Home = Mom and Pop

As I write, my favorite local “department store” is having a Going Out of Business sale. It was the kind of store where you could find just what you were looking for. Special event? Big date? Vacation? You’d find the perfect blouse or skirt or pair of shoes, with accessories to match. Not only that, but you’d recognize the materials they were made out of--good quality materials, made to for last years, not just this season.

A friend of mine says it was the place folks used to go for Girl Scout and Boy Scout uniforms. We had one in the town where I grew up--it’s where we bought our gymsuits (does anyone remember gymsuits?) It was the kind of place where they took the time to say hello, to ask how you were and mean it. The kind of place where they’d ask if you needed help not because they were afraid you were shoplifting, but because they really could offer assistance if you asked. And all you had to do was ask.

But, despite the crowds of people pouring in for the department store’s big sale, despite the lines in the three small dressing rooms and the “record sales” reported by the owner, the store will be gone by mid-August. In its place? A cookie-cutter Coldwater Creek, I hear. Good cheap clothes that everyone within driving distance of their 300 stores across the country is wearing.

Soon to follow, no doubt, that tsunami of chain stores apparently necessary in any growing community. A Starbucks for $10 coffees. A benign Barnes & Noble. An Applebee’s for “homecooked” processed foods. A Payless Shoes and a payless hardware store and a payless gift shop.

In a time when “shopping” has become a pastime, I suppose “payless” is the key. Those colorful flyers that come in the mail each week have become the “calendar of events” for many. “Did you hear they’re having a huge sale on giant glow-in-the-dark Buddha statues this weekend? I have to get some of those!”

Who cares if the giant glow-in-the-dark Buddha statues were made in China? Who cares if they’re made of materials that will congest our landfills when we throw them out--and we WILL throw them out, next year, when giant glow-in-the-dark giraffes are all the rage. Who cares if the store pays their workers minimum wage without healthcare? Who cares if the store does nothing to support the community in which it does business? Who cares?

YOU should. Because downtown, next to the Starbucks and the Barnes & Noble and the Applebee’s are a host of small, locally owned “mom and pop” businesses maintained by members of your community, your neighbors. Businesses that support local events, local organizations, local charities, and local school programs. Businesses who have done so for years, if not generations.

They are businesses that are part of the fabric of your community, part of its unique character. Afterall, you don’t see your town’s tourism brochure promoting the great dining experiences of the local Olive Garden and Taco Bell. The “Where to Shop” section of the local website rarely touts the charm of the town’s Wal-Mart or BJ’s.

Who cares? We must. Because, in our enthusiasm for dirt cheap, ON SALE, glow-in-the-dark whatchamacallits that we have to, got to, need to have NOW...we’re losing the very essence of what makes your town and my town HOME-towns.

Perhaps we don’t need a place where you can purchase the latest in gymsuit fashions, but we certainly need the people and places that support our communities, that speak to the character and tradition of our towns, that make our towns the places we want to call home.