Life Lessons: Grocery Bags and a Bottle of Ketchup

Saint Anthony Park public library looks about the way I remember it, back in the early 1960s: from this angle, at any rate. It was on the other side of a small ‘downtown’, between Carter and Doswell Avenues on Como.

I visited that shopping area recently, using Google Street View. I’d hoped to spot the grocery my mother sent me to, but the library’s the only thing that looked familiar: hardly surprising, after upwards of six decades.

Learning Something Important

The grocery would have been a walk of three or four blocks from where my folks and I lived, depending on exactly where it was.

Going there and back, I had at least two choices. I could walk along Como Avenue most of the way, or take Doswell Avenue down — literally — to Keston Street.

The Doswell-Keston option had the advantage of being mostly downhill from the little ‘downtown’. It was about the same distance both ways, if I took a short paved pedestrian path that made for some wedge-shaped yards.

That way was also quieter, although there was a wheezing bulldog with a habit of following me when I crossed his territory. I think he was just being interested and friendly. But at age 12, I had to keep reminding myself that his personality didn’t match his appearance.

One day my mother gave me some money and sent me to get groceries. She probably gave me a list, too, but I don’t remember that part.

I do remember walking home from the store, with the groceries in a bag. A paper bag.

I learned something important that day. Supporting the bottom of a paper grocery bag is vital, if the goal is getting groceries from the store to the kitchen.

A Glass Bottle and Sparkly Shards

My errand was going fine.

The store had each item, and enough of each item. I had enough money to pay for everything, and there’d been no problems at the checkout.

It was a good day.

Then, I’m not sure exactly when, but I think it was not long after I’d left the store, the grocery bag lost weight.

Abruptly.

A glance down confirmed my fears.

The sharp, complicated, sound I’d heard came from a bottle of ketchup hitting concrete.

Glass is an excellent material for ketchup bottles. It won’t affect the taste — neither will today’s multi-layered plastic bottles. Improvements in materials technology since my youth have been spectacular, and that’s another topic.

But glass ketchup bottles do have one drawback. When they hit concrete, they tend to become sparkly glass shards.

That’s what happened to the bottle of ketchup I’d been carrying home.

The other items were on the sidewalk, too. I don’t remember what they were, probably routine baking and cooking supplies.

They had one thing in common: their containers were still intact.

That was the good news.

The bad news was — I WAS FAILING TO BRING THE KETCHUP HOME.

I don’t remember how I re-packed the undamaged supplies, or how I dealt with what was left of the ketchup and its container.

I do remember being upset. Extremely upset.

Legacies

“Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after many a vanish’d face,
“Many a planet by many a sun may roll with a dust of a vanish’d race….”
(“Vastness” , Tennyson (ca. 1889) via Bartleby.com)

In the great scheme of things, a broken bottle of ketchup barely qualifies as ‘trivial’.

So how come I was upset?

For one thing, I was around 12 at the time. Things like bottles of ketchup tend, I think, to seem less important as the years pass.

For another; I sincerely, emphatically, and profoundly do not like bungling a task. Particularly when the task is simple, and I could have sidestepped failure.

And I’m pretty sure that how I feel about waste was in the mix.

Back then, my mother sent me to school with lunch in a brown paper bag: which included a sandwich in a waxed paper bag. Being careful about how I removed the sandwich and replaced the waxed paper bag in the other one, I could make both bags last at least a week.

To this day, seeing my wife discard a plastic bag after a single use makes something in my mind twitch. I have to remind myself that the benefit/cost/risk balance favors her habit. It’s one of many things we discussed during the early years of our marriage.

My cheeseparing, penny-pinching — I’ll call it frugality — approach to disposable packaging almost certainly comes from my parents.

My father experienced the Great Depression as a youth, my mother’s a few years older than he is. The families of both were not having a good time in the 1930s.

Some folks in their position decided that banks couldn’t be trusted. I don’t know how many actually stuffed their mattresses with money, my parents didn’t, but that’s where the stories started.

Even without the Great Depression, my folks probably would have been careful about not wasting food or anything else. But experiencing a decade that encouraged careful living arguably helped them retain their heritage of peasant common sense.

Remembering What Matters

I re-packed the non-ketchup grocery items and headed for home.

We were living on Buford Avenue then. My father was taking classes at the University of Minnesota, which is why we were renting a house in the Twin Cities. It was the last time he tried finishing his PhD. A lot happened that year, which is yet another topic. Topics.

Anyway, I got home and told my mother why I wasn’t bringing the ketchup.

Knowing me, she probably had to stop an overly-detailed and despondent exposition. I’m a very emotional man, and was a very emotional boy.

Among my cherished memories is her assurance that failing to get the ketchup, and wasting what we’d paid for that item in the process, was not a major issue.

It wasn’t “okay”, of course.

We were one bottle of ketchup short, and would remain that way until we could get caught up on that particular inventory item. Which isn’t how she put it, but that’s the gist.

On the other hand, our relationship was still okay.

So was the family.

That was what mattered.

And I’d learned: specifically, about carrying grocery bags; and generally, about paying attention to how materials were likely to respond when being moved.

I was also learning how a family works. I still am, for that matter.

One of the takeaways from the ketchup experience was that we learn by doing. And that we we make mistakes as we learn.

“Anger Born of Worry”

I was chatting about grocery bags, ketchup bottles, and life lessons with my oldest daughter the other day.

If I’d been an old-school sitcom father — well, I wasn’t, so she remembered that I’d been very loud when she and her siblings made mistakes.

[oldest daughter] “…I remember putting some eggs away (don’t remember why they were loose instead of in a carton) and dropped a couple. They broke all over the floor in front of the fridge. I was panic-apologizing as Mom approached.

“Mom took one look at egg splatter and said, ‘YES! I have an excuse to get ride of this carpet!'”

[me] “Your mother is a good and wise woman!!!! – – — and that carpet did have to go!!!!!”

[oldest daughter] “Yeah. My memory of us breaking things often involves a lot of yelling. Though I got the impression that at least half of it was ‘anger born of worry.'”
(Discord chat (February 12, 2025))

About the carpet: we bought this house from folks who entertained. Often. Which may explain the fancy touches — including the kitchen’s low pile carpeting, and the ground floor bathroom’s brown plush carpeting. I am not making that up.

About my yelling: was that ‘okay’? No, I don’t think so. Ideally, I’d have been much calmer. But my daughter somehow realized that I was more concerned over what might be happening, than angry at her. The others probably do, too, although I haven’t asked.

These days, every day I thank God that I’m part of this family.

And that’s yet again another topic.

Somewhat-related stuff:

• “A Crate of Oranges” (February 1, 2025)
  • More Memories
• “Early Diagnosis, Tardy Treatment, and a Gimpy Hip” (January 25, 2025)
  • A Failed Prediction
• “Christmas: Family, Lights, and a Little Weirdness” (December 28, 2024)
  • Desolation, Dissatisfaction, Depression, and a Prayer
• “Saints, Depression, Assumptions, and Me” (March 23, 2024)
  • Depression, Faith, and Making Decisions
• “Cancer in the Family” (January 27, 2024)
  • Putting Feelings in Perspective