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6
MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015
T
his issue of MyRouses Everyday
marks my one-year anniversary
working with this magazine. And
the theme of this issue — saving stuff —
confirms for me that it was my destiny to be
in the grocery business all along.
I didn’t always know this. And it’s been a long
and circuitous route to get here with many
diversions along the way —newspapering,TV
commentary, even waiting tables — but a look
back at my childhood reveals that the grocery
business was in my DNA from the start.
Grocery stores don’t just
remind
me of my
youth. I actually
had
one as a kid.
Sort of. Let me explain:
My upbringing in the 1960s was
conventional. My dad was a doctor, my
mom a traditional homemaker. As the
youngest of five kids, I squeezed onto a big
yellow bus to go to school during the week
and squeezed into the family station wagon
to go to church on Sundays.
But most folks who know me can tell you —
and any reader of my work might reasonably
infer — despite the suburban trappings of
normality, I was a bit of a strange lad.
OK, I was downright weird.
The first things I saved as a kid — the first
things I ever seriously collected — were
sugar packets.
Yeah, sugar packets. The kind you get at
a restaurant. For free, even still today. As
many as you can stuff in your pocket.
That may sound odd — OK, it
is
odd —
the
Savings
issue
by
Chris Rose
Rose’s
Market