Ukrop's cookies, time travel, and things gone by

After a brief trip to RVA (Reader, remember, that’s Richmond, VA) for my mom’s 79th birthday (yay!!), I am headed back to the ATL (Atlanta, Reader. Atlanta.). I usually get some snack at the airport, and in the Hudson News (really? Not the James?? Anyway.) I found Ukrop’s rainbow cookies. And pinwheels!! And I immediately dropped $37 (Reader, Virginia peanuts and bubbly water were also involved) to procure these delectable and now rare-ish treats.

If you are not a Richmonder, and especially a Richmonder in the 80s and 90s, then you don’t know about Ukrop’s. The greatest grocery store chain to ever exist, with the legendary Ukrop’s bakery. Rainbow cookies, melting moments, White House rolls, mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, oh Reader, what small child in Richmond in the 80s didn’t go absolutely batshit crazy in the grocery store, begging for rainbow cookies? We all did.

When Ukrop’s closed their stores (they were only ever in RVA, Reader), the city wept. WEPT. People lost their minds. To the extent that the Ukrop’s Bakery stayed in existence. I’m not sure if a Ukrop still owns it (It’s a last name. Jim Ukrop, I believe, is the Ukrop that owned Ukrop’s. (That was fun to write.)), or if it was bought by Someone Else. But it exists. And every Thanksgiving every REAL Richmonders order all their rolls and mashed potatoes and so forth from the Ukrop’s Bakery.

It’s hard to say what made Ukrop’s so special. Part of it was community. They gave scholarships to high schoolers who bagged groceries. They sponsored local events. They had great food. Everyone shopped there. They filled a gap when the big name chains weren’t here. But it was also during that magical point in time when we were all growing up. And our mothers all shopped at Ukrop’s. Those were the carts we rode in. The samples we sampled. Those were the aisles we ran down. The paper bags we used to cover our textbooks. The cookies we ate.

And those cookies still taste the same. Like a Sunday morning at the grocery store, bored, looking for something to get into, when the whole wide world was waiting. The shelves and floors and refrigerators and stock was all shiny and new. And so were we. We would cart the groceries home, and go outside and play, or go to a friend’s house, or play video games, or be bored waiting to do those things. We would harass our parents to eat give us cookies. We would eat White House rolls with dinner. Everything was possibility. Everything was young. Everything was different.

The 80s nostalgia is for more than youth, more than cookies. We didn’t have cell phones or home computers. Or much to watch on TV. We had to be creative in ways that we don’t get to be today. Today, we get to be distracted. We get to give our attention to whatever ping alerts us. We get news immediately. We don’t have to wait. We don’t get to be bored.

I miss it. As much as I love technology, and the Internet, I miss it.

Like I miss Ukrop’s. And Sunday mornings at the grocery store. Bored. Waiting for it to be over. Until we get to the rainbow cookies.

I always forget that I can find rainbow cookies at the airport, until I get here, and hunt for snacks, and then go batshit crazy in the Hudson (sigh) News, dancing with my rainbow cookies in hand. It’s a time machine of butter and flour and sugar and food coloring that always transports me to a small childhood happiness. When my family was still vaguely family shaped. When we all mostly spoke to each other. When we sometimes laughed. Before divorce and cancer and alcoholic dementia. When we could manage to pull our shit together (mostly) for holidays. When we could sit around the kitchen table together, and talk, and make jokes, and be comfortable, and relax, because for a moment, everything was okay.

Because we could eat cookies.