Our mobile convenience store

Every Monday just after lunch, a truck backs down the driveway of our cluster of houses. "It's the Vegetable Man!" bawls out the driver, and after a minute or two the housewives gather round. 

       Everything's fresh and about the price of everything at the supermarket downtown. In addition, the truck provides gossip about adjacent neighborhoods.

      Actually, the Vegetable Man usually doesn't sell much in our neighborhood because we like to go downtown and browse around, but some of us don't have a car and to go downtown by bus and haul our purchases up the hill is a chore. So it makes sense to keep on the good side of the Vegetable Man and every Monday most people buy something, even if they don't really need it.

   -Hisae Tanaka