WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE IS IN THE CARDS
This column originally appeared on Wicked Local.

I went to pick up some groceries at Trucchi’s in Abington (the much disputed pronunciation of which is True Key for those of you still embroiled in this argument).  I had an idea.   I would pick up some baseball cards.  It seemed like a fun idea since the Red Sox were playing their first televised spring training game that day and the temperature was pushing 70 uncharacteristic degrees.   I was quickly informed by the woman at the register that baseball cards have never been sold in supermarkets.  I politely told her that I used to routinely get baseball cards at Angelo’s down the street in Whitman (ok, my mother used to buy them for me) back in the ‘70s.  I laughed and said with a sarcastic smile, “What’s wrong with this country?” I was obviously implying in a comical way that we, as a nation, must have lost a piece of our wholesome innocence.  After all, if you can’t buy a simple pack of baseball cards at Trucchi’s, you have to ask yourself what has become of the America we once knew and loved (at least during the Carter Administration).  The woman bagging my groceries smiled in complete agreement.  I chose paper over plastic, for those of you wondering.  

I got right down to business when I got home.  Where could I buy a pack of baseball cards?  Olden’s Pharmacy in Columbian Square, Weymouth, was the perfect place to begin my search.  It is old-school, to say that least, and they should sell baseball cards – but with a simple phone call I found out that they don’t.  They claimed they hadn’t sold them in years.

I went to CVS because I also needed to pick up some Velcro tape to attach my EZ Pass transponder that I usually dig out of the console at the last minute and try to dangerously hold up to the windshield while driving.  I surveyed the store but had no luck finding baseball cards.  I asked the CVS employee stocking shelves.  She said that if they had them they would be in the toy section with the Pokemon cards.  No baseball cards.

I drove to Target.  I knew Target had baseball cards and I was curious to find out how this department store had come to have an apparent monopoly over a product that was once so widely distributed.  I walked into the Target in Abington and began to strafe the store’s entire inventory. I was looking for a simple pack of baseball cards, the kind with a stick of gum that predates World War I.  I soon learned that the normal pack of 12 cards was now $1.99 instead of 15 cents (only the small print on the front of the pack claims that the pack of 12 might contain only 10 cards).  I could also buy a pack of 36 cards for $4.99 which included a “fielding award bonus card”- which seemed to imply that all of the remaining cards were only designated hitters.  I could buy the authentic memorabilia pack for $12.00, which was roughly $11.99 over my desired spending limit.  Last but not least, I could buy last year’s complete set for $50.00, but what fun is that?  When I was a kid, the magic of collecting cards was being surprised by the cards that came in your pack along with the disappointment of getting doubles (again!).  

I chose the 36 cards that included the fielding award bonus card.  I got into the shortest line possible, but ended up behind a customer who picked this time to review the Warren Report with the woman behind the counter.  My cards that were marked as $4.99 rang up instead at $7.99.  Questioning the price I was quickly told, “people move things.”  Obviously inconvenienced, the Target worker went to get the manager (although I did not ask or want her to do this).  I began happily walking out of the store satisfied that I had, indeed, found baseball cards and was somehow glad that external forces had prevented me from actually buying them. 

Maybe I had grown up at exactly the right time when baseball cards were still cheap, prevalent, and not sold with the implication that they held any specific collecting value outside of the special magic that they provided.  Apparently, some things are better left in the past. 

Life on this day was good.  It was 70 degrees in February, I had spent a light-hearted morning looking for baseball cards, and I was going home to watch the Red Sox play their first televised game of the season.  All the planets were aligned in the world of Gillespie.

Only I forgot to get the Velcro tape.