The Cost of Living in Baker City

July 22, 2010 by Clair Button.

I recently found myself studying grocery ads like I was reading an incisive book. “Beef rump roast at $1.99 per pound,” I remarked to my wife, “not bad if you are willing to chew on a cow’s butt.” For some unknown reason, perhaps consumer psychology related to the Gulf oil spill, fish is no longer within our normal budgetary allowance.

“I’ll write that down,” she replied. “Which store?”

So it goes. This is a small town. You cannot visit a grocery store without seeing people you know, so we stopped to speak with an old friend who was reading the small print on the tags posted on the shelves. “Being retired means you shop more and buy less,” he said.

I guess that is true. Given the age demographics in our town, you would think the grocery stores would pay a bit more attention to scaling down the prices on the basic, unprocessed food items, while charging the profligate more for their potato chips and beer. Unfortunately, we live in a cold climate, and growing peppers is an act of faith. When green peppers went from 50 cents apiece to 2 bucks, and red peppers approached 4 bucks, we declined the offer. The problem with age is that you don’t always develop dementia. We can still remember sweet corn at 10 cents an ear.

We just returned from visiting my wife’s father in Boulder, Colorado. There, among the privileged generation of Lady Gaga, we found strawberries at a buck a pound, red peppers so cheap we bought a dozen, and fresh Washington cherries cheaper than in Oregon. We binged so completely that the gastric distress could have powered my truck on the way home, if only we had a flex-fuel hose to the cab.

However, after a week in the frantic flow of traffic in Boulder, cheaper gas prices notwithstanding, we were quite happy to return to our little town at the end of the earth. Quality of life means a lot. You pay for what you get.

Clair Button makes irregular contributions of (ill-?) reputed humor to this column from time to time.

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