My Google maps review of "my" Kroger gas station, in a wealthy neighborhood - near my new home.

(Dear Google Maps)  "I know Kroger only too well."

My review?  

Oh yes - I know Kroger.  Gas and grapes, oil and steaks.

People - hear me.  It is a familiar story, same shit - different day.

Only the three-headed dog Cerebus could drag me to spend money at Kroger - gas or no gas, I don't care if I'm walking with a can, I go to whatever lengths necessary to not spend money here.

Kroger.   I spit that word.   

Perhaps the most openly prejudiced of the immortal corporations that rule America.

Kroger.

After decades of trying, they established a monopoly in Fort Wayne, finally purchasing the historically significant "Quonset Hut" (the BIG one) aircraft-hanger grocery in Fort Wayne.  Indeed, they bought the entire Scott's food chain that dominated my hometown for two generations.  

My home store was the big boy.  It had originally been built to house heavy bombers in World War II - and was purchased as surplus and opened by the Scott family just after the war.  Old Decatur road.

The South Side.  Fort Wayne, Indiana - and the boom times of postwar America, growing not rich, but with the real wealth of pride and position, the saviors of the globe, and the "greatest generation" had returned from the war - beaten but not defeated, humble with the knowledge of life, death and war.

The Scotts.

I was there - beginning at age 3, walking hand in hand with my parents each Saturday, buying groceries, and if I was good - perhaps a Matchbox car (in a real matchbox!) for a young boy, growing strong and sturdy on locally grown food.  

The Scotts.

I remember by father always greeting the then-manager, Don Scott - he was Dad's friend.

The GIs poured in - raising strong families, working hard, buying the homes my dad and Bill Hilker built, in fact Dad, Bill and quite a few others fed their families with money made, building the South Side of Fort Wayne.

The anchor of that community, was called Eavy's then - Don Scott's store.  Old Decatur road.

I can still smell the flower shop at the entrance.  I still to this day play with one or two of the matchbox cars - and I am an old man now.  

I'm rolling one on my desk
right now.  

It is time to remember.

Kroger - Kroger you see is a multinational corporation, beholden to wealth, power, and the greedy acquisition of every damn thread in the cloth of feeding America.

Kroger.

Finally in the 1990s, Don Scott needed to sell.  

Now old and grey, Mister Scott (even as an adult, he was always Mister Scott to me), he bent to the will of his children and sold all 18 locations - every store, truck, distribution center and (I'm sure from Kroger's perspective) all the human property that he employed.  

He wouldn't have, he shouldn't have.  But he did.

Because they lied.  

They lied to my Father's friend.  I know - I knew Bill pretty well, and he told me what they had promised, to get him to sell.

"We promise to never close the big store - it's the main reason we want to buy you out."

A neon sign.  Scott's Horn of Plenty - In Trouble

A gigantic, 100 foot tall neon sign, steel and frame, neon and paint - a cornucopia...  a genuine cornucopia... with bananas large as a man, and apples and grapes... the bounty of America - the promise of the 1950s America, writ large against the golden autumn sky of harvest home.  Indiana.

They lied.  They lied to my friend.  I WAS THERE.

Within 9 months of the buyout, the pink slips began to fly.  Scotts stores everywhere, shuttered.  20, 30 years employees (especially those with pension funds...  dripping like golden rivers...) employees left to fend for themselves in the cold, cold job market of the 1990s.

Evil.  Corporate evil - lies on paper, swirling around an old man, lawyers circling like bats around a witch's cauldron of hatred and greed.

But you might ask, "John - how do you know?"

"Perhaps... it was just a misunderstanding."

"Old mister Scott was an old man, maybe it was just a slip of his memory.  Surely, they couldn't have done this, on purpose?"

Really?  To hell with your mild acceptance of this crap.  They did it - to an old man, to my entire community... on purpose.

And it killed him.

Don Scott obituary - 2009

I knew Don well.  And I tell you true - he died not of age, but of a broken heart.

That "Eavy's" store? The big one? Don bought it in 1967.  He'd managed it for years, saving, planning, hoping.  He bought it from his own employer and best friend.

Promise made, promise kept.  And Eavy's became Scotts.  The neon sign that announced prosperity to the world, continued to glow, lighting games at the dirt floor football field of my Alma Mater -  Bishop Luers, right across the road.

I smoked pot under the bleachers on that field - me and Max and Mike and Bill and Kent and Mace and Tim Morken - who died of a broken heart too, he died young - but his heart was swollen and he dropped like a stone. 

 Tim didn't die of corporate lies.

So - I decided to find out why.

I called them you see - in early 2008, as the last employee clocked out, and I bought some brown bananas for a few pennies.  I was one of the last customer to walk out those doors.

Bastards.

Breaking their word, they quickly emptied that historically significant structure, that edifice of America's golden age - they emptied it and sure enough, soon that beautiful sign crashed to the ground.

God forgive me, I prolly thought about the crack pipes you could make of the neon glass.  I had some tough years in the 1980s.

Better crack pipes than scrap for monsters - I say.

That cornucopia looked like Las Vegas.  Incredible.  100 feet tall?  Neon.  Bananas. Grapes. The wealth of a nation, the "fruit of the vine, work of human hands."

Indiana - writ bold against the golden autumn sky.  The Luers Knights marching band horns glittering as the sun set and the neon blazed.  America.

So I called them - Kroger corporate, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  

I'm pretty fancy - Dad did pretty well, and I grew up surrounded by wealth, privilege and the kind of weird, American ignorance of how truly lucky I was.

But by 2008, believe me, I knew exactly who I was, and who I wasn't.  The 80s set me up like a bowling pin, and the 90s damn near killed me.

But, I had the polish, the voice and the experience ... I knew how to speak to power.  "Takes one to know one."

A few minutes three secretaries and one executive assistant later, I sat quietly by my Dad's phone there on the Southeast side, and as I knew it would - it rang.

It was the director of facilities (corporate) for Kroger.  Indeed, a minor member of their board.

I asked him to explain, why they shuttered a newly remodeled gigantic store, and continued to operate a shithole (still there) on Pettit avenue.  Why?

This slick rascal explained in his well-groomed Harvard voice, that it was all part of a national scheme, and that almost certainly due to the nearby negro population, Kroger had designated my home zip code as part of their "urban plan" stores.

Prejudice.

So - after listening to this nonsense for a few sentences, I just slid that receiver
back onto the cradle and went outside.  At least I could breath fresh air as I watched my dog lick his own balls.

So - that's my review.  Don't buy from Kroger.  Ever.  

Is it any wonder that George Floyd was from Minneapolis?  

People - it is time we held these monsters to account.  

WHERE IS OUR SIGN?