite Aid just announced it would close the store next month as being underperforming, leaving me with no store I can walk to handily.
Showing posts with label dimestore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dimestore. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 7, 2019
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Bag of Dreams
HO is for scale (1:72), not Christmas.
I was in the toy section of a thrift store over the weekend when I found a bulging bag of small WW2 soldiers, HO scale, with some little vehicles and supply-train items in there too. Among the infantrymen, machine gunners and tanks in the bag were rubber rafts (for the commandos to paddle across rivers in), pontoon bridges (to lay across the Rhine River when Germany was reached) and blasted storefronts (so the tiny soldiers could lay ambushes).
(Below: British Commandos on the job.)
There were hundreds of lilliputian-sized combatants in various poses of combat, wielding automatic and semi-automatic weapons suitable for clearing any street during an intense firefight. The bag was priced at $2.50. Some volunteer store clerk had taken this clear gallon baggie loaded with a boy's dreams and put it out to the uncaring public for a song.
This treasure trove represented scores of dollars (for the soldiers when new) and hundreds of hours (of memories for the boy who played with them). Put out for...anyone.
These soldiers were of a type I played with as a boy. Purchased at hobby outlets and stored in raisinette candy boxes in my room according to their nationality, these servicemen were always ready to stem the tide, hold the line, not let them pass, take the fight to the enemy. The Germans (gray) were there to provide opposition and the Tommies (tan) and Yanks (olive drab) were there to win the war. I never had any use for Russians (bluish green), after all, what did they do in the war bes
ides partition Poland with the Germans in the first place and get it started? (Left: The Opposition. Germans.)
This bag had Russian soldiers in it though, and even some Union (blue) and Confederate (gray) Civil War troops. With this supply a boy could conduct a century's worth of pivotal campaigns from Gettysburg to Tet in one long weekend of play, alone in his bedroom with armies waxing and waning across the floor.
I felt bad for the boy whose Mother (or the decedent whose estate) had so cavalierly packaged up all of these memories and sent them down to the local secondary retail outlet. I purchased the bag full of soldiers and put it on a shelf in the empty bedroom of my son who used to play with toy soldiers. (Last summer I came across three decrepit green plastic armymen embedded in the dirt behind the garage, at an old battle site of his obviously, and I near to cried.) Although I examined the tiny soldiers in their various poses through the clear bag, I didn’t have the heart to open it and paw through it. (Below: The wages of war. A Barclay Podfoot Dimestore Lead Soldier (bigger than HO scale) sporting a wound and perambulating about on crutches.)
I was in the toy section of a thrift store over the weekend when I found a bulging bag of small WW2 soldiers, HO scale, with some little vehicles and supply-train items in there too. Among the infantrymen, machine gunners and tanks in the bag were rubber rafts (for the commandos to paddle across rivers in), pontoon bridges (to lay across the Rhine River when Germany was reached) and blasted storefronts (so the tiny soldiers could lay ambushes).
(Below: British Commandos on the job.)There were hundreds of lilliputian-sized combatants in various poses of combat, wielding automatic and semi-automatic weapons suitable for clearing any street during an intense firefight. The bag was priced at $2.50. Some volunteer store clerk had taken this clear gallon baggie loaded with a boy's dreams and put it out to the uncaring public for a song.
This treasure trove represented scores of dollars (for the soldiers when new) and hundreds of hours (of memories for the boy who played with them). Put out for...anyone.
These soldiers were of a type I played with as a boy. Purchased at hobby outlets and stored in raisinette candy boxes in my room according to their nationality, these servicemen were always ready to stem the tide, hold the line, not let them pass, take the fight to the enemy. The Germans (gray) were there to provide opposition and the Tommies (tan) and Yanks (olive drab) were there to win the war. I never had any use for Russians (bluish green), after all, what did they do in the war bes
ides partition Poland with the Germans in the first place and get it started? (Left: The Opposition. Germans.)This bag had Russian soldiers in it though, and even some Union (blue) and Confederate (gray) Civil War troops. With this supply a boy could conduct a century's worth of pivotal campaigns from Gettysburg to Tet in one long weekend of play, alone in his bedroom with armies waxing and waning across the floor.
I felt bad for the boy whose Mother (or the decedent whose estate) had so cavalierly packaged up all of these memories and sent them down to the local secondary retail outlet. I purchased the bag full of soldiers and put it on a shelf in the empty bedroom of my son who used to play with toy soldiers. (Last summer I came across three decrepit green plastic armymen embedded in the dirt behind the garage, at an old battle site of his obviously, and I near to cried.) Although I examined the tiny soldiers in their various poses through the clear bag, I didn’t have the heart to open it and paw through it. (Below: The wages of war. A Barclay Podfoot Dimestore Lead Soldier (bigger than HO scale) sporting a wound and perambulating about on crutches.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
