I pull the cart out of the rack and begin the process of walking up and down the aisles. I'm not exactly new to shopping; however, I am new to the kind of shopping where I'm buying a week's worth of groceries, and I will cook and eat my meals. I'm now in college, and I'll be living on my own, well, I should say, on my own with five other roommates in a dormitory on the Utah State University campus in Logan, Utah.
I graduated from High School in May of this year (1976), and like most high school students, I couldn't wait to get away from home and my parents. However, my situation was somewhat unique. I was hoping to get away not from my father but his new wife. A stepmother to whom the stereotypical descriptions apply; I won't waste any time explaining the relationship here; suffice it to say she was probably more than happy to see me leave.
My sister Susan and her husband Stephen moved to Logan simultaneously, so while technically not alone, I am grateful to have someone close to call if I need help. Stephen had been a godsend to me during my mother's long illness, sometimes just stopping by to take me out to get a coke and drive up and down the main street. Occasionally we chatted; sometimes, we didn't; however, it was thoughtful to pull me out of the house, if only for a short time.
I had purchased Stephen's Ford Mustang Mach I from him months earlier, and it was nice to have a car on the college campus; however, the dorm rooms were not ready to be occupied just yet, so I stayed the first week sleeping on the couch at my sisters. Then, finally, the rooms became available for check-in, and I was the first one in line.
The David O McKay dormitory is referred to as the "morm dorms," a derogatory nickname based on David O McKay's former standing as the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). The dormitory was a standard affair with great rooms and gathering places on the main floor and a central staircase servicing four rooms on each floor. The building was three stories tall, and each room had a central kitchen, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms. Each bedroom held two single beds, a built-in wooden closet, dresser drawers, shelves, and a desk. My roommate was Jerry from Salt Lake City.
I called home to let my dad know that I had moved into the dorm and everything was going well. Marva answered the phone, and as I waited, I could hear her calling down the hall. "Steve's on the phone. Steve. Your son!" Sigh, I had been gone a week.
My roommates and I had decided to start by shopping for ourselves before jumping into any shared format around meal prep and kitchen responsibilities. One roommate whose parents, in hindsight, had been exceptionally forward thinking had purchased him a meal ticked on campus so that he was assured of a hot meal three times a day. One of our roommates was an exchange student from Iran. He had already been shopping, and none of us wanted whatever he had cooked and was still on the stove.
I had gathered most of the essential ingredients for some easy meals I knew how to cook, i.e., pancakes, cereal, bread, and peanut butter. Passing the box aisle, I picked up some hamburger helper, and I was now standing in front of the hamburger meat section, trying to decide how much beef I required and if I wanted extra for a plain hamburger or not. I'd need to double back and pick up mustard and ketchup if I decided on the hamburger when a voice says, "do you know how to cook kidneys?" I look to my right, and an older gentleman is standing a few feet down the row holding up what I can only assume is a package of kidneys when he asks again, "do you know what I need to do to cook kidneys?" "No sir," I respond. "Boil the piss out of them!" He laughs, tossing the package back into the compartment as he walks away. Sigh, it's going to be a long semester.
Written October 21, 2022