Fresh off a trip to the Menlo Park Safeway, where he spent a total of $42.78 on his week’s groceries, local leaf classifier and balsa wood collector Ira Mastam suffered another harsh deal from the hands of Fate as he watched his bag full of groceries split completely open and the contents tumble out onto the asphalt parking lot.
“Oh dear,” said Mastam, as he attempted to pick up what remained of his now-broken eggs and the canned peas that rolled away just out of the reach of his short, stubby arms.
“What will I do now? Cooking my hearty peas-n-eggs is one of the only things that gets me through this ol’ life of mine,” continued Mastam, crouching pensively amongst the remains of a flattened pineapple upside-down cake that he bought for himself as a treat. “Third time this week,” muttered Mastam, shaking his just a tad small so that it’s a little off-putting head sadly.
For Mastam, whose wife Bertha was expecting him to come home with the foot cream that now lay open and congealing on the baking asphalt, this marks just another in a series of travails that life has put in front of him. First he lost his job as a dentist office’s before picture, then his pride and joy, a replica of the USS Monitor, was shattered when it fell off his mantelpiece.
As he walked away from his fallen groceries, Mastam tripped, splitting his pants open and crumpling slowly to the ground.
