TUESDAY, JULY 11, 2023, SHOPPING TODAY
Do I really need that item in two days?
From Amazon’s Site:
FREE One-Day Delivery
Get items the next day
Available coast-to-coast on more than 20 million items with no minimum purchase.
Filter by “Get it tomorrow” when shopping. Selection and order cutoff vary by area.
Receive items by 9 p.m. the next day.
OR
FREE Same-Day Delivery
Fast delivery on millions of best sellers and everyday essentials
In eligible cities, customers can order until 5 pm5 pm and get delivery within hours, with multiple daily delivery windows. Orders placed by midnight will be delivered overnight by 11 am. Eligible items are marked as "Today" or "Overnight".
OR
2-Hour Grocery Delivery
Ultrafast delivery on groceries and household essentials, free on orders over $150
Shop a wide selection of groceries including fresh foods and produce with two-hour delivery from Fresh and your local Whole Foods Market. Available in select US cities.
Go to amazon.com/grocery to learn more *Checkout using your existing Amazon account
OR
FREE Amazon Key In-Garage Delivery
Enjoy even more convenience and added security by having Amazon packages and groceries delivered directly to your garage.
(Amazon used to have a guaranteed two-day delivery, but seemingly that is gone. Most of the speedy deliveries depend on being an Amazon Prime member - currently costing $139 a year)
*****
As a kid, almost everything we wanted or needed could be bought locally. I grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Cedar Rapids was (and still is) a city - the second largest in the State of Iowa (after Des Moines). [You might be hard-pressed to name many more cities in Iowa]
We had two large and pretty complete department stores (Killions and Armstrongs) - both (seemingly) owned by local families. They were on opposite sides of Third Avenue - downtown. Then if you wanted “cheaper”, there was Kress and Woolworths. Kresges was next to Armstrongs and you could go out a back door and across the alley to Woolworths.
We had a JC Penny store on Second Avenue - kitty-corner from Woolworths. Also downtown was a large grocery store, the post office, the library, two large hotels, two movie theaters, and probably about all the doctors, dentists, optometrists, financial planners, and other professionals you would ever need.
You could ride a city bus downtown. As a kid, I could ride for a nickel (it might have been a dime for adults - I don’t remember).
It was ALL DOWNTOWN.
Petula Clark had a hit with “Downtown”
When you're alone and life is making you lonely
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So go downtown
Things will be great when you're downtown
No finer place for sure, downtown
Everything's waiting for you
*****
And, we did go downtown - where else.
But, as cars continued to become ubiquitous, there was a parking garage (I was amazed at the spiral to get down from the upper floors. I even paid for a couple of minutes of “parking” once just to come down on the spiral exit ramp). Then more garages.
And then . . .
Shopping malls
Lindale Mall, and then Westdale Mall. And groceries stores that weren’t downtown. No longer did you have to go grocery shopping frequently (because you could only carry a few grocery bags home on a bus) - but you could fill up your car with groceries and only shop once a week!!
But, now, I can go to Amazon (or Walmart’s online shopping) - order my groceries, order whatever is on my mind, and wait a day or two for delivery - to my door (or at least to my apartment complex).
COVID paid a major part in making online ordering and delivery bigger.
Not too far from me is a regional distribution center for Amazon, and they must have an arrangement with my local Speedy Stop gas station because, in the evening hours, it seems like most of the gas pumps are filling up Amazon vans. It is like a swarm of bees in the morning as the Amazon delivery vans hit the road (Interstate 35) to blanket the areas with same-day, two-day, or other delivery.
Yes, shopping is a lot different now - home delivery is different. The only home delivery I can remember is the milkman - and the mailman (now postal employee as we’ve also become gender-less in so many areas!!!)
*****
But, change is inevitable. Amazon has been experimenting with drone delivery. And with self-driving vehicles not far behind, maybe robots will bring packages to my door from an autonomous vehicle.!!
(I was reading how the Post Office is raising stamp prices - largely because more and more communication is being done by email. And, more package deliveries are done by Amazon!!)
So, what might delivery look like in the future? Hang on to your hats!! I don’t know what it will be, but, it is going to “knock your socks off”.
(Of course, this has little to do with the human soul, but however we get our groceries and things, LOVE still will WIN, and LOVE will still TRANSFORM US!! However we view the infinite God, behind everything and also in the recesses of our brains, there is a GREAT Spiritual Being that is so far beyond us.)
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