When I came to the Mart I was 75 years o...

When I came to the Mart I was 75 years old. At the time I hadn’t expected to go back to work, but I’d owned some bad stock, drank a little more than I should… Betty died.

My neighbor, Fred, said, you oughta go to work at the Mart. “It ain’t hard––get you out of the house.” I went down there and I told them I didn’t want any indoor job. I didn’t want nothing to do with being no toothless greeter, smiling, putting stickers on things. I wanted to be outside. I didn’t mind. I didn’t care about the weather. I wanted to be a cart wrangler.

Management didn’t think I’d be able to keep up. Heck, what was there to keep up with? I can push a shopping cart. I can push a row of shopping carts just as good as any kid. As a matter of fact, I taught those high school kids a few tricks. How to balance and ride a cart around a corner.

Excerpt From: Brian Price. “The Old Cart Wrangler, The New Silence, and Other Notions.” Apple Books.