#149. or, There be Hipsters Here!

  I had to run into town the other day to get parts to fix my tractor. Parts that didn't actually fix it, which means I have a bigger problem than I had hoped, but that's a different story.

  Whenever I go to town, I try to stop and take a couple minutes to visit my wife at the office she works in. While I was there, one of the topics that we breezed over was our grocery list. I had remembered an item or 2 that needed to be added, and since I was in town anyways, I asked her if she wanted me to pick up the things on her list. She said that it was fine, that she could just swing by and grab the items after work. So it was left at that.

  Now, at some point after that, and before I actually left town, I was stricken with the urge to make margaritas. Probably because it's been rather nice here the last few days and it feels good to have the sun shining down on me. So, despite the fact that there's still a foot of snow on my deck and I can't yet lounge around outside without at least 2 layers of clothing, I've found myself, wanting to make a margarita.

  I don't really drink margaritas. I'm more of a mojito guy, when I get in this mood. But still, when you get margaritas on your brain, you've just got to make margaritas. I made some from scratch a couple weeks back and they weren't all that good, so as I was leaving town, with my tractor parts, but without the grocery list, I made an executive decision and wheeled into the grocery store to pick up margarita mix. The grocery stores in our town have a pretty good selection of items to choose from, but the last thing I expected to find there were hipsters.

  If I had to wager a guess, I'd say that at any given time, our town is predominately made up of cowboys and farmers, retired farmers, people who work in one field of agriculture or another, and a handful of other fine people who make the gears of society run efficiently. But that doesn't mean that we're a town of backward hicks either. We even have our very own goth guy, but now that I think about it, I haven't seen him brooding about since last summer.

  I don't think I  have ever seen hipsters here.

  These weren't just wannabe hipsters who buy their skinny jeans, woolen scarves, and horned rim glasses off the rack at the trendy store either. These were the traditional, granola-y hipsters, with unkempt beards, clothes off of the 2nd hand store rack, wearing homemade jewelry hipsters. Some of them even had hipster dreadlocks.

  The women didn't have unkempt beards. Just the male hipsters. I expect, by the way that they looked, that the women had other unkempt body hair. But that's just an assumption on my part.

  I may be wrong in this, but it's been my understanding that hipsters generally tend to congregate around coastal regions where it's warmer and they can wear hemp sandals and macrame shawls and vests and things. So I'm sure that you can understand just how excited that I was to be able to view these hipsters outside of their natural habitat. Right there in the produce section of the IGA as they fondled the avocados.

  Even though it was hard to contain my excitement, I didn't want to spook this gaggle of  wayward hipsters, so I tried to avoid eye contact as I nonchalantly drifted toward them to catch a bit of their conversation while they discussed whether the tomatoes were truly organic or not.

  I didn't have a lot of items to get at the grocery store. Just the margarita mix. And well, chocolate chip cookies, Because I'm drawn to them like a kid to the end of the mud puddle that's deeper than his rubber boots are tall, so in only a few minutes, my basket was full. I took the long way back to the registers when I got to the end of the isle and spotted a small group of hipster dudes gathered around the meat cooler, poking  fingers of contempt at the packages of steak, and took one last pass by them before I paid, and left the store.

  I don't know why the hipsters interested me so much? I guess it might be because they're a bit of a novelty to find here. Sort of like the ornithologist, finding a pink flamingo in downtown Winnipeg, blown there by some errant jet-stream. I can only imagine various turns of events that sent these hipsters into our town, so far from home, wherever that may be.

  Unless of course, they're a hipster advance party, scouting out the area for an impending hipster invasion in the warmer months to come. I don't really know how you're supposed to prepare for a hipster apocalypse?

   ............Oh also, don't tell my wife about the chocolate chip cookies. We're on a diet in this house and it's my intention to get her liberally lubricated on margaritas and break the news to her gently. I'll let you know how that goes.