WinCo Ghost Town Tuesday Walking With Working ATMs

With today's, Tuesday, August 18, temperature, a few degrees under 100, as measured by the Fahrenheit method it was to the Wichita Falls Ghost Town known as WinCo I ventured for my daily walking purposes, instead of my regular, heavily populated Walmart walking venue.

You can see, via the photo documentation, why we refer to WinCo as the Wichita Falls Ghost Town, nary a human to be seen as we head down yet one more empty aisle.

A new WinCo is under construction, currently, in my old Washington hometown of Burlington.

I hope the Burlington WinCo does a better job of being the new store in town than has been the case in Wichita Falls.

From its opening the Wichita Falls WinCo self-checkout ATMs have not worked right. The ATM would reject the slip in the card chip method, multiple times, then instruct to use the slide the card method, which would fail a couple times, before working. 

The failing WinCo ATMs were sort of amusing, as it was a sort of group annoyance, shared by the fellow customers and the employee in charge of watching the self-checkout, who quickly tired of all the ATM woes.

A couple months ago one of the long-suffering employees told me new ATMs were supposed to arrive in August. And those ATMs would have the tap method, in addition to the chip and slide methods.

Well, last week I was at WinCo. The new ATMs had arrived. And they were worse than the previous. When the chip method was rejected, I beckoned the WinCo employee, who then came to my ATM, she  tried to figure out how the tap method worked, then tried the chip method, and finally the slide method worked, after we managed to figure out where the slide slot was.

And now today, for the first time since WinCo opened, almost a year ago. the ATM worked flawlessly. Where to tap the card was clearly indicated. A loud beep clearly indicated the tapping was successful.

I shared my ATM joy with the self-checkout employee, one with whom I had previously lamented with regarding the sad state of the WinCo ATMs. She was even more pleased than I was. She said it has made her workday so much more pleasant.

Low Sunday Sikes Lake Tide Waiting For Winco To Open Tomorrow

This second Sunday of the 2025 version of October has Sikes Lake in what looks like low tide mode, with a large flock of ducks mucking about looking for something to eat.

Seems like the ducks should be flocking south for the coming winter. Or is this already their winter southern location?

The outer world is still being way too warm at my southern location. The high will hit the 90s again today, with no predicted temperature relief in the near predicted future.

The speed controlling chain on my bedroom ceiling fan broke last night, when I pulled on it to turn the fan on. So, I have nothing spinning overhead in my bedroom. The A/C seems to be sufficing, so far, making the lack of a ceiling fan bearable til repaired tomorrow.

The walk around Sikes Lake was pleasant today, not too hot, only in the low 80s. And breezy. There seems to be an increase of people enjoying the outer world now that it has become more pleasant, temperature-wise.

Tomorrow brings a big change in my regular routine of going grocery hunting at Walmart. Winco is having its Grand Opening tomorrow.

When I lived in the DFW zone I never grocery shopped at Walmart, even though it was nearby. I instead drove the few extra miles to Winco.

The Wichita Falls Winco is real close to ALDI, and way closer than the DFW Winco I used to drive to.

Seeing Ma Joad, Flubbo the Gut & Madame McNutty Took Me to WinCo

This Microsoft OneDrive Memory from this Day is totally baffling to me.

Is it part of a stage production of The Grapes of Wrath? I have never seen a stage production of The Grapes of Wrath.

Is that Ma Joad in the center? Did I alter the image of Ma Joad with the head of either the entity I refer to as Flubbo the Gut or the entity I refer to as Madame McNutty? 

The Ma Joad likeness sort of looks like both of those entities, frumpy, elderly and plump.

Changing the subject from Ma Joad to Wichita Falls.

Via the Texoma Homepage today I learned WinCo is going ahead with opening a store in in Wichita Falls. Construction to begin in December, completion by summer or early fall. WinCo has agreed to pay for a boulevard upgrade, an agreement which hastened approval of the project.

A WinCo in this town is going to change many people's grocery shopping habits. As in, for me, it will put an end to buying groceries at Walmart. WinCo makes the best bagels I have ever been blessed to consume, among many other good things.

The new WinCo will be a short distance from ALDI.