The price we pay to save a buck

I’d rather pay more to local shops than save in a Big Box

Feb 1

Some people have math anxiety. Not me. I get a case of nerves over sewing and all things related to bolts of cloth.

I owned a sewing machine once when I took an upholstery course. Threading it was a source of mystery. My older brother Tim, living with us while he recovered from shoulder surgery, could thread the machine for me with ease even with his arm in a sling. He was adept, remembering all the twists and turns from his long-ago work for sail makers, stitching main sails, spinnakers and storm jibs. As he explained patiently, I remained befuddled. After the course was over, the machine gathered dust. I gave it away.

Occasionally, my sewing anxiety morphs into something else. Choosing curtains, for example. I don’t know a valance from a pleat. Fortunately, most of my decisions involving interior decorating are long behind me. Until last week, that is, when my husband finished converting our former living room into a library.

“You pick out the curtains,” Pete said. “I’m a guy. I don’t know the first thing about that.”

Ha, I thought.

I knew I was on my own based on my recent Christmas shopping experience. For much of the last several years I, like at least some of the pandemic-beset nation, ordered nearly everything on the internet just to avoid getting sick. At one point, we even ordered a dishwasher and a freezer, online.

But by this past December, I was ready to shop like it was 2019. I looked forward to what I hoped would pass as a normal holiday shopping experience. But every time I went to a big store or a mall, the crowds were sparse, employees were in short supply and helpfulness nil. When I asked for something specific I was told, “We don’t keep everything in stock. You have to order that online.” Uh, thanks.

So, how was I supposed to figure out what to put on our windows, aside from blackout shades?

That’s when I found out that small business still lives. Shocking, I know. I noticed a small store in a plaza in a town, Colchester, about 10 miles away. “D&L Draperies,” the sign said. I lunged for it like a drowning woman flailing for a life preserver.

Inside, I entered a bygone era. The walls were covered with dozens of window treatments and, better yet, the store owner was behind the counter, ready to assuage my cluelessness with her 30-plus years of experience. With advice, I picked two different styles. “Don’t pay for anything yet,” the owner, Jan LaBella, said. “Just sign them out. Hang them up and see what you think.”

“Sign them out? Like a library book?” I said in disbelief. “How much of a deposit do you need?”

“No deposit,” LaBella replied. “I let people take things home based on a name and a phone number. Do you know, in 34 years I have been stung just once?”

Did I walk through a portal and step into the 1950s? As consumers, we have been practically trained to expect the vast emptiness, the isolation of a big-box shopping experience.

Yet shopping in chain stores is what I have been accustomed to my entire life. For example, when I was 5, in 1962, Target, KMart and Walmart all opened. Today, Walmart has well over 5,000 stores. KMart at its peak had 2,400, but now has just a few. Target has nearly 2,000.

During most of American history, corporations did not dominate most sectors of life. Sure, the railroads held sway for decades. Energy companies like Big oil were 19th and 20th century players, and still are. But retail was, for three-quarters of the 20th century, “a haven for small business,” wrote Stanley C. Hollander, a professor and author of an essay in a 1980 book, “Small Business in American Life.” Small shoe stores, clothing stores, what was once called a “five-and-dime store” abounded. Heck, even I remember taking shoes in need of repair to a cobbler in the 1990s. (Try to find one today). In 1972, “the 50 largest retail firms accounted for slightly less than 19 percent of all United States retail trade.” according to the book’s editor, economic historian Stuart Bruchey.

That wasn’t so long ago. LaBella and I ticked off small businesses we knew in the area that recently closed. I mentioned a nearby tractor business that sold to a chain a few weeks previously. An establishment in another town 20 miles away closed in November after 102 years in business. A jewelry store closed after being open for more than 50 years; the owner died and the family decided to shutter the shop.

Sometimes a business closure can’t be avoided. For smaller commercial enterprises, the stresses of the recent pandemic, what I call the Late, Great, Unpleasantness, are real. Many small businesses have struggled. One exception was a local dairy business that ended home delivery of milk in 2012. That changed overnight once the pandemic hit and most wanted to avoid stores. Mountain Dairy moved quickly to rehire retired milkmen (milkpersons?) and rev up mothballed delivery trucks. Dairy home delivery continues to bask in its newfound popularity.

But that’s the exception, not the rule.

“Because of covid and everyone’s love affair with the internet, we are losing small merchants, and that is the fabric of a small town,” LaBella said. I agreed. It’s the mom-and-pop stores – the ice cream stores, the restaurants, the little hardware stores where you can find anything, and, yes, the drapery stores, that make the difference.

I’ve looked for bargains my whole life, but there is always a price to be paid in saving money. Often it isn’t obvious. The Amazons of the world will not revive our downtowns. I would rather pay more to have more bustle on Main Street, see stores stay open that actually give service, and keep a few more of the little guys in business.

Otherwise, we’ll lose the very things that give our towns their unique qualities. And I might never have gotten help choosing curtains.