I lived in Phoenix for 40 years, and always maintained a pantry. It's just how I am. 
I've always been a bit of an Agoraphobic, and don't like shopping in marketplaces.
@Cyber Liberty Well,it's better to have something and not need it,that it is to need it and not have it.
I used to live in an area where the closest place to buy gas was about 10 miles away,and they closed at 6 PM on Sat,and weren't open on Sunday. The next closest place was another 10 miles away and had similar hours. When fishing,it was right at a 65 mile round trip to the fish market,and then back home.
If somebody got sick or injured at night,it was about 45 miles one way to the nearest hospital,and there were no ambulances. The best you could hope for was a stationwagon from the Sheriff's dept if there was one in the area,and even then you had no phone so there was no way to call and check. The closest doctors office was maybe 20 miles away,but there was no guarantee he would be there after hours.
One Golden Rule for all the locals was "You NEVER come home with a empty gas tank! You stop and fill up on the way home,even if you have a half tank."
Pretty much the same thing with groceries. Closest place to buy groceries was around 12 miles away,and they closed at 6 PM. Miss them,and you had to add another 20 miles one way to your grocery trip. You always bought two of anything you would need,and then buy one replacement after using one of the ones in stock,and rotated back to front to maintain freshness.,and you NEVER left home without a shopping list of things to buy on your way back home. Didn't have telephones until the late 60's in that area,so there was no such thing as calling home to see what was needed.
If there was someone elderly or sick and living alone,you just automatically stopped at their house and asked them if they needed anything from the store if you were heading that way and right back home.
AFAIK,nobody ever locked their houses. No need to. Everybody knew everybody else,and nobody was going to steal anything from you or try to hurt you.
The closest anybody came to stealing anything was my big Chesapeake Bay retriever,Jack. People that didn't have a duck dog would stop by and ask if they could borrow him,but if nobody was home,they would just call him and he'd jump in the back of their truck. Jack was fussy,though. If you missed a couple of shots in a row,he would swim to shore and walk back home. Even if you were doing well he would just leave and go back home when he got hungry unless you fed him your lunch.
Sometimes he would lay down on the warm asphalt on the road in front of the house to nap in cold weather,and people would have to nudge him with the bumper and beep their horns to get him to move.
Jack was huge for a Chesapeake. He could,and would,stand flat-footed and look in your window when you came in the yard,and "grin" at you. Scared the hell out of people who didn't know him and thought he was snarling. Broke my heart when he died of old age. His heart just gave out one day. He let out a terrible moan,and just fell over dead. I had him from the time he was weaned. Smart as hell. My mother trained him to bring in firewood from outside and drop it in the wood box in the kitchen. I remember one time she was ironing in another room and had the kitchen door propped open so he could come in and out while she was ironing,and then it got cold and she remembered she had left the door open for Jack. When she went to close the door she spotted him laying on the couch and taking a nap. She grabbed a broom and started beating the hell out of him with the broom to chase him out of the house. That was the end of him hauling firewood for her. She never trusted him after that.
