Supersizing at Walmart

13’x15’ motorized shopping cart

We pulled into a Walmart parking lot in Franklin, North Carolina, with plans to stock up on food and other camping supplies before we made the last leg of our journey to our Smoky Mountain campsite.

Dark clouds started leaking giant plops of rain on our van. But what caught my attention was a giant grocery cart on a trailer. A pickup truck was maneuvering the trailer into position along the sidewalk in front of the store.

Photo snapped from our van

When I exited Walmart later, the 13’x15’ cart was off the trailer and lurking beside the store’s exit. I wanted more photos and the story behind the supersized, motorized shopping cart.

But rain was threatening once again. Husband Walter was ready to roll. And both of us wanted to make it over the mountains in time to set up our popup camper before dark. I only managed to snap the photo at the top of this post.

Got to be NC Big Cart (Photo Source)

But once back home I googled. The Big Cart page of the Got to be NC website described the cart as a promotional vehicle, powered by a Chevrolet 396 V-8 engine and rolling across North Carolina since 2006 as part of the North Carolina Department of Agriculture’s “Got to Be NC” campaign. The marketing effort promotes the agricultural products produced and processed in North Carolina.

In the photo above, the driver in the "kiddie" seat is NOT my husband, but from the perspective of the image I borrowed off the Big Cart page, the driver does look a lot like my hubby.  

A calendar of the cart’s appearances at businesses and festivals showed a schedule booked solid for August 2013 and busy through the end of 2013. The cart must be a popular novelty.

I learned from the Internet search that individuals and organizations in other states and countries also boast huge motorized shopping carts.

What Google did not reveal, maybe because I haven’t actually searched, is the answer to this question:

When I’m going down the Google highway,why do I become so engrossed in exploring a multitude of ever smaller and more remote pathways then feeling compelled to share every morsel of trivia that I encounter?

I think the answer is in a prayer on aging that my mother had clipped from a newspaper and that I posted here in 2009. I need to take the opening request in that prayer seriously:

“Lord, you know I am growing older. Keep me from becoming talkative and possessed with the idea that I must express myself on every subject." (Emphasis mine)

Amen and amen.