John Sealander

Pechins is located approximately one mile South of Dunbar in rural Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Dunbar, about ten minutes North of Uniontown, is so small that it doesn't even appear on most maps. Nevertheless, this obscure Allegheny Mountain hamlet at the end of an unmarked county road still attracts thousands of faithful every day. What the town has to offer are the world's lowest grocery prices. Tens of thousands of people in Southern Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Eastern Ohio wouldn't shop anywhere else. In this part of the country, all you have to do is mention the word Pechins, and everyone knows you are planning some serious grocery shopping. They also know there's a good chance you're on welfare.

Pechin Shopping Village has become legendary for miles around. The place has achieved such notoriety that it is now considered a mecca for bargain hunters, senior citizens and those who have made public assistance a way of life. A pothole covered parking lot the size of several football fields is always filled to capacity with aging pickup trucks sporting gun racks and mismatched body panels, rusting full-sized American sedans and the ocassional Saturn. With the protectionist sentiment in these parts, it would take a brave person to park a Nissan or Honda anywhere near Pechins. Many local shoppers will tell you quite emphatically that Japanese steel dumping and NAFTA are responsible for the area's staggering unemployment. If you offered them a job a few hundred miles down the road however, most wouldn't take it. California might as well be a foreign country.

At certain times of year I have seen freshly killed deer strapped to the hoods of cars. And it is not uncommon to see people surreptitiously siphoning gas from each others cars in the parking lot. Strange as it may seem, all this activity seems almost tranquil when compared to the chaos taking place inside the store. The narrow twisting aisles are filled with dimwitted comparison shoppers trying to determine whether Sno-Balls are a better bargain than Ding-Dongs. The meat department makes the trading floor of the Chicago Commodities Exchange seem organized by comparison. And throughout the store, hundreds of shopping carts are overflowing with Pepsi, cigarettes, frozen pizza, kielbasa and other culinary delights.

Most of the shoppers look like they've never missed a meal in their life. Even though there is an abundance of merchandise to choose from, there seems to be absolutely no interest in products that might help shed a few pounds. In fact, the higher the fat and cholesterol content, the more popular the item. Polish sausage, bacon, ribs, beef brisket, Halloween candy and Sara Lee cakes all appear to be huge sellers. The produce section is strangely quiet, although I do see several people buying cabbages.

Many of the older men sport grimy gimme-caps featuring heavy equipment and power tool logos. The younger men and women seem to favor a Harley Davidson motif. Harley Davidson tatoos and T-shirts are evident throughout the store. And Harley Davidson decals adorn the rear windows of dozens of trucks in the parking lot. You won't find many motorcycles though. At today's prices, doctors and lawyers are buying up all the Harleys. The authentic looking bikers filling their shopping carts with frozen pizza and Pampers will evidently have to settle for a Harley T-shirt and a package of Ding-Dongs.

If you follow a few of these Harley clad customers through the check-out line, there's a good chance they will lead you directly to the Pechin Bakery and Restaurant across the parking lot from the store. The restaurant is always packed. The smell of garbage and freshly baked bread blend subtly together. The place is a Ritalin free zone. Wild-eyed kids are always screaming and there are flies everywhere, but few of the patrons seem to mind. Coffee is a nickel a cup. Hamburgers are nineteen cents each. A decent hot meal is only seventy-nine cents. You see people leaving with huge sacks of nineteen cent hamburgers. If they catch you looking at them, they will tell you with a straight face that the burgers are to feed their dogs. I wonder though. The ill-mannered, screaming kids I see running around the restaurant will likely to be dining from these burgeoning sacks of burgers for the next several weeks.

They say that Pechins was started in 1947 by a former employee of the nearby Anchor Hocking Glass factory. He could probably buythe glass factory today. The store allegedly does an amazing 30 million a year in business, more than four times the gross of your average supermarket. Pechins makes money in spite of its bargain prices by keeping operating costs unnaturally low. The store has grown continuously from its humble beginnings in a friend's basement to the sprawling 50,000 square foot complex it has become today. Nevertheless, it still looks like it hasn't been cleaned in fifty years. The place is dimly lit, the roof leaks and it would never pass a fire inspection in most states. The aisles are narrow and the floors are an almost indescribable patchwork quilt of raw concrete, cracked linoleum and warping wood. Nobody worries about the place being shut down any time soon though. Pechins has become a major employer for the entire valley, providing steady work for over 300 people. If the store goes, the entire Fayette County economy falters. I'm sure an operation this big must be operating within the letter of the law, but it doesn't appear to matter that much anyway. The locals will tell you that most of these government rules and regulations don't mean much in these parts.

You could spend a lifetime without passing through a place like Dunbar. Once you shop at Pechin Shopping Village however, you'll never forget the place. It's a bit unnerving to realize that even though a significant percentage of the shoppers look like they married their first cousin, they can all vote and will probably elect the first person to promise them an endless supply of T-bone steaks for 59ў a pound. I wouldn't doubt that Sam Walton once paid a surreptitious visit to this quiet little town with its surrealistic supermarket and nineteen cent hamburgers, cleaned up the idea just a bit and called it WalMart.

There are probably innumerable little towns like this tucked away all over the country. Other communities may not have anything as grandiose as Pechins, but they each have the same sort of shoppers, searching their favorite Targets and K-Marts for their own piece of hillbilly heaven. Although I know I won't find that elusive nickel cup of coffee at my local Starbucks, I'm ready to return to more familiar territory. I'm hungry for Thai food and I haven't seen a Lexus in a long time.