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| - Shopping here is an interesting, melancholy and sci-fi event. How am I combining these two descriptors logically you might ask? Permit me a tangent.
In my youth in the long forgotten dark ages before the Intertubes and clever-portable-phones, Sears was the Amazon-Walmart-Target of a world where mail-order was embraced as the acme of Atomic-Era modernity and consumer convenience. I got my first bicycle via Sears, a Wildcat-purple Schwinn Fastback Stingray with a white banana seat. My father being an inept Asian Internal Medicine specialist had to call in a pair of University of Chicago cardiac surgery residents to finish assembly. The extreme absurdity of the 1970s Sri Lankan national isolationist trade policies was amply summarized by Uncle Piyas when he exclaimed, "We can't even get Sears mail order in this bloody Island. Prime Minister Bandaranaike has cut us off from CIVILIZATION!" Oh how the mighty have fallen, or at least not made the transition to 21st Century commerce. A shopping visit here made me realize that Sears stores aren't long for this world, this one really feels like a final clearance sale is imminent. The end is palpable, and that makes me sad for a lost past.
The place is full of empty spaces, devoid of customers, we spoke in hushed tones as if we were in a temple, library or mausoleum. The plaintive calls asking if we needed assistance from the idle workers were pathetic cries of loneliness, similar in timbre to the voices of the prisoners in solitary confinement cell blocks. This is the sci-fi part. Phillip K. Dick's seminal Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? envisioned a future where the decimation of human population and animal life led to the expansion of technology for lonesome, socially isolated people needing comfort from talking appliances and artificial pets. Since then there's been a whole genre of speculative fiction depicting a low population density future, and you can visit this future here at Sears. We saw another couple of customers off in the distance, but maybe that was just a mirage. We waved anyway.
But, this means that while your husband is off on some peculiar science-fictional-fantasy adventure in his head, you can check out some of the most competitive bedding-mattress prices in Wisconsin. The stuff you still buy in a mid-Twentieth century fashion like box springs and laundry dryers are sold here at great prices with no stress or pressure. Also, unlike any other store in any mall in America, the workers here are sincerely happy to see you, I guess because they are just so desperate for the merest sliver of contact with humanity.
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