By LYNN HANRAHAN
Los Alamos

Pallets of groceries symbolize the malaise of modern America. If you are an old lady and complain about this you are demonized. If you trip over something and break your hip who will care for you — say if you live alone and have limited resources? 

The pictures reminded me of a truly awful job in the spring of 1988 at Ames Department Store in Athens, Ohio when I was stacking hangers below a rack of men’s Hawaiian shirts and my very nasty boss started screaming at me for endangering customers who might catch afoot under the rack.

A disclaimer — someone I gave birth to works at one of these groceries while awaiting departure to a doctoral program. The job is a very good thing. We are grateful. I always remind the very old children when they complain about this or that that a job I once had driving a dump truck for a couple of years probably saved my life.

We need to eat. We require housing. We like to have safe, basic transportation. We live in a very expensive, beautiful mountain community. We are blessed and cursed. Could any of our highly educated children afford to do today what we were able to do in our twenties — move here and build a life? It would take more than a bit of luck. When our oldest got a gig with health insurance recently before crossing the dreaded max out age for lab insurance my relief was epic.

The story is always the same. Walk around the Coop, Smiths, or Natural Grocers. The turnover is constant because who can afford to live on the wages? I really feel our local government is doing all it can. I shop in town because Santa Fe is just too depressing with its homeless crisis with no solution in sight. Grumbling that the local paper shouldn’t report on such matters as chaotic conditions at the local grocery is elitist as well. Being able to safely negotiate the store and prepare a meal for your family should not inspire fear. Some are more able bodied than others.

So what is the solution? The answer remains the same  — decade after decade — affordable housing, quality healthcare for everyone, and wages which allow all of our young adults to be able to do what we could  — raise a family in our little town. Making this dream a reality is all that matters to me.