It’s time to give back all those stolen carts

As you’re probably aware, February is “Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month.” That means you’ve only got three more days to round up all the stray carts on your property and wheel those babies back. Go ahead and use the middle of the street for this purpose; everybody else does. Presumably you’ll be granted amnesty if you get them in before midnight on Friday.

Here in Springfield, stolen shopping carts are part of life’s rich tapestry. I use the word “stolen” only because I’m assuming most of the folks towing these things around the neighborhood did not buy them off a used-cart lot. I don’t begrudge them the convenience, of course. If I didn’t have any place to store my stuff, I’d probably grab one too.

You look at a shopping cart and it’s almost as though it was designed expressly for the purpose of schlepping useless crap down a major thoroughfare. The other options that come to mind — a backpack, a cardboard box or a wheelbarrow — have never really caught on.

To celebrate this festive month, I photographed a pair of rogue shopping carts in the ‘hood. These came from Save A Lot, which is about four miles from where they ended up, and across the St. John’s River via a major high-traffic bridge. If only these carts could talk; what a story they’d tell! I’ll never bitch about traversing the Sam’s Club parking lot again.