That big bad winter storm is heading our way, at the time of writing, but we've had some lovely springlike days, and the blossoming of Prunus trees (fruit-bearing and ornamental) and forsythia and dandelions and other beautiful things reminds me of a Washington tradition I used to enjoy when I lived in or near the city.
That tradition is usually called a Weekend Getaway, but after sharing it with me my husband prodded, "The purpose is to pump a little money back into the local economy." Sometimes I miss the subtleties of these things. Although I was and still am a frugal fanatic, after it had been spelled out in so many words I remembered the purpose of the Weekend Getaway and packed a hundred dollars or so to spend on our monthly road trips.
But in a way he paid a price for explaining the purpose of the Weekend Getaway to me. Before that time, I used to enjoy visiting other people's favorite places, Morgantown, Pittsburgh, Chincoteague, Luray, Roanoke, Charlottesville, Asheville, Ocracoke, and of course everybody likes the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Afterward, my husband would receive monthly coupons for one night free and one night half price in a participating hotel. He'd say, "Where would you like to go?" and I'd scan for participating towns and say, "We can go to Bristol or Wytheville...I have things to do in Gate City."
The other day I talked to a village idiot type who said, in a confrontational way, "Do you buy things you don't need, just to support someone's business?"
When I read the words by themselves, printed on paper, a funny thing happens. A different answer comes to mind. Nonverbal elements of communication, as the late blogger known as Ozarque often said, change the meaning of the question.
My answer to "Did you use to buy things you didn't need, just to support someone's business?" would have been, "People include different ranges of meaning in the word 'need.' It's a good word not to use if you want to know what sort of things I bought. I did not buy the kind of gift items that are most likely to be re-gifted, the bric-a-brac made in China and so on. If a business deserves support, it sells things for which we can find a use. Prices for things people use regularly, groceries and toiletries, tend to run high in the cities; often we spent our spending money on gas and groceries, and felt that we'd found good bargains relative to what we paid for those things in Washington. More optional purchases, like the yarn stash that still takes up about a quarter of a room in my home...some of those yarn packs were bought as souvenirs of a trip, and yes, I remember the towns, the shops, and the occasions. And if a man wants to make a good impression on me in the city, yes, he should definitely buy flowers from one of the students and immigrants who stand out in the weather and sell flowers. Yes, when possible I do buy new books and records in order to encourage living writers and musicians. I never pay retail prices for ready-made clothes but I do pay for hand-made clothes or clothes resold for a good cause."
My answer, if the village idiot had asked, "Do you ever buy things you don't actually need, just to support someone's business?" in a pleading, despondent manner, would have been, "Yes. Although my handknitted blankets will last for years, although many of them could literally be buried in mud for a month, be dug up and machine-laundered, and look almost as good as new--while your cut-and-hemmed polyester 'fleece' blankets will shrink every time they're laundered--I would buy a few of your blankets, and resell them beside mine, because there is a market for cheap junk and because I recognize the natural limitations on your talent, or lack of one. Fleece blankets are good for pets." Well, "yes" is all I would have said out loud, but...yes. That.
My answer to what the village idiot actually said was "Yes." With nonverbal communication to fill in, "You've both heard and read what I have to say on this subject. I know you've been planning an insulting comment for some time, so bring it on...and pay for it." So idiot spewed, and paid, and if idiot is now telling people I've lost none of my edge at the verbal abuse game, idiot very deliberately asked for it. There's no sin in winning a game. I'm not convinced that there's a sin even in enjoying the misery of sore losers whose verbal abuse game requires them to pretend they're red-faced and teary-eyed about something other than having lost the game. But that's beside the point.
When we want to help people...disasters and emergencies happen, and we should all prepare to handle those and help others handle them, as best we can. Beyond that I think we all need to support one another's business, whenever it's feasible, as opposed to buying things from big-chain stores or giving money to those who just sit around going "needy-needy-needy."
(Which unfortunately does include some otherwise good church, community, and humanitarian causes. I don't mind buying things from their store or bazaar, or even putting money in the plate if I go to a concert or movie or lecture. My father used to say that churches should ban the custom of passing plates for money during regular services, and I used to say, "If people go to an ordinary lecture they chip in a little to pay for the cost of the hall, don't they?" and he used to say, "But a minister ought to be an example of doing without and giving to others," and we agreed to disagree. Dad never acknowledged that extroverts get some benefit from reading and discussing the Bible in groups; I concede that they do, but I notice no benefit to me in doing that, or anything else, along with a group of extroverts. But I'm not willing to pay people for advertising or fundraising. I'll forgive them for doing a little of that if other things they do are worthwhile, but if most of people's e-mails ask me for money, I will stop opening them. If you want to increase sales of a product that's been in the stores for more than one year, show me a low price in the store, not a TV commercial. I'm not rich, but if I were George Soros's last living heir I still wouldn't have any money to donate to the full-time fundraisers.)
We need to support makers, not takers.
We need to support people whose work we respect, not people who we believe are so pathetic that we can congratulate ourselves for being better off than they are.
We need to support people who will, with a little support, be as well off as we are...if only because, by and large, those people tend to be younger than we are, and like it or not we will eventually have to depend on people their age to drive our cars and clean our floors, and anyone over about age 25 should start cultivating a few carefully selected younger friends. I see a lot of baby-boomers in denial about the fact that friends who visit our homes can do a lot more to make our old age enjoyable than wage slaves who work in retirement projects. I see older people who take their children for granted...sometimes their own children are all these people hoped they would become, sometimes not.
Washington is unique because it was meant to be only our nation's capital, the place where our federal government worked as many days as was absolutely necessary before going back home, but it has become a real city in its own right too. Most Washingtonians are, by any reasonable measure relative to any reasonable portion of the rest of the world, rich. The ones who travel overseas know that. They have two "communities" to support: the people who are doing good work in Washington, and the people who are doing good work in the home or host towns where they go on weekends. They can afford to show respect to both.
I read and hear rumors about vague attempts to cut the federal welfare budget. Gate City has a small group of educated people--I refer to them generally as social workers, although some of them have moved up to legitimate jobs, or retired--and a large group of old-age and disability pensioners, both of whom can be counted on to kick and scream about any suggestion that their handouts might be reduced. The rest of us can hardly help thinking thoughts like "My parent/s, grandparent/s, etc., did work and pay into a Social Security handout fund, even if they knew all along that it was an unsustainable scam that was designed to fall apart before they started claiming their money...or X does have a major disability...but actually they like to have something worthwhile to do besides sit around and gossip! They want to work! And those other people who prefer to sit around and gossip? If they did starve, I'm not trying to be cruel, but seriously, they'd never be missed."
I like the idea of cutting the welfare budget. Yesterday this web site passed up an opportunity to commend a specific proposed cut. There are better ways and worse ways to cut the welfare budget and, as long as all I've seen of a proposed cut is someone's name on it, my guess would be that that person wouldn't recognize the better ways if they walked up and bit him. (For example, since social worker types get "high" on believing that "all they ask for is gratitude," by all means cap their salaries at ten percent of the minimum hourly wage.) But cuts do need to be made. People who gossip, people who push welfare, people who fail to support those who set up micro-micro-enterprises to keep themselves off welfare, need to be spending their days on a day labor site, advertising their capacity for unskilled labor. They may not need to starve to death but most of them could only benefit from the experience of hunger, and even more than that, from the experiences of walking to work and doing physical labor. Forcing some people to do physical work, like removing weeds from roadsides with a hand trowel, might actually relieve their physical disabilities.
People in Washington can benefit from meeting the people in towns like Gate City. The makers, not the takers--especially the social workers who claim to speak for the takers, who actually, in many cases, are speaking against the best interests of the takers.
The makers do not, in fact, want visitors to come out and spend their whole $100 in our stores, or roadside stands or flea market booths, just because that would make our days. Well, it would, of course. Days go by when we do not see a hundred-dollar bill. Oh this is sad. We love the sight of Benjamin Franklin's benevolent, un-handsome, greenish face. But actually we want you to buy, e.g., a doll dressed to match a children's book because you know a little girl who likes dolls and whom you'd like to interest in books, or a hand-sewn wallet because you want something to stop money sliding out of your pockets into seats, or a chunk of homemade fudge because you like fudge, and so on. Naturally the more you buy, the better we are pleased, but I don't know anyone in Gate City who is actually selling junk. (The village idiot who's flooding the market with "fleece" blankets is donating them, to the full-time professional "needers.")
Actually we like being a small town in a rural setting. The main reasons why you'd want to visit Gate City would be outside the city limits. People who don't come here to maintain their own homes and visit their own relatives, come here to camp in the woods, paddle on a clean, fresh river, and pick their own fruit on a farm. And you don't actually need to spend a lot of money to do that. Visitors can and should pay to ride the chair lift, swim in the nice safe pool, buy snacks, or rent boats on the Clinch River. If they prefer to bring their own boats and snacks, keep their faces out of the water, and walk on the trails, they can do that free of charge. Some pretty nice trails with lots of bird, flower, and leaf peeping potential are even wheelchair-accessible, too--free of charge. For people who are new to Washington and have not learned how to minimize spending on boring everyday things there, my town does offer a full weekend's worth of pure change-of-scene that won't cost anything beyond the rent of a vehicle you can "camp" in. At the Natural Tunnel Park, cabins with hot showers rent for $30 or $35 a night, plus $5 if you bring a dog.
However, here is a Top Ten List of things to shop for when you visit Gate City:
1. Handmade wooden furniture: Look for this in the Friday Market, but don't be surprised if you don't see any. The couple who make those "Amish-style" chairs, trunks, etc., bring out a truckload when the weather seems right.
2. Garden produce: Pick your own in season, buy from a roadside stand, or look in Friday Market, but be aware that the really fresh local produce is rarely sold to visitors (except zucchini, in some years, and occasionally tomatoes). Farmers who grow organic produce usually sell to short lists of close friends and relatives, then long lists of townsfolk, and only then in public places. For strawberries and blueberries, the long lists can be very long indeed. If people are willing to commit to hand-cultivating these crops, perhaps in time they'll be available to visitors. Much of what you buy even from farmers' stands is retailed from out of state and not organically grown. If the sign says "Mann Farms," it is local and fresh, though not 100% organic, and the quality is probably good. And if we can get a local ban on glyphosate spraying into effect, it will be REALLY good.
3. Homemade food: Well, duh, I am typing this in a cafe, what d'you expect? Mostly sweet baked goods, plus eggy things for breakfast, hot soups and sandwiches in winter, cold salads and sandwiches in summer, can be pre-ordered at the Family Bakery Cafe. Spicy Mexican meals and icy Mexican drinks are available at Molcajetes. Pies, fudge, and other homemade snacks are often sold in the Friday Market as well.
4. Hand-knitted blankets and winterwear: While selling those in the Internet Portal store last winter, I sold a few that were then displayed for resale in other stores. I don't display them in summer, but store them in town and can bring them out on request.
5. Hand-knitted or crocheted washcloths, towels, table covers, etc.: These used to be the specialty of a retired teacher (yes, one of mine), during her lifetime. A few of hers may or may not still be available at the Ivy Cottage, which was her store--if so, they may not be used but they're hardly "new." Others are now making them for sale at Roberts & Jones. I've made a few in each category.
6. Window treatments: If you want to reduce heating expenses in a hastily built Washington or suburban flat, consider a Window Blanket. (These were actually Grandma Bonnie Peters' idea, although if they're knitted they're almost certainly mine.) They're made to be hung over large, odd-shaped windows on cold nights, and can be stuffed with insulation. I also knit lacy curtains to hang in front of windows just for looks.
7. Dolls: I usually dress adult-or-older-child-shaped dolls made at a scale of 2 inches to 1 foot; can dress other kinds of dolls to order. Knitted doll outfits, made with scraps of craft yarn in shapes and colors that generally match a picture, cost $5. Sewn doll outfits, which can involve embroidery and tiny beads and so on, cost more.
8. Chickens or turkeys: If you want to inspect the bird before having it killed and cleaned...I've been pleased to see that the live birds sold in the Friday Market had a healthy, contented look, strolling around in roomy cages, sipping water, "talking and singing" to each other, until they were sold. I'm not so pleased to think about the fact that people who bought them didn't plan to make pets of them, because most of them would have made good pets. Chickens, anyway. Domestic turkeys have been selectively bred not to have enough brain to be made pets, as have some breeds of chickens; my point here is that the chickens I've seen were not those breeds. They were the kind that would have answered to names and followed people around the yard. Anyway, whatever your intentions, Gate City is a good place to buy live chickens and sometimes turkeys. People grew up thinking of these as companion animals and are likely to have led them out to graze in real grass, at least some of their days.
9. Eggs: Hens who have been reared as companions and led out to graze in real grass lay "country" eggs, with a firmer, darker-colored, more nutrient-rich yolk than supermarket eggs have. (I once heard someone say he preferred wimpy, pale-colored supermarket eggs. Pooh! Not only do those eggs contain more cholesterol and less beta-carotene, they also came out of sickly, unhappy hens, and they're likely to contain salmonella.) Buy directly from hen fanciers to be sure of getting fresh eggs.
10. Wallets and cell phone covers: I mention these because they're what I've seen for sale in Roberts & Jones. People who sew them could probably sew other things. Anyway, they're locally made by church ladies who want to be makers not takers, so that alone makes them nicer than the kind sold at Wal-Mart.
This is only a Top Ten List. I'm sitting at the cafe, and just as I got to ten locally produced things I've seen visitors buy, the part-time worker came in. She knows not to interrupt writers, so it's only the sight of her that reminds me that she's the daughter of a fairly well known painter. He's still alive, although retired, and would probably be chuffed if you arranged to look at some of his unsold paintings.
Then there's the knife maker, the T-shirt artist, and others who didn't feel able to commit to keeping the Internet Portal open, but they still live here and would bring out their products to show visitors who wanted to buy them. Sometimes they come to the Friday Market, sometimes not. Some of them tour a more upscale craft show circuit, some don't. Some of them have web sites, some don't. You just have to come out and shop.
(Currently featured on sale in Roberts & Jones. Johnny Cash and June Carter are gone, and the Carter Family Fold is...easier to get into than it used to be. But how could I mention visiting Gate City and not mention live, oldtime country music as performed by the Carters, Holston River Boys, Dwain Reed, Jim & Jesse, Mac Wiseman, Ralph Stanley, and other twentieth century legends? Most of our celebrity musicians are at best very old, but their former students are still here. If you're not in town in time to spend an evening at the Fold, which is technically in Hiltons, you're probably in time to visit Leonard's Pickin' Parlor, which is technically in Weber City...depending on the time and day you can buy acoustic instruments, have them repaired, sing along, or listen to the professional quality band that's formed in the store.)
If our elected officials and other government employees make a personal commitment to support the individual makers who don't want or need handouts, we could really cut the federal welfare system. More Americans would have taxable incomes, and feel better about having them. Only people who are genuinely disabled would need handouts--and the handout system could probably be trimmed down to the point that people would receive their disability pensions while they were in fact disabled. Oh wouldn't it be love-r-ly!
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