A&P was a grocery store chain that started in New York in the 1800s and by the 1930s spanned the United States with thousands of stores. It even thrived and reached its peak during the Great Depression, driving many small independent stores out of business. Various measures were attempted to stem the A&P advance: tax penalties, laws against opening new stores, etc. It was eventually driven out of business itself by the rise of supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart as well as various regional supermarkets, such as H.E.B. in Texas, where I live. By the time I was old enough to remember grocery stores, in the late 60s, there were no A&P's around here. Back then, my grandmother and I would walk several blocks to downtown Floresville and buy groceries at either a small Red & White, which was another national chain that disappeared, or Baumann's, which was a local chain of 3 or 4 stores only in my home county (Wilson County), and which closed up forever only recently with the building of new H.E.B.'s in all the larger towns in this county. In Stockdale, where I did most of my growing up, there is still a small Lowe's Supermarket, another chain that isn't nearly as big as H.E.B., but somehow still survives. It started out as Joe's Groceries in a small place on Main Street, then he bought some property and built a much larger place that became Joe's Supermarket, then Joe retired and it became a Super S (another chain that I think is now gone), and finally Lowe's Supermarket. Anyway, this is a song about buying a home for the sake of convenience. There aren't many supermarkets that are around the corner from a neighborhood anymore; they're mostly out on the highways. But if you live in the right place in Stockdale, you can still walk to Lowe's, and there's one H.E.B. in San Antonio that was built back in the 1940s that is still smack in the middle of a neighborhood where many people still walk to the store to buy groceries. First stanza and one chorus only.