Oh, I want to see an Oscar Mayer wiener, that is what I truly want to see-e-e ...

For some reason, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile has been flitting about the Boston area the past couple of days. Today, as Sheeps Eating Me shows, it appeared in Hyde Park. Truman Parkway, to be exact.

Why there? No doubt to help open the newly rebuilt Stop & Shop there.

We took a spin around the place (after the wienermobile had left, though). It's a vast improvement over the old store there, but then, almost anything would be, given that that store was the Stop & Shop that time forgot, forever stuck in the 1970s, right down to the old Stop & Shop sign out front.

The new store is a solid, no-nonsense place for stocking up on the basics. While it does have a prepared-meals area, it's small and stuck in a corner, as opposed to the gargantuan boutique-within-a-store you'll find at the West Roxbury Roche Bros. or the Chestnut Hill Star. Although it only has 20 kinds of Oreos cookies (the Hyde Park Shaw's has 21, according to the official UHub statistics department, i.e., the variety-counting kidlet), it really has all the basics you'd need, along with a decent meat department and even a small seafood counter. Oh, and Mexican Coke and kosher-for-Passover Dr. Brown's Cream Soda.

Probably because it was opening day, Stop & Shop brought in what appeared to be every single one of its middle managers in all of New England - everywhere you turned, both inside and in the parking lot, there was a middle-aged guy (no women that we spotted) in a suit (and you could tell that for a fair number of them, that was not something they normally wear). Also, every checkout line had three baggers.

Outside, the parking lot felt a lot like the one at Roche Bros. in West Roxbury. The layout appeared saner, but it was just packed - lots of people were checking out the new store.