Playing the Costco game

    In the 1980s my friend John Coote took me to a store in the Pacific northwest he thought had a big future. From the minute I walked in the door, I was shocked that a bunch of suckers, I mean shoppers, were paying a not-so-insignificant membership fee just for the opportunity to hand over bigger wads of money at the cash register. I swore I’d never be that stupid!
    If only I’d have bought stock in the company that day! You’ve probably guessed the store was Costco and like those other suckers, I joined up the first chance I got when they moved to a neighboring town.
    One of the things I liked about Costco was they used to open an hour early for small business owners like myself before they unleashed the hordes of unwashed common shoppers. In that hour, I invented The Costco Game where you guessed a person’s profession merely by looking at all the stuff piled on their cart or carts.
    I know that other people play The Costco Game because my wife and I were recently stuck in a long line of Costco shoppers and I overheard a conversation in front of me between some friends who live on a ranch way out in the sticks, and an old hippy gal.
    The free spirited dame looked at my friend’s two overflowing carts and asked, “What kind of restaurant do you have? I own a vegetarian cafe. You do own a restaurant, don’t you?”
    “Nope,” was all my friends replied. They didn’t divulge that they lived two hours away, 45 minutes of which are on a dirt road, and they only got to “the big city” twice a year; once to sell cattle and the other to buy staples at COSTCO.
    Unlike greenies who order vegetarian omelets made with brown eggs and goat cheese and then think they aren’t eating any animal products, my friends raise their own beef, collect their own eggs, milk their own cow and grow their own veggies.

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