No Black Friday

Mom and Pop Shop Love for the Holidays and Every Day...

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I grew up in a suburb of Chicago with a town square flanked by shoulder-to-shoulder shops in brick and tudor. A fountain on one end, a Parthenon shaped department store on the other, a park with grass and benches, and a flagpole in-between. My goldfish met its maker in that fountain because I thought it a better life than the one he’d been living in a small bowl on my bedroom windowsill. I biked to that fountain every morning before school and met my best friend, and we’d sit on the side of it, eating donuts from the local bakery. I had a kiss or two in the dark at that fountain. I climbed that flagpole on a dare. I believed in the spirit of Christmas each December as I stood in that park, looking into the illumination of the crèche. We called it “Uptown” and it was an iconic yet controlled kingdom to us, the “Downtown” of Chicago being so vast and distant, thirty miles away. My house was close to Uptown, and after school every day, I walked my dog around its streets, memorizing every alleyway, every store window, smiling at the familiar faces of the shopkeepers who knew my family, our names, our stories.

In those days, many families had charge accounts at the stores. So sometimes, I’d get permission to go on a little shopping spree: stickers or pens at the stationary store, ribbons at the dimestore, a Bonnie Bell Lipsmacker at the drugstore, a bike bell at the sports store, seeds at the hardware store for my vegetable garden. Not all at once, of course. But here and there on a blue moon, when my parents were feeling extra generous. I’m not sure if I loved the actual item as much as the phrase, “Can you please charge that to our account?” It filled me with a deep sense of belonging to my town. Not just anyone could have a charge account. You had to be local. Very local. I liked being very local.

The shops Uptown, were like icons to us. We had nicknames for them, like old friends. Helanders was He’s. The Left Bank hot dog spot was Pasquesi’s, because that was the owner’s name, of course. Walgreens was Wag’s and that’s before it became a multi-mega drugstore. We grew up with the family. It was local. These shops were our meeting places. Our stomping ground. Our stage. When my father died, the local grocery store, Janowitz, gave us a cart full of groceries for free once they heard the news. These shops were the bones of our goings on as a community. Not because they represented greed or even commerce to us. They were the places where our mothers ran into each other and gossiped and put together a meal train for a family in need. They were the places where we flirted with boys, dreamed up birthday parties, found the right card for a grieving aunt, played truth or dare over an ice cream sundae. A lot of these shops are gone now. Now the shoe store is a Williams Sonoma. The corner store is a Talbots. The hardware store is long gone, a Home Depot beckoning in the not-so-distance. Every time I return to my hometown, I feel sad about how many of the Mom and Pop shops have been taken over by franchises. Lululemon. A Starbucks on steroids. The only thing that’s left is the sporting goods store where all of us got our first bikes. I always go in just to see if it smells the same. It does. The owner’s son is there. He always smiles and says, “Everyone comes in for a whiff when they’re in town.” The Lantern bar is the other establishment that’s still there. Still has the best burger in town. Some of our pictures are on the wall. Over the years, I have been proud of the way my hometown values its local shops and supports them, even with so much bright-light-big-city so close. But now there are so many fallen soldiers in the way of local, family-owned, commerce, and it saddens me. We belonged to those places. I don’t feel like I belong to my town square of origin anymore.

Somehow, I ended up living in, and belonging to, another small town— a mountain town in Montana. When I moved here thirty years ago, it was full of economic hardship. There are three blocks of Mom and Pop shops in our town. Over the years, I’ve watched as the shop owners of Central Ave. struggled to make ends meet and keep their doors open. I’ve known most of them the way I knew my hometown shop owners. I watched as they took their vision and made it a reality. They wore their pride because in our small mountain community, these shops hold deep importance. There is no option of city. People drive a long way to stock up on feed for their animals, paint for their barns, winter socks for their kids. Not long ago I was proud to say we didn’t have a Gap in the state of Montana. Or a Target, a Best Buy, a Home Depot, a Lowe’s, a Walmart, a Costco. That’s changed now. It’s here. Consumption Junction we call it. And it’s tried very hard to kill our local small businesses. Which is why I choose to do all my grocery shopping at the local health food store and other small markets, buy shoes and clothes at our local outfitters. And even though I’m not a big shopper just for shopping’s sake…from time-to-time I’ll walk Central Ave., and pop into those shops, usually just to have a look around and feel like I’m part of a town center like I did in my hometown. I’ll buy a little something to show my support. And I am filled with such warmth and yes, belonging, every time. Those shop owners have worked hard to keep their inventions alive.

Sure, there are new sorts of shops— shiny ones that announce “we are on the map.” (BTW: we’ve successfully kept Lululemon out!) But I go into those shinier shops too, because even though they don’t represent the sorts of shops I’ve known and loved for decades in this little town, these people are store owners with a vision too. These shops are products of small town dreams. There’s a bar in our town that’s full of all the shop signs that didn’t make it. Every shop owner in our town knows that if their vision doesn’t work, at least the sign will end up on the wall at the Northern. Which, like the bar that lives on in my suburban Chicago town, will also never die. And that’s because it’s as much about gathering as it is about beer. And all the signs on the walls make good stories, because people in a small town, at least our small town, love to tell stories, albeit sometimes stretched. And so what. We get lonely in these here hills.

I always say, “You can judge a town by its hardware store.” And in the last little while…our multi-generational hardware store…got bigger! (And they still have their old fashioned popcorn maker by the front door. You can’t go by that popcorn maker without filling up a bag to eat while you shop, no matter how much of a hurry you are in.) And during the height of the Pandemic…not one Mom and Pop shop closed. Not one. Any upstanding local that I know will always go to Nelson’s before heading down the highway to Consumption Junction. To me, that says a lot about where I’ve lived and raised my kids. And is part of why they have moved back. They don’t make ’em, (and keep ’em), like our town anymore. They just don’t. But our small mountain community ain’t for everyone. It’s hard-living all winter long. Days and days of gray skies. And often, smoky summers. Not a lot of local industry. Still, we thrive. And Central Ave. reminds us of that very fact.

Whether we like it or not, in the summer, our sidewalks are heavy-laden with tourists. But in the off seasons, when it empties out to locals only, sometimes I walk those blocks and have a scary flash that one day Central Ave. will be like a ghost town of the old West, tumbleweed and all, the bars surviving because people will always drink away their woe. The churches surviving because people will always need to pray in public, knowing they’re not alone. Or what if it goes the other way? What if all the Mom and Pop shops are lost to franchises that don’t really understand what our town is truly made of? I deeply (and a bit desperately) don’t want to lose out to franchises, and thus, to what binds a small town in the way of common space: kids riding bikes to the ice cream store, parents lingering over coffee at the local coffee roaster after school drop-off, the kind of place where you know you’re always going to run into someone you know at the market, buying broccoli, and have questions about how (insert family name) is doing. The kind of town where they wrap your Christmas gifts right there, and with loving smiles. The kind of town where you pop into the toy store just to remember what it was to take your kids there to buy their friends’ birthday presents, and the owners catch you lingering in the plastic horse section and shed a smile and a tear with you. They remember too. When I go into a local shop on a mission of nostalgia or just plain curiosity, I usually buy a little something as a way of saying, thank you. I can think of a handful of times when I’ve forgotten my purse and the shop owner said, “Just pay us next time. We know you’re good for it.” I like feeling “good for it.” One time, at the local gas station, the guy behind the counter, who calls me by my last name, said, “Hey, Munson. You like horses, yeah? I got you something.” And he produced a brown paper bag from behind the counter. It was a glass horse figurine. “Was in a little shop the other day and I thought of you.” I wept in gratitude, and yes, belonging. It’s been front-and-center on my nightstand for years. Thanks, Murray.

Sometimes, I admit…I have no other option but to go to a box store. I loathe it, avoid it, dread it…but sometimes have to succumb. Like when I’m looking for doorknobs. Or light fixtures. Or a rug. (Even though I always stop by Nelson’s first!) I muscle through the experience, trying to remember that I’m still supporting the locals who work at those stores. I admit it though: I drive through Consumption Junction and I picture/fantasize a time when the box store will die. When our greed for unnecessary plastic items will fade, if it hasn’t already devoured us. We’ll stop filling up our shopping carts until they are brimming over, when all we came for was…well, socks. And maybe things will return to the old ways. And people will live off the land. And buy only what they need and only when they can afford it. And barter for what they can’t afford. I picture a time when a person with sheep has profound power, shearing them and spinning their fleeces, and a person who knows how to work a forge is the reason why transportation is possible, horses needing shoes— a means of commerce, not just a pet or a creature of recreation. And the Farmer’s Market will be more than a sunny place to listen to a singer/songwriter and buy a hula hoop along with your Swiss chard. In fact, around here, farms are growing and thriving. Maybe we’re closer than we think to the old way of life.

There is a road here called Farm-to-Market. It’s a pretty Sunday drive. When I take that road, I think about how it once was a bloodline for this community. Blood sport. Many broken hearts along its fences. Countless dashed dreams and false hopes. The kind of road where you sort out what you’re going to say to your wife when you come back with a full cart, someone else’s tomato crop being what it was, and sauce to put up for winter. It’s not that I defy modern technology or progress or the possibilities of button pushing. It’s that I don’t trust us to know what to do with what we’ve created. I trust humility more than greed. And as much as I appreciate that I get welcomed into Costco and that I could get a 24 pack of gym socks for my kids and Swiss chard both, and still get back in time to pick them up from school, as much as I know that those are local people working those jobs, in honesty and humility with dreams of their own, sorting out their own stories to tell their spouses or loved ones…I want us to stop.

I want us to go to the local hardware store and eat a bag full of popcorn while we discuss paint color and drill bits, and talk weather while we do it. And what about that school bond and what about that new city councilperson? I want us to drop our spare change into the Mason jar to help with the middle school teacher who has Leukemia. I want us to go slowly again. I want us to wonder about each other. I want us to ask, “How’s business?” and hear that it picked up this October, which is usually a slow time— better than last year. To nod and smile at that good news and feel like we’re going to be okay. We won’t lose our hats along with our dreams.

This holiday season, I want us to stop. Not take our turkey hangovers to the early morning, standing at a Target ready to run in like monkeys on a zoo break. I want us to continue the gratitude of the day before. I want us to sleep in and maybe take a walk into town later to see what the local shops have for sale. I want us to have those conversations. I want us to go Uptown instead of Downtown, and especially I want us to steer clear of Consumption Junction. Even if it costs a bit more. Even if it is a little less shiny. Even if it means we buy less, or go to three stores to find that one thing our kid asked for. I want us to stroll down Central Avenue. And say “hi” to each other. Maybe even stop and have a surprise conversation full of more questions than answers. Maybe even ending with a hug or a long-called-for, and unexpected, handshake. I want us to be thankful for our town centers, and our backyard businesses, and see ourselves in the reflection of their holiday windows.

Here’s to Main St. everywhere! Happy Holidays.

Truly,

Laura

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