Fred Meyer

The day I came to Fred Meyer was the day after my travel companion and flew in at 1am and rested in Denny's for a few hours. At first, fully and completely sleep deprived and starved, we assumed Fred Meyer was a tractor store - a good looking name and megalith building, what else but tractors? Forgetting of course all the acreage of plains Washington held. As we walked by the store for a second time, before a journey that we did not foresee that would take us stumbling through a dense unmarked woods and up a literal forest cliff for over half a mile in attempt to reach a public coast line after walking the wrong way for 2 miles and wanting only a long stretch of beach to rest our weary bones, before arriving at a beach that was 10ft' by 35ft'', we recognized a familiar mermaid. Tractor stores don't typically have Starbucks, and, our assumptions were correct. Fred Meyer was not a tractor store. It was anything but that. When I tell you our eyes glittered. The most gorgeous vaulted ceiling known to man. It was an indescribable mix of Costco, Albertsons, and something magical. So magical. Fred Meyer packed everything. Wandering down the isles was comparable to ToysRUs and $20. For a second we forget the crushing debt that we would hold in 4+ years and how our dinning hall had unlivable choices for a picky disgruntled eater and an allergic college student and how one of us didn't love or understand biology and the other was double majoring in chemistry and physics or even how we had no money left after paying $230 for two nights at a room that was supposed to be $180 dollars and was down the hall from a room with a bullet hole in its window and had one bed, unclean floors, and the creepiest vibes imaginable. Fred Meyer momentary corrected all the failings society had crushed on our shoulders the moment we turned 18. Fred Meyer was stocked with something we now call hope and love. We went back later that night after falling in love with our tiny beach and it's sunset and walking uphill on a 45 mile an hour stretch of road with no sidewalk in the dark, and got a big old bag of gluten free chicken nuggets which actually totaled out to be 13 chicken nuggets each with a 14 servings bottle of barbecue sauce that will have to be chugged by tomorrow at 11am. Fred Meyer saved our faith in Washington and made us believe that it would be okay to raw dog another trip 6 days in advance after getting the thought logged in our heads the night before and deciding to go into as blindly as humanly possible after paying $120 for a flight on what little savings one of us had from nannying kids all summer. It was worth missing Friday classes that we paid thousands up on thousands of dollars for and it was worth that last second test that teacher who one of us to take a separate bus to, assigning a last second test. Thank you Fred Meyer, thank you. They have apple cider, go get some <3