Simple Pleasures

When Barb and I married, our big Friday Night in the City was to cross the street to the bait shop, purchase a bottle of pepsi to split between us while we played a few games of pinball, then head back across the street to the trailer and call it a night. That's if we were flush with a couple of dollars between us after we paid the bills. If not, we probably couldn't splurge on more than one or two games of pinball and we'd take turns with each ball.

Although a lot has changed in the thirty-nine years since then--now we go to Disney Quest in Orlando with our sons and grandchildren for our pinball fix, where we can bang away on several dazzling-lighted, blazing-action boxes to our hearts' content, game after game for free--other than the hundred-dollar year's pass each, of course--we're still kindred souls in our love for simple, sometimes silly, usually cheap pleasures.

This morning we both had the day off so I took her to the Hess station for coffee. It happens that there's an extensive, sit-down Dunkin' Donuts in the west room, offering a full breakfast menu, but we'd never been there and it was fun. Since she'd come with me at my urging with no questions asked and fair's fair, I then followed her directions up to a different part of town and parked in a shopping center lot. She led me into a store neither of us had been in before nor had any idea what was sold.

It turned out to be quite a surprising array of sundry things, similar in some ways to a Dollar General store but with much greater variety, and pretty high prices. This was not a bargain store, though the bare-rack grab-bins and askew boxes of bric-a-brac seemed like it should have been deep-discounted. They had a lot of seconds and junk, frankly, but they had also a lot of electronics that kept my attention. Some imports, some lamps and furniture, rugs and barstools, laundry baskets and mirrors, framed prints and small appliances, paper items and eyeglasses we might have expected. But then I spotted a flute. A real, honest-to-gosh band flute ("beginner's", it said) in a hard, cushioned case, for $99. In another shelf I found the ultimate gadgeteer's delight: a mirror ("fog-proof", it claimed) for the shower, with a built-in am-fm radio with stereo speakers (about a half-inch each) and a digital clock (less than an inch across the lcd) under the oval reflector. All for $9.99. How could I resist? But I did.

I never could figure out their pricing. Any given item's cost seemed based on whether the stock boy thought it looked classy or common. So a wrought-iron grate might cost $20, but a gleaming, brass, free-standing toilet tissue valet might go for $99. Barb bought a new fry pan. Ours are getting the teflon wearing thin and starting to stick the eggs and stir-fry stuff to them. Though we walked all the aisles, we left wondering if we'd missed some unusual, hard-to-find treasure buried amongst all the motley piles and high-stacked shelves. I thought it had the feel of a garage sale.

"Well, what did you think?" Barb asked.
"Hey, that was different," I dodged. "Unique."
On the way out I learned the store wasn't unique at all but part of a national franchise. I guess lots of people must like to just shop for whatever surprises they can discover. But the point was, we had fun, did some different things for a couple of hours on a day off, and didn't spend much. We had our big spree in the city, our pepsi and pinball as it were.

We're lucky both of us seem to enjoy simple pleasures. Maybe it's our shared small-town upbringing.