Published May 10, 2009 01:16 am - When you write a weekly column, there are times you stop and think — have I written this column before or only thought about it?
There’s always time to shop for groceries A ROBERT LEBZELTER column for May 9, 2009
Star Beacon
When you write a weekly column, there are times you stop and think — have I written this column before or only thought about it?
That can be a real problem. Nothing more embarrassing than unintentionally writing the same column as a few weeks or months ago.
Not so with this one. I know I’ve written this one before. But I’m writing it again.
It’s about supermarkets and our quest to eventually visit all 91 Giant Eagle supermarkets. There used to be at least 93, but the Pittsburgh-based chain closed one in Youngstown and one other. Now where was that? Oh yeah, two miles from my house.
The upshot is while there are other fine supermarkets out there, wife Louise is used to Giant Eagle and Giant Eagle is where we shop, no matter where we are in northeastern Ohio or northwestern Pennsylvania.
Last summer we traveled to Mentor so she could have a root canal. Why she wanted a root canal, I'm not sure. But she got one.
As we left the office, she had a request.
"Ga a a geagle," she told me in her root-canal voice.
Huh? I said, pretending not to understand. But indeed I did. She wanted to go to Giant Eagle.
Any time we travel more than 20 miles from home, we take an ice chest in case we run into a Giant Eagle .
A few months ago I got a coupon from Red Robin for free onion rings as a loyal customer. They have very good onion rings. But I'm not paying $7 for onion rings. Heck, Red Barn used to have them for 40 cents, although sometimes you could break your tooth on them.
So the day before the coupon expired, we trekked to Willoughby for $13 burgers, free onion rings and before we left that city, a visit to Giant Eagle. You could see the store from the restaurant. You could hear it beckon. "Louise, Louise, I'm here. I'm here."
A few weeks ago we attended a concert daughter Megan was performing in at Thiel College in Greenville, Pa. There was a time gap between when Megan had to be there to perform and we as the audience had to show up. Yep, we were a mere three blocks from a small yet serviceable Giant Eagle.
The next weekend we had to pick up a relative at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Unfortunately she missed a connecting flight from JFK and instead of arriving at 3:30 p.m., got in at 9.
So we killed time at Best Buy (I resisted attempts to buy anything), Half-Price Books, where you can get cheap HD-DVDs (and I couldn't resist), then dinner. But with less than an hour to landing, we raced to the nearest Giant Eagle. I got half a list, Louse the other and we raced around the store, eventually filling the car with water, pop, toilet paper and other items, before we met someone at the airport who was toting four pieces of luggage we had to squeeze in the car as well.
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