Retired?

I must explain that in the 80s military installations were pretty basic. We lived in cinder-block houses, painted a sort-of-yellow (look them up, called Wherry Housing for the Senator who got the funding) built in the 50s. The base seemed to be all warehouses, also painted sort-of-yellow, or beige.

The commissary (grocery store) was a huge warehouse, with unfinished shelves and narrow aisles, short hours, stocked with foods priced for military families who frequently qualified for food stamps.
These commissaries were always crowded, and as the line of grocery carts snaked along the aisles, heaven help you if you missed something because there was no way to turn back.

Later on, they made commissaries nicer, but the lines were always so long I blocked out a whole morning for grocery shopping. I always bought paper towels or packages of serviettes so my little ones could nap and rest their little cheeks on a soft package as we stood in line, and stood, and stood...

Prowling up and down the parking lot looking for a parking spot and driving long distances made the retirees shopping at the commissary a crabby bunch. They too, prepared to spend all morning at the commissary.
But for mothers, the retirees presented a real challenge as their noisy children made so many retirees angry. Everyone I knew had been yelled at by an irritable retiree.
So we shopped at quieter times, opened up the crackers for kids while waiting and tried to choose the lines that did NOT go past candy, or breakfast cereals.

That's all changed now--wide aisles, extended hours, high end deli items, lots of space, 8 aisles of frozen foods...

It was a strange experience the first time I shopped at the commissary after Kris retired. I no longer belonged with the mothers shopping with little kids--I belonged to another demographic now. Squeezing pennies again, but I promise to be patient with little kids and mothers trying to shop on their lunch hour.