Buy or die

Carson Arthur recently wrote a brilliant piece about the importance of buying local. I can’t top that, but I can expand on that. I won’t go into how we historically grew as a County by relying on each other. I’ve written tons on that, to no avail.

Business is hurting in the County, and I’d like to talk about that.

THE COVID EFFECT
There was a time when all the stores were closed. A few carried on, as long as you wore a mask and a hazmat suit while grocery shopping, and followed the arrows on the floor to tell you which aisles were acceptable for you and your cart. As thoughtful human beings, we bought up every roll of toilet paper and pack of bottled water in the County, and most of the good potato chips, leaving behind the weird-flavoured ones.

I know you don’t want to revisit this ugly era—especially if you ran out of toilet paper, and had to find a ‘dealer’ on the street at midnight to supply you with Charmin.

The point here is this: Covid disrupted our buying habits. Would have been okay if Covid lasted a couple of months, but no. So, like the hunters and foragers of our Neanderthal ancestors, we looked elsewhere. And we found people who had tons of stuff to sell us, and they didn’t even have an actual store!

Amazon. So much in the right place at the right time. And, man, did they kill it! People who wanted to buy went crazy! And for good reason. No going to the local store with a mask and hand wipes, following the arrows behind a guy who was coughing in his mask, and standing in the one-way aisle behind a woman who could not decide between Coco- Puffs and Coco-Puffs with Marshmallow Bits. And you can’t back out, because the aisles have one-way arrows!

So, yes, I see how this happened.

WHAT I DON’T UNDERSTAND …
When the Covid Days officially ended, we did not change. Amazon was like a drug. Why go out where danger lies, why not just order it online? And so we did, and continue to do. Even though we can now leave our homes, mask-free, and just go … shopping.

My daughter ordered shoes through Amazon, and this freaked me out. “Shoes? You need to try on shoes and go, ‘These shoes are comfortable, I will buy them’.”

She said, “But they have a return policy if the shoes don’t fit.” This still made no sense to me. Order another pair in a different size? Why not just go to a shoe store, or even Walmart, and buy the right size? I don’t get it. Which brings me to:

WALMART
Walmart does not have everything Amazon has. If you google Amazon and ask for aardvark meat, lightly seasoned, you will get a hit. Still, Walmart has everything an average family needs, and they have regular price drops on a pile of things you don’t need.

What they do have is acres of stuff, sorted according to no known connection between what you want, and where it is. There are some things Walmart has that I can’t find anywhere else. [As a County Boy, I wear a disguise when I go to Walmart, in case a local spots me and turns me in. It’s just a black mustache, on top of my existing mustache, and a panama hat so I look Mexican. “Dondes estes los ibuprofens?”]

By the way, if you suffer from depression and low self-esteem, go to Walmart and join the line with the customers. You’ll feel much better about yourself.

The thing about Walmart is that you need to brace yourself for a quarter-mile walk. I look at my list: I need a pillow; that’s about half a mile over there. I need ibuprofen, it’s nearby, oops, they don’t carry the cheap Equate ibuprofen anymore, which is way better than Advil, which is offered at twice the price.

I rolled an empty cart through checkout, and went to Giant Tiger in Picton.

THIS IS A MATTER OF PERCEPTION
buy local because it’s easy. They have what I want. I get what I want. I’m a simple man, and I don’t need to walk a hundred miles to save a buck. Why expend the energy and the gas money, when a quick trip to our local spot does the trick. It isn’t a matter of money, it’s a state of mind.

I don’t know if you think like me, but I’ve always believed the people who do the work should get the money. This is why I buy County Cider on a trip to Waupoos. I buy my Cressy Mustard while I’m there. I’m not a fan of wine, but I like Sandbanks Dunes. I buy it from them. I could buy either of them from LCBO or other outlets, but I know, from my own business, the maximum profit to them is that I buy from the source.

UNTIL IT’S GONE
You know the Joni Mitchell lyric: “Don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.” Well, here we are. We’ve seen many changes in the County, and probably more to come. It seems to me, there’s little that we can keep, as the steamroller of progress rolls on.

Businesses rise and fall for various reasons over the years, but one thing has always held true, despite the chaos of impending progress: The County is strong because of its independent businesses. It will not be stronger with the addition of thousands of new homeowners. It remains that our strength is in our local businesses. Not big and fancy. Not the stuff Toronto papers like to rave about. Not just the amazing successes like Base31.

But just our places. The places where we shop. The places we count on. I always cite CF Evans Lumber. I show them my plan, they fix it, they deliver to my property. This is what County businesses do. Just like I do in mine.

It’s not just a matter of ordering stuff from some invisible Internet entity and having it delivered. It’s the process of engaging, discussing, learning. Talking back and forth.

Amazon doesn’t do that. Walmart doesn’t do that. I gave up my membership in Costco because I did not have a family of 25 people who required a skid of toilet paper and another skid of corn flakes each week.

All I needed was right here. Walk into Walmart and, if you can find someone, ask them: “This is what I’m looking for.” You will get, “That might be on Aisle 25, but I’m not sure where that is.”

Local business is built on people. To me, the big deal is: People you can talk to. Amazon got that? Walmart got that?

SHAKE IT OFF
Lose your easy way of doing things with a few keyboard strokes from your comfy chair. Covid Days are over. Get out and do what we used to do: Just go shopping. Locally. Not Walmart … there’s no stimulating conversation to be found there. It’s all here. Use it. Enjoy it. While it lasts. When you ask yourself: “Whatever happened to …?” You are the answer.

Steve Campbell is taking a short hiatus, and will return sometime, before the year 2030.

countymag@bellnet.ca