Replies

A friend just showed me an article in the Washington, DC “City Paper” about Walmart. Four new stores are planned incide DC, which for years has been known as haveing “food desert” areas. Of course it doesn’t help that years ago the city passed laws against unlicensed street vending and made licenses expensive and hard to get. There used to be farm trucks loaded with fresh produce traveling around the city and especially in the poorer areas. There was one white farm couple that stopped their truck near where I worked. I bought their lovely ripe tomatoes and corn regularly. They were run off by these vending law changes.

One effort that DC has made according to the article, is to require that Walmart pay at least $4 above minimum wage.

There used to be farm trucks loaded with fresh produce traveling around the city and especially in the poorer areas. There was one white farm couple that stopped their truck near where I worked. I bought their lovely ripe tomatoes and corn regularly. They were run off by these vending law changes.

I wonder how many times that's happened over the years. We have started trying to buy from local/state farmers, and being in central Texas, we are incredibly blessed with a large variety of foods. I'm especially glad we started trying to buy more local/fresh foods, because the main grocery stores in the area are run by a man who helped kill off the sanctuary cities bill that was in front of our legislature.

That reminds me- Many years ago, when I lived in a small city in MD, (we didn’t live far from Wash. DC, maybe a half-hour or less)they had something I haven’t seen anywhere before or since! It was a sort of “store bus”. It was a bus that went through the neighborhoods and the driver would honk his horn and people would come to the ‘bus stop’, then he/she would go on to another stop, just like a bus you ride on. All of the kids in the neighborhoods would call it the “Beeper Bus”!

It was like a cross between an ice-cream truck and a book-mobile. The only thing different about it was that it carried groceries like a small rolling grocery store! It had shelves w/canned goods and bread and soda pop. It may have had a freezer case and a refrigerator for meat(I really can’t remember that for sure), it had small amounts of all sorts of stuff- soup and ketchup/mustard/mayo., cereal, coffee, drink mixes, candy, etc.. It also may have had some fresh produce, but that I can’t remember either.

I remember when the kids would sit and wait for it, then bring money and glass pop bottles to trade for candy! Parents and others would get on it and buy things when they couldn’t get to the store for some reason. In those days, they didn’t always have 1 car let alone 2 or three! I guess most people had at least 1 vehicle, depending on income.

The bus driver had a cash register, and would take the money just like a ice-cream truck! Like I said, I haven’t seen anything like it since, anywhere! It would be a handy thing to have for poor neighborhoods now. That is-if it wouldn’t get robbed!