BREAD WARS

Wednesday is the day I go to the bakery to pick up some free date expired bread for us poor senior citizens. We eat anything free We have to be there at 9:00 a.m. so we can rush in the garage door when it opens. I started this gig as a solo act, but have struggling for two months with my back last Oct.-Nov. a couple of the "girls" came to help. They still come. Maria tells me how to drive and Gale snickers behind me. That has nothing to do with the story other than some background. We cannot see that bread will be available until we get around a corner. The bulldog of the group always walks around front so the employees know we are waiting in the rain. They let her in, send her through and and she opens the door. I'm fine with that, but she pulls a few trays before she opens the door. Everyone fights for the speciality breads. They don't come up often. Everyone is looking to get the Cinnabon bread - both raisen and plain. So Ta-Da — the door opens and she has a full tray for red and blue Cinnabon bread already in her stack and Maria gasps and comments out loud. I'm with her thing time and I'm ready to fight. That bread is almost $5 a loaf and I love anything with cinnamon - well not meat, or vegetables, or... You get the idea. I was ready to move the rack, steal directly from her stack, or even knock her to the floor. She does this so often I have been planning for various forms of counter attack — painless I hope. At least to me.

So we come around the corner and there were four racks and several more trays of Cinnabon. Whew. God must have known I was serious this time and he spared me the sin of my heart. We also got a full try of each kind of Cinnabon. I can't believe people don't like raisens. One calls them little bugs in her bread. Now that's a pretty picture. At least I didn't have to knock anyone down today. There is always a shortage of something. Today it was regular sliced bread. Most like plain white bread. Yuck. Give me wheat and nuts and grains and heavy so much so that I'm full after half a loaf. If this man is going to live on bread alone, it may as well be packed. The only white bread I every really like was "Wonder Bread." Ot was squishy and could be molded into various shapes. The easiest model was of a snow man. Of course you had to cut the crust of for the right image.

Kiki usually meets my van in the garage with a cart to take the bread in. When I came we have four shopping carts. Now we have two (don't know where they came from - there are no grocery store markings on any of them Think the logo was removed and the serial number filed off. One is still good - sort of. The best one has a basket that sags and looks like any extra weight would snap it off. The second one has a goof basket but the rubber came off one tire and it wobbles. Of course, I thought they were made with wobbly wheels. I get them all the time at the store.

Anyway, there was a truce at the bread wars, but watch out. The other side could fire a shot any week.