Under ordinary circumstances, my wife and I go grocery shopping twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.  Again, if ordinary circumstances hold, we have found on Tuesdays, there are two attendants who retrieve the carts over the large parking lot and bring them back so they may be used again.  When the two cart retrievers are between jobs, they go into the store and pack groceries.
At this point, I should tell you that I am a curious fellow and I wanted to know a little bit more about the cart retrievers.  The first such fellow is a Peruvian by birth who has resided here for quite a while.  The second person is a fellow who seems to have grown up in the great and gorgeous state of New Jersey.
I have always found that making friends comes easily to me.  So with these two cart retrievers, I stuck out my hand and let them know that my intentions were entirely friendly.  In the case of the Peruvian, I wanted to know more about his former career as a sailor.
It turns out that the people in the store know little about these two cart retrievers, but I found them very interesting and I am happy to call them my friends.  The older cart retriever is a former Peruvian sailor who seems to have renounced sailing ships.  However, on Tuesdays, he works as a cart retriever and grocery bagger.  I might also add that the Peruvian cart retriever is a man of about 60 years.  His name is Cesar Guerrero.  Earlier, my friends in the grocery store, who are all in the produce department or in the fish department, told me that Cesar was had not much to say.  But once we shook hands, he started to talk in his accented English and I learned quite a bit about him.
I asked him about two Peruvians whom he instantly recognized.  One was the former Prime Minister, Alberto Fujimori, who is within a hair’s breadth of being sent to jail.  The second one was Yma Sumac.  I thought that Yma Sumac would baffle my Peruvian friend, but he knew her instantly.  It turns out that about 50 years ago on the Bell Telephone radio program and on the Firestone radio program, Yma Sumac was a soprano soloist who attracted great attention for a period within the 1940s or 1950s.  Her claim to fame was that her voice spanned more than four octaves.  For Yma to reach a high C was no problem at all.  She went far beyond that.  But my new-found friend, Cesar, knew Yma Sumac instantly as well as Alberto Fujimori.
As time has gone on, I look forward to grocery shopping on Tuesdays because I know that I will meet Cesar and Andy.  Cesar apparently has a family here and seems content with his circumstances.  But I will tell you this: any man who knows who Yma Sumac was and Alberto Fujimori is, is a man to be reckoned with.
When we were able to refer to our computer, it turns out that Yma Sumac was born in 1922, a magical year which was my birth year.  Yma lived until 2008, when she died at the age of 87 or something of that sort.  I am at a loss to tell you how I produced the names of Yma Sumac and Alberto Fujimori, but they must have been ingrained in my memory from long ago.  So much for Cesar Guerrero at this point.
The second man who retrieves carts and packs groceries is Andrew Karlovich.  When we first began our conversations with Andy, it turned out that he had spent a substantial amount of time in the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in West Orange, New Jersey.  Andy told us that he had had three motorcycle accidents which landed him in the Kessler Institute.  I fear motorcycles and why old Andy would endure three accidents is beyond me.  But that is what he said he did.  Andy and I share a bond in that I am also a graduate of the Kessler Institute, having been sent there to deal with a case of stroke induced aphasia.
Andy is an enormous giver of compliments.  Whenever he sees my wife Judy, he compliments her on her hair or on her dress.  When I ask for a similar comment from Andy, removing my cap and showing him my bold head.  He will usually say, “It’s maaavelous.”  I have told my daughters about my head being “Marvelous,” even though they have skepticism about that particular description.
The burden of what I am saying about Cesar and Andy is that people who appear to do the heavy lifting are real people who have feelings and emotions.  In my case, I look forward to going grocery shopping on Tuesdays, knowing that there is a good chance that we will see Cesar and Andy.  Cesar and Andy may be found in residence at the Whole Foods Market on Springfield Avenue in Vauxhall, New Jersey.  If you see them, I hope that you will ask them about Yma Sumac with the four octave range, Alberto Fujimori and about my “maaavelous” bald head.  I believe that you will find your conversations with Cesar and Andy more than worthwhile.  I am glad to call them my friends.
 
E. E. CARR
May 13, 2010
Essay 455
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Kevin’s commentary: These sort of essays just make me happy.  I wonder if this is the same Whole Foods where Pop was told that he was wearing pimp shoes.
Seriously though I think the manner in which someone addresses service people is deeply revealing of a person’s true character.  Ed is off the charts.