Dartblog

A trip to Wal-Mart was occasioned last night when late-breaking news came to my home that cigars were to be enjoyed. My cigar lighter, a triple jet device of fine manufacture, required butane fuel—quadruply refined only, the manual warned. I set about finding the liquid gas in advance of my friend the impromptu tobacconist’s arrival.

At nine o’clock on a Sunday evening the acquisition of specialized fuel poses a challenge. Society has arranged for the dispersal of only two combustibles late at night: gasoline and No. 2 home heating oil. The meticulously cultivated markets of two thousand years having thus failed me, I tried the subsociety invented in a Bentonville, Arkansas laboratory in 1962. I tried Wal-Mart.

I achieved Wal-Mart only after crossing into the wrong part of town, which side is called Milpitas, and the shopping center which opened before me revealed a backward slice of Silicon Valley—presumably a subset of northern Californians who did not have stock brokers in 1998. Wal-Mart was a smoldering mess of overcobbled cars. Its beige and unfenestrated east elevation was the site of the make-out sessions of two unattractive couples. Somehow these unprepossessing kissers silently foretold that Wal-Mart would not have the product I had set out to buy.

Wal-Mart did not have the product I had set out to buy. My only hope, I knew going in, was the sporting goods section, where ‘camping’ would have various bottles and canisters of Chinese fuel. The maître of the section was a diminutive Chinese. I pointed to a stack of tiny butane refill canisters. They were made in China, were called “ultimate butane,” and did not specify the degree of refinery to which they had been subject. “Is this all you have,” I asked. The clerk waited several moments before telling me yes. I replaced the canister and fled.

Walking briskly I yet noticed—and this pleased me—a rack of torch supplies in the hardware department. Torches generally use propane, but perhaps… Yes, there was a large canister of refill butane, intended for large torches but perhaps meet for my little cigar lighter. The label, alas, offered no hope. It—“supreme!”—was just as enthused as the “ultimate” butane in sporting goods, but gave no specifications as to the precise chemical nature of the substance therein.

Traveling from one corner of the store to the exit, I engaged the method of heated walking one learns to employ in a crowded New York City street or subway station. Forward, strafe, spin, sideways to slip between two people. It was difficult to exit because Wal-Mart, at ten o’clock at night on this Sunday, was absolutely packed with customers. Every check-out line was active; every check-out line had a queue; this in a strip mall otherwise deserted of life. Finally achieving the doors leading outside, I made a note to buy some WMT and got into my car. We lit the cigars on the stovetop. It ruined them.