Life in the Fast Lane

Touring Downtown

Thanks H-E-B

HEB carts are an important means of transportation in our neighborhood. Kathy and I will sit on our balcony and watch the carts go by filled with kids or lawn care tools or personal effects--and sometimes even groceries.

There are other forms of transportation as well: a lot of walking, biking and motorized wheelchair driving from the high rise nursing home down the street. There are also cars, monster HEB grocery trucks that set off the neighbor's burglar alarms and skateboards. But the signature vehicle of the neighborhood has to be the HEB shopping cart.

I am not sure how you get one, but it is clear, when you are through with it you can leave it on the side of the street. Every day a guy with a pickup truck drives around and loads HEB carts into the truck which he apparently takes back to the store on Elizabeth Street.

At first there was no reason everyone could not leave the store with a cart, but now metal pilings have been driven in the ground to create a gate around the carts at the store. Someone told me (a clerk?, a customer?, a panhandler?) that I would have to pay a $5 deposit if I wanted one.

HEB appears to be out of character in its generosity in allowing the use of the carts. Maybe this is not true and there is cottage industry of threats and bullying surrounding the carts and who gets to use them and who brings them back. I have not tried, since both of our cars usually run and when mine doesn't, Kathy will sometimes let me borrow hers.

When I say the generosity would be out of character for HEB, I am aware that HEB advertises they give away turkeys and other food at Thanksgiving and Christmas and send food to Mexican orphanages. Good for them. But my impression of the company stems more from years of reports of mistreatment of employees and having customers arrested for shoplifting and fighting customers or employees who had the temerity to slip and fall on the premises. From nightmare experiences, HEB could strike fear in the hearts of some people just like other initials like CIA, KGB and IRS.

Charles Butt waged a political campaign to make sure no one could sue them. And pity the poor Lopez supermarket when an HEB came to the neighborhood.

I still shop there, of course. No principle of corporate bad citizenship is likely to overcome my desire for convenience and cheap groceries. Back in the day when I was trying to observe a boycott, I would sometimes eat grapes and lettuce and I readily hop on a Boeing manufactured jet and use DuPont and AT&T products although I rank those corporations with those that sold opium in China and colonized India. Anyway, I don't claim to be part of the solution as a consumer.

Grocery stores are notoriously difficult to unionize and as food delivery becomes more complex, food coops seem like romantic dreams. And every attempt I have made at a victory garden has failed, although I did enjoy the worms I got at the composting class. Alas, readers true, any thoughts about improving the way we get food?