Throwback Thursday Remembers Groceries Express

Today it is snowing a little, and it's still very cold.  The birds are so busy eating anything they can find.  We don't cut back our perennial garden in the fall because on days like this the birds spend a lot of time pecking at all the dead flower heads.  They must be finding something because we have a lot of birds on the feeders, on the ground and in the flower garden.  At one point we had 7 male cardinals and 3 females, 20 mourning doves, 6 bluejays and more junco's and purple finches than I could count.

This finch looks kind of miserable.  I believe he has the grumpy cat look.

Besides a snowy January 8th, it is also Throwback Thursday.  I was cleaning out a closet recently and came across a memory from the past.  It was 1997.  That seems like yesterday, but it was 18 years ago.  My friend Vickie and I worked across the hall from each other.  We were having a day where it was hard to imagine doing our jobs until retirement.  Her job was much more stressful and important than mine, but some days a person is just ready for a change.  We conjured up a plan to open our own business.  We figured we were on the cutting edge.  Our business was a grocery delivery business. We thought that people would line up for miles around to have us deliver their groceries.  We got set up with a phone line, a computer, car signage and even special hats and jackets.  We offered an email ordering system as well as phone or snail mail.  We charged a small fee plus a percentage of their grocery order.  We used coupons and shopped sales.  We thought we had everything covered.  We did not take into consideration that people are basically cheap.  They complain about working all day and not having time to shop for groceries, but didn't want to pay for the service.  Gradually we acquired a few customers.  They became friends.  Vickie had a daycare and became very fond of the children.  I had a few lonely senior citizens who were willing to pay a little for a visitor once a week.  I ended up staying for an hour talking and even writing checks out for them to pay their bills. 

My friend Vickie's husband even created a logo for us.

Eventually our business fell by the wayside.  We moved away to Princeton, Wisconsin.   Vickie continued with deliveries to the daycare until it too went out of business.  Groceries Express wasn't a failure, even though we didn't make our fortune.  We made some friends, and we have some good memories.  We were on the cutting edge but just a little before our time.