On Topic: Blame the shopping cart

"Let's get it, let's get it, let's get it, let's get it!”

The boy hopped up and down as if powered by the combined influences of a new pogo stick and far too much sugar, as his parents studied the prices of the enormous-screen TVs near the entrance of the newly opened Costco store in Coralville.

“Let's get it, let's get it, let's get it, let's get it!”

My wife and I visited the store during its first weekend. When we arrived, the line of eager, would-be shoppers waiting to complete a club membership application ran like a train of box cars out the main door and along the far wall of the massive indoor parking garage, all the way back to section C.

The sight convinced us we'd skip making any purchases today, thank you, and in we went, without a membership.

Inside, the place was packed with newly minted customers gorging their carts with items whose price tags or apparent novelty couldn't be ignored. Excited children, like lookouts dangling from a ship's main-mast, clung to the sides of the packed carts.

The experience appeared to bring out some ancient hunter-gatherer instinct - except instead of wild game their prey included packages of men's socks, survivalist-sized jars of peanut butter and squares of different cheeses.

As we browsed the aisles, cart-less, I wondered when shopping had become the equivalent of social adventure. (Maybe it was around the same time pop culture came to be regarded as news.)

Scads of scholarly articles and books have examined this notion, Sharon Zukin's “Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture” being a notable example. And then I recalled hearing of a study that concluded one of the most significant inventions to influence modern society to be the shopping cart.

Here's the contention, as best as I remember:

The cart enabled folk who'd moved to the suburbs to buy more stuff in fewer trips. That in turn required wider store aisles, then bigger “grocery” stores that could carry more than just food items - from school supplies and car batteries to light bulbs and lawn ornaments - and ultimately ever more expansive blacktopped parking lots.

And, as a consequence, less green space. The paving of America.

Not being a sociologist, I can't say if this assumption is really valid. The chart itself was the invention of Sylvan Goldman, owner of the charmingly named Piggy Wiggly retail chain, and Fred Young, a mechanic, back in 1937.

Goldman's initial idea, according to the RealCartUniversity, a website for developing Internet “carts,” was to aid long-suffering “arm-weary” shoppers - and, of course, encourage them to buy more stuff. A vision of a folding chair with wheels brought about his eureka moment.

Over time, carts have become larger and more tank-like - so we can trundle to our cars with a greater number of things - and cleverer: with baby seats, mini versions, even carts augmented to look like brightly colored automobiles so as to engender in small children this whole shopping-as-excursion frame of mind.

And so that one day they, too, can be a fully active participant in today's culture: “Let's get it, let's get it, let's get it, let's get it!”