The time? High summer. The place? Binghamton, New York. My husband and I were there for a two-week stint, and though we weren’t native to the place, we were growing restless. Our Airbnb seemed haunted, with its framed photos of people that looked like ghosts and a decorating motif that could best be described as violently Christian. And we—a Jew, a Buddhist, and a corgi who answered to neither man nor God—longed to escape. But where?
Time and again, our answer to this question was Wegman’s.
The First Grocery Run for an out-of-towner is always overwhelming; there are basics to acquire, meals to plan, and (in our case) mustard packets to swipe from the sit-down café area to hoard for midweek sandwich-making emergencies. Amid this chaos, I espied a logic-defying new popcorn strain from a familiar brand. But the First Grocery Run is no time to get fancy. Watermelon hibiscus-flavored anything cannot be indulged in when one is in survival mode.
