JUNE 2, THURSDAY

MY ELECTRIC THROW

Last week I ordered an electric throw for my Amtrak trip circling the country. I‘ve read that there is an electrical outlet for every seat but that they are placed next to the window seat and that the window person might be annoyed if your wires extend into their space. But I decided to risk it so that if the car suddenly becomes over air conditioned or we go over a mountain pass and get caught in a snowstorm I will be ready. I am reminded of my hitch hiking trip across the United States 60 years ago. I had a pack laced to a wooden frame that I lugged across with a sleeping bag and tarpaulin. This was the day before high priced compact everything for camping. I was wildly unprepared. And of course, like now, I didn‘t know what I was doing. I made it with all my stuff but it wasn‘t pleasant.

But this Penneys Sherpa electric blanket, marked down from $130 to $30 seems very light and comfortable even without being plugged in. I tried it last night. The blanket was comfortable, the recliner was comfortable but I woke up almost every hour caught in dreams of being dropped from a cliff or having some frustrating non specific problem to solve and hardly slept, waking up with a sore knee of all things. Was it the blanket? It doesn‘t bode well for my seven nights sleeping in a reclining seat on the train. But I will keep practicing.

To save a little money after ordering the throw online from Penney’s I picked up the throw from the local Penneys in the mall. And as I wrote about months ago after being in Germany, the Mall experience was weird. There were only one or two customers in the huge store, a discount store now with everything on sale, and almost no one to help me. I found a customer service station and was directed to take the long empty walk the length of the store where an elevator would take me up and someone would help me. I did. Just outside the elevator exit was a very large desk and behind the desk through a door I could see shelves with things stacked on them, obviously things people had ordered. I called for help, no one answered, then went through a closed gate to the room behind and called for help. No one was anywhere around. So I went looking for a person and in the middle of a floor of merchandise found a customer service desk. A very chipper young woman was eager to help me and went back to another room and brought my package out to me. I asked how long the store the store would remain open since it looked as if it was on its last legs, with no service people and everything on discount. “I hope till next year,” she said.

And out I went passing no one on the long way back to the parking lot as I thought about the way that Penneys, when we came to Asheville, was in the middle of Asheville when the Asheville downtown was full of people shopping back in the 60’s. Then in the 70’s the Mall was built and was soon so jammed with people that you couldn’t find a spot to park in the huge parking lot while the downtown died and was deserted and even a little sinister and was almost razed to make a counter mall. But then since 2000 the huge cloud of Amazon and other on line shopping outlets has hung over the city and the Mall has withered and emptied to a skeleton of itself, pretending with its bright lights to be alive. There are now Amazon Prime trucks visiting every street in Asheville. And downtown Asheville with boutique shops and boutique hotels and restaurants from every land on every corner is so jammed with tourists that the city parking lots are often full and there is no where to park. Go figure.