I now do 95% of my grocery shopping at the Winco in Beaverton. It's fun, cheap, close to my workplace and every visit is like an Indiana J...wait, scratch that. Every visit is like Firewalker.

Or it would be if Chuck Norris spent the entire movie in 24-hour discount grocery store/warehouse. Instead of Aztec gold, plenty of preservative-filled foodstuffs are up for grabs.

My regular trips take place near the midnight hour, which means I have to contend with an onslaught of forklifts. Like Costco, Winco stocks its shelves in bulk and this requires heavy machinery. Regardless of what night I'm there, the forklifts are out in full force; their drivers blasting through the aisles while maneuvering roughly 2 tons of Depends Undergarments. Getting across the warehouse's main aisle can be like ducking through traffic on an interstate. Is running the risk of dismemberment worth saving $2 on a box of Chocolate Lucky Charms? I think so.

Plus, Winco is great for people watching. It's amazing the number of seemingly normal shoppers you'll find cruising the aisles in the middle of the night. Why is that seemingly-innocent looking yuppie couple filling a cart full of fruit? Why are those three secretaries stocking up on cans of Campbell's "Thick and Chunky" soup at midnight on a Sunday? And why are entire families going shopping at this god forsaken hour? All of these questions will spring to mind during any given late-night trip to the Beaverton location.

But they only make up 10% of Winco's Sunday night crowd. The rest? The morbidly obese, methheads and possible zombies. A steady diet of Winco's cheap eats, over years, could turn me into any number of these. Nevertheless, the savings on my grocery bills can't be beat. I'm so infatuated with the Beaverton Winco that I've written it this blank-verse ode:

Oh, Winco

How do you do it?
You sell tubes of Crest for a dollar less than Thriftway
$1.50 less than Zupan's
You're the only place in town where I can buy a pumpkin pie at 3 AM on the Fourth of July...well, expect for all the other Wincos
Your endless stacks of granola bars, your .99 cent Catholic candles
Your death-defying forklifts and your...death-defying, but in a different sort of way entirely, zombie-like clientele
Your gigantic wine selection and your $5 jugs of half-gallon Ragu
I go to sleep every night knowing that, if, for some strange reason I wake up a few hours later with an insatiable need for a "Fairly Oddparents" pinata, I can rush into your perpetually open bosom and buy two of them

For all of these reasons, Winco, I love you with a passion that will whisper through the ages