Jan 28 2009
Cardinals Gear? Not Here!
The Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl, right? And, they are from Arizona, right? So you’d think Cardinals gear would be easy to find in the state, right? Wrong! At least not in the northwestern part of the state.
I have been looking and looking and looking for Cardinals gear locally and I’ve come up empty-handed. It’s not because the Cardinals stuff is sold out either; it just doesn’t seem to exist. I’ve been looking for it since August, since we moved to the state.
I’m a big sports fan, and I like to show my support of the home teams. I lived in Kansas City for 47 years, so I have quite a collection of Royals and Chiefs apparel. My husband is from Indiana, and we have our share of Colts and Pacers memorabilia. I even have Colorado Rockies shirts, gotten while visiting my father, who lives in Colorado. No Broncos items are allowed in my house however. Being in the same division as the Chiefs, they have always been bitter rivals, and they always will be. But, I digress.
I started following the Cardinals closely when we moved here, and I wanted a Cardinals shirt. Could I find one early in the season? Nope. Can I find one now that they are the NFC champs and heading for the big game? Nope. Now, there’s not a whole lot of places to shop in this town, but we do have WalMart and Kmart. Evidently, WalMart thinks that Arizona only has three teams: the Diamondbacks, the Suns, and the Arizona State University Sun Devils. At Kmart, it was even worse. There were a few Diamondback shirts, but that was it as far as Arizona teams went. Now, if I wanted shirts of the Green Bays Packers, Denver Broncos, or Oakland Raiders, they were plentiful. I even went to some of the truck stops near here. I could find Chiefs stuff, and Colts stuff, and just about every other NFL team’s stuff, but no Cardinals stuff.
I have been checking religiously ~ like nearly every day. I’ve even asked at Kmart if they were ever going to get anything in. The girl looked at me like she’d never heard of the Cardinals.
If Cardinals gear exists in this town, it’s pretty well hidden. I did find a ball cap at Dollar General, but I didn’t have enough money with me to buy it, because I wasn’t expecting to find anything there. I mean, if Kmart and WalMart didn’t have gear, I sure didn’t think Dollar General would either. They only had a few, and I’m sure they’ve sold out.
I’m heading out to a nearby, bigger town on Friday. Maybe I’ll have more luck there. If not, I’ll pop across the state line into Nevada or California since I’m not going to be able to get into Phoenix. Surely someone acknowledges that Arizona has a football team.
