[Prizing local restaurants and community, avoiding the processed poisons that chains call “food,” and watching mammoth corporations and the Internet destroy community shops reminds me of this (fictional) editorial about a citizen’s death in April, 1900. Let’s prize what little we retain of community!]
We wish to express our personal sympathy to the family of the late Millard Halvorsen and also our fears for the future of a way of life he exemplified.
Mr. Halvorsen (who would laugh at being called anything but “Mills”) owned a general store among the farms near Duckton. Such stores are essential to the lives of nearby residents, while most of us rush past without noticing them – unless we suddenly need a new wheel or warmer gloves.
Such stores may not long outlive Mills. Enabled byRural Free Delivery, the huge mail-order houses have the little general stores on the ropes – or perhaps flat on their backs on the canvas, with a referee shouting numbers.
Mills was a big, strong Swedish man with a friendly warmth and a keen sense of right and wrong, as well as strong arms, a sun-reddened face, and a broad forehead encumbered by less and less hair each year. We shared the youthful experience of War – and the lifelong bond GAR veterans share.
Not often enough, I sat watching Mills dispense advice as he dispensed sugar or salt from one of the big barrels. Carefully weighing the desired quantity, he would speak warmly to a child who felt ignored by his parents or listen patiently to a woman whose husband was not all he might have been.
His store held almost everything a farm family could have wanted – from pins to plows, and drugs to dairy products. Salt by the barrel for the use of cattle and for salting their meat later on. Green coffee for those who preferred to parch and grind it themselves. Siftings of broken tea leaves for fifteen cents.
Sears Roebuck isn’t likely to sit up nights worrying with a customer over his seriously ill child, nor will Montgomery Ward accept eggs in place of dollars when necessary.
He had a back room the length of the store filled with plows and harnesses, hoes, axes, coal oil. If he didn’t have what someone needed, he’d bust his backside to have it the next time.
Following time-honored custom, his store was also a gathering place for folks to visit and gossip. He claimed a person could get more news in an hour there than from a month of this newspaper. Though I never admitted it to him, he was surely right.
We understand the excitement of devouring the spring and fall catalogues when they arrive, well-illustrated with images of plows and tools, sleds and skates, and dishes and new clothing styles, to whet the appetite of each family-member for more THINGS. And in the very latest styles. We understand the lure of low prices.
But Sears won’t carry a neighbor on credit if he’s lost his job or the elements destroyed his crop this season. You won’t be writing “Montgomery Ward” down for $100 on the subscription list for church repairs or a new town hall. Seegle Cooper won’t help pay the preacher’s or teacher’s salary or feed a hungry widow and her kids.
Perhaps the proverbial silver lining today is that Mills won’t have to witness the end of that story.
– 30 –
[The above column appeared Sunday, 14 July, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website and on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[I hope the 1900 Gazette editorial both offers a glimpse into a past we left far behind us and enhances our perspective on our contemporary world and conduct. I wrote it as part of a long piece of fiction, or, more precisely, had fiery old Addison Martin write it, as part of a bygone time in our country. But, tinkering with it recently, it again seemed relevant to contemporary life, too. Addison (who dies about four years after the editorial) and I are both vigorous old men watching our world both grow and deteriorate. As I read about some distant grocery chains planning to transform Albertsons into a cheaper wholesale sort of place that will be less satisfying to customers (while I patronize Toucan more often – and Toucan's advertising on our community radio station echoes the sorts of community contributions from local businesses that Addison describes), and watch “Dutch Brothers” and other characterless, cookie-cutter drive-by coffee places spring up, but drink my coffee at Milagro, Nessa’s, Grounded, The Bean and other local places that are more interesting and welcoming, offer better coffee, and contribute to our community, . . . I thought of Addison’s complaints.]
[A friend emailed me this morning, “Thanks, Peter, for the interesting obituary ‘rerun’. It reminded me of Lake and Chaffee counties in Colorado in the 50s. My first jobs were working for people I'd known as a child, when my parents were their customers. People I kept in touch with until they died. That's where I learned what a community was.” ]
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