Neighborhood Grocery

 Dear Diary:

It was 1987. I had just moved to New York from Texas. I loved going to small neighborhood grocery stores in the city. They were so different from the huge suburban ones I was used to.

One day, when I was in Grace’s Marketplace on the Upper East Side, I overheard a customer addressing the man behind the counter.

“Do you have fresh escargot?” the customer said.

“No,” the counterman said. “But we have snails in a can.”

— Kate Marcus