It’s time that I wrote something about Costco.

I’ll start by saying:
Thank you, Costco. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for doing what you do. Thank you for being a place where the family can take the children on a weekend outing, and the children yell, “Yay! We’re going to Costco!”

I grew up without Costco. It hadn’t been invented yet.

We did have stores, but they weren’t very big by today’s standards. We had markets, but super markets were unknown, so we had nowhere else to go.

Our market was the Star Market. It was close enough to walk to. We did, a lot. It was just down the street in Monterey Park where Alhambra Avenue crosses Garvey Avenue and it was right there on the corner on the left with a little parking lot. We got most of our food there, and maybe light bulbs and certainly soap.

I didn’t go there very often myself, like not all the time, because I was little and probably couldn’t help carry the groceries up the hill if we were on foot. I don’t remember all the details. But I seem to see myself standing at the counter eye level on tip toe looking over at what people were getting when they had money.

I didn’t have any money, almost never, and I guess my family mostly didn’t either.

I was always a hungry little boy, and I liked going to the market because I could see people with money go up to the counter and pay for food to take home, and I could imagine what it would be like.

The Star Market didn’t have everything, but it had enough. It had what you needed, and people learned to need what it had.

As I got older and even taller, I was still always hungry, and I got around more to discover they had invented super markets and even bigger, giant endless buildings with flat roofs that had everything else besides food.

There was White Front. That was a thing for awhile and then it went away. Then there was Fedco for awhile, and you had to be a member to get in, and I was a member because I was teaching school by that time and it was a store for it seemed mostly teachers, until it went away and now it’s a Target store in the same building. That’s just the way history works. And Target has pretty much the same stuff, which is pretty much everything.

And I think the Star Market is still probably there in Monterey Park, on the corner, and I should go by to find out. [Star Market became Quang Hoa Supermarket, and closed in 2023. -ed.]

But speaking of Costco.

I had limited experience. I had never been to one. I had fragmentary information that included the fact that you had to sign up for it and be a member or they wouldn’t let you in, like a gated community. And don’t expect to find everything because it didn’t have everything and what it did have came in bulk. If you wanted something and they had it, you had to buy the big size multi-pack. If you wanted one bottle of ketchup, you had to buy a pack of 24. If they even had ketchup. But everybody said it was cheaper per each in bulk and you saved money hand over foot, or however the expression goes.

I always liked saving money, mostly because I never had any, so it seemed like a good idea. But at home where I lived now we had markets closer that we liked, and you didn’t have to sign up and fill out forms like a loyalty oath that probably showed how you voted. So I never went.

My first experience with Costco was in the back seat of a car. Shirley and I were coming back from a lunch David and Jackie had invited us to. David and Jackie are dear friends and the Leaders of The Martin Luther King Jr. Community Coalition, Jackie is the President, and they had taken us without telling us where to a surprise secret location of, it turned out, the San Antonio Winery where they had Italian food and fresh wine, and Jackie had said, as we drove along back streets in L.A., “I bet you can’t guess where we’re going,” and I looked around and said, “It looks like we’re going to the winery,” and Jackie was amazed and thought I must know everything about L.A., and I didn’t contradict her.

The lunch was wonderful and I want to go back, and on the way home they pulled into the parking lot of Costco in Alhambra and David asked if we were members and we said, “No,” and he ran in to get something, I think maybe a prescription because they had a pharmacy inside, and that was my first experience with Costco, parking lot only.

Over the intervening years, which are not many, I heard references to Costco. Now that I’m living mostly in the Bay Area near Berkeley with my beloved Daughter Kristina and her beloved Husband Chaz, they’re Costco members, and go there regularly, so finally I got to go inside.

They do have a lot of things, as I had surmised, and even more than I might have suspected. It was like a warehouse of opportunity with stacks of boxes on metal shelves going way up above the ground floor display, rather like Smart & Final, but bigger. And like Big Lots if you weren’t buying food.

Over the last few years, which are only two, I have experienced and availed myself of many of their offerings. They also sell clothes, some of which I think I’m wearing as I write this.

Our big beautiful television came from there. It’s wide screen and almost like the movies or a drive-in and we could invite the neighbors and charge admission to make enough money to pay for the popcorn we could provide for the full theater experience.

Today Chaz got a push basket and asked if I wanted to do the usual push and I said no, not this time, I brought my walking sticks so I could get more exercise which I need because I’m so lazy, and so he pushed the cart and I chased him down the aisles of the store, where he goes in all directions.

I do like Costco for the way it makes up for not having some things you wanted by having other things you didn’t even think about. Like today, Chaz and I were going to get hamburger meat but they didn’t have regular. Right next to where the regular would be, they had ground Wagyu. That’s more expensive, but the high quality special I’ve read about where they massage the meat while it’s still alive, is something I can now this time just afford to find out about and look forward to and can hardly wait as I write this.

Right next to the Wagyu was ground bison. I’ve always wanted to eat buffalo ever since I read a story in grade school about how the cowboy pioneers would eat it on the trail and how good it was, especially the hump. I wrote about it in my blog in an earlier entry. This ground bison didn’t look like hump, but even so, now that I know where it is and they have it, I’m looking forward to that too.

In the cold area, we got four gallons of milk. You can freeze them, and thaw them once.

I was assigned to pick out the tomatoes, because Chaz is not enamored with them, denied knowledge of how to choose, so any mis-choice would fall by blame on me. Organic tomatoes on the vine, vine included, in a little box, each box with one green tomato, don’t ask me why, maybe for inclusion.

We found cucumbers, English, pack of three.

Potatoes, big bag, enough for several meals.

Fresh garlic, because garlic is one of the basic food groups.

One thing I really like about Costco is the free food samples. They pop up at the end of the aisles, especially around the weekends.

Sometimes they’re great, with meat, sausage, once even dolma. Today was a real disappointment. Maybe we came at the wrong time, too early or too late. The first sample was a little piece of bread. Ok. Then a miniscule cube of cheese. Ok. Then some kind of sparkling controlled substance “summer drink” that I didn’t even try largely because of the name which I conveniently forgot. Then there was a guy just setting up and after I passed by he yelled out, “I got prunes!”

The best was the applesauce. Four varieties, strawberry, cherry, cinnamon, and plain. I had the plain because it was right in the front, a little taste with a little fork spoon in a little paper cup. Quite good. Maybe next time we’ll put it on the list.

Chaz said, “If you see something you want that’s not on the list, just grab it.” I was hoping for Graber tree-ripened olives, didn’t expect to find them, and didn’t. I did get a little bag of bacon bits because they go with everything. Chaz approved.

Last on the list: Worcestershire sauce – no. Tooth paste – yes, multi pack.

We trundled our cart to the register.

Paid, passed muster, then to the car and home in triumph.

I think I’ll get my own Costco membership card. Couldn’t hurt.

I can’t wait to go back.