kerouac says

when i was a little girl, i always went to the giant grocery store with my mother on fridays to do the shopping. i have various grocery memories--one of crying in that cage-like area under the basket of the shopping cart, where children ride, because we were buying chicken and chicken came from killed chickens. one of shaking the box of minute rice like a maraca in the aisles of the scary college town supermarket when we went to outfit my first apartment with necessaries while "dancing queen" played on the musak system. and a big one of the habit we got into, while wheeling the cart out through the OUT doors past the banks of pop machines of my mom pulling over, every week, and fishing two quarters out of her enormous streched leather change purse. no words, just two quarters with no restrictions and a standing armada of soda vendors.

to this day, a coca-cola spells treat to me, and there's something about my mom routinely slipping the young girl a couple of quarters that makes me go all soft-serve.