Growing up in that little suburban town next to urban cities, we did not have a car much of the time. My grandmother NEVER learned to drive in her whole live, although she did a lot of travel in her life – even went to Spain and I _think_ to Cuba before it was closed off)
Sometimes my mother had a car, sometimes not. It didn’t matter.
We would get our food at “Joe’s” (SMALL WHITE DOT ON THE PATH) much of the time; a corner store we could walk to. Then there was “Chestnut Hill Market” within walking distance but further – more expensive than a Supermarket but it always had apples and a few fresh veggies and meat, and lots of canned /boxed goods and fresh bread, they were alright. Bananas sometimes.
The nearest actual Supermarket which had fruits and veggies at STANDARD prices was
0.6 miles away;
a decent walk, which added up to over a mile there and back again.
My grandmother would take that walk by herself up through her mid 60s. She had a little one bag cart she took with her. She was more likely to go to Chestnut Hill (higher prices, less selection), or Joes (even higher prices, even less selection (mostly hostess cakes, a sub deli, ice cream, chips, newspaper, coffee, and treat like apple turners or big cookies and of course candy. I loved Joe’s).
But this was the suburbs. Everything’s safe as far as I knew, only had to worry about neighborhood bullies or loose dogs.
0.6 miles. No bus went there. The town I grew up in wouldn’t qualify as a food desert due to the income level and other things it didn’t have that it would need to be classified as such.
However, that DISTANCE _would_ have put it into the broader level of food desert at 0.6 miles if our demographics / crime rate / etc were different.
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