Pickles by Brian Crane for January 27, 2021

I feel your pain Earl. It’s hard hearing how your baby got hurt. Even harder knowing it was caused Opal was careless with the shopping cart.

Even one time some months ago when working at the grocery store, a car backed into me when I was hauling carts back to the lobby from the parking lot. Even driver of car was surprised when I let out a scream in panic and said they didn’t even notice me. No damage though. Gave a front-end manager our testimonies.

I used to shop at a store where it was downhill from the store to my car. I rode the shopping cart down even though I was past 50. I never hit a car with the shopping cart.

A 60+ year old car that never had so much as a crease in the fender? That has to be a record.

“I don’t want to hear what I told you to tell me.” Smooth, Earl.

It must be a hilly parking lot. The skin on an old Studey is thick. The cart may have erased some of the paint but make a dent? I think that’s not too likely.

I got a big dent in the side of my car door one day. It would seem a truck door had dinged it mighty good. That dent was quite noticeable and bothered me every time I saw it. Then one day I bought some bullet hole decals and applied them to where the dent was. I stopped worrying about it from that point on. :-)

“Halfway up, I met the barrel coming down….”

Earl is now seeing the tragic moment in his head. “Make it stop!”

I think the woman I saw yesterday was Opal. While the Mrs was in Bed, Bath, I was sitting in my car when a woman about Opal’s age was trying to park her car next to mine and the cart rack was next to that spot. She kept banging into it. After a couple of tries, she finally got it into that spot, quite close to my car. I happened to be on the phone at the time with my brother and told him what was going on. I told him wait a minute while I got out of Dodge and pulled out of my spot to one in the row across. Sure enough, when she got opened the car door, it was not a gentle push but a “swing wide open as hard as you can” push. It would have put a nice dent in my door if I had stayed there. Never once did she check to see how much damage she might have done to her car. I don’t know if she was married and, if so, if her husband is still alive. And before someone comments about mine, I would venture to say I am lot older than both Earl and Opal and probably that woman.

Too late, Earl!

If I see someone walking one way while looking the other way, I go out of my way to get in their way. Walk forward, face forward…how can people not get that? Ok, enough venting for the day.

Shopping cart?!? Studebakers were made with 12ga cold rolled steel. Need more than a cart to make a mark on that beast. She be lyin

Shopping carts do a lot of damage ……BAD OPAL!

It does not pay to ask questions that you do not want answered.

A shopping cart? Did this to a Studebaker? Earl, uncover your ears, we gotta hear the rest.

Self-inflicted, even worse. You don’t have a stranger to blame.

This is right out of the “Cling Peaches” episode of All In The Family.

So tragic.

She hasn’t even gotten to the part about the squirrel, the policeman, or the school bus…

Those old cars were made of heavy-gauge steel, and a runaway shopping cart wouldn’t damage it at all, aside from maybe a tiny scratch.

Some things you just don’t really want to know.

This reminds me of all inthe family where Edith dents a car with a can of ummmmmummmm cling peaches

Mr. Crane seems to have forgotten the original strip when she said the dent is in the bumper. I cannot envision a shopping cart inflicting even the slightest dent on the steel bumper of a Studebaker.

Clearly her grocery cart license needs to be suspended. Runaway carts are no joke. People die from runaway carts.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/video-supermarket-cart-kills-chinese-woman-article-1.1380903

Other types of carts: I saw a woman turn away from her pram at an ATM. I was half a block away but I yelled loudly enough that a man was able to grab it before it rolled with the baby into the street. Never look away unless your hand is on it.

News gets worse with the dent.

Tell me, did you get the Store Certificate that the cart was wiped down?

Little “dimples” like that can usually be fixed with hot water and a toidybowl plunger.

If Earl was a good husband, he’d buy her a nice shiny Subaru.

But it wasn’t done on purpose, if it was. Wouldn’t it be bigger dent?

Minus the presence of cling peaches in heavy syrup, this is a classic plot from, “All In The Family.”