It's been a rough, sad and peculiar ride for Haggen, the west coast supermarket chain that briefly seemed about to dominate the field in the western states. The small chain, which has run high-quality stores (I've shopped in several of them) from a base at Bellingham, Washington, was a small operation until not too many months ago. Then it's eyes got bigger than its stomach. When shifts in the Safeway and Albertsons world forced those companies to do a massive selloff, Haggen bought. Like so many small fish trying to consume large fish, indigestion resulted, and the company has been trying to back off elements of that sale for a while now. Now it is auctioning more than 130 stores, and apparently even its original stores are up for sale - which may mean the end of Haggens. That would be a shame, but there's a lesson here for the ambitious. - rs