“You May Quote Me”

No peepers peeping yet on Tuesday....

The American spring is by no means so agreeable as the American autumn; both move with faultering step, and slow; but this lingering pace, which is delicious in autumn, is most tormenting in the spring. In the one case you are about to part with a friend, who is becoming more gentle and agreeable at every step, and such steps can hardly be made too slowly; but in the other you have been shut up with black frost and biting blasts, and where your best consolation was being smoke-dried.

 

-      Fanny Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans

 

Ah, spring, you are such a tease!

The sun shone in Leelanau on Easter! All day long! We couldn’t call it a warm day, but it was lovely. Even though the daffodils hadn’t opened yet, the little blue squills were cheery in the sunlight.

Monday was a day of rain. Shrug! “April showers”— you know the rest. On that rainy day I drove south of Traverse City on an errand that had been postponed long enough but on the way stopped at a thrift shop to look through music CDs for something to combat the dreariness of the day and give me voices in the car that were not battering me with current events. What I found was the original cast recording of “The Phantom of the Opera.” It more than fulfilled my requirements: I was in another world all afternoon! The mood of the rain … memories along every mile of road … images of the Paris Opera … the lyrics and the music!!! “Wishing I could hear your voice again….” Oh, yes! And, of course, "The Music of the Night"! I was ecstatic and miserable and floating on air and drowned in sorrow. When I got home, I told Sunny, “I’ve been breaking my heart in Paris. It will take me a while to come back to you.”

From the previous century's bulbs 

Tuesday the sun returned, and the “wild” daffodils at my place began to open (the ones that I planted not quite ready but getting close), and with another day of sun in the forecast, I hung towels out on the line. Sunny and I played in the yard, I worked at outdoor tasks, and we made it to the dog park and met with friends there. 

No more snow!!! Airborne puppy!

Mrs. Trollope said it first.

The passage quoted at the beginning of today’s post is the first paragraph of Chapter XIV in Mrs. Trollope’s book (I call her “Mrs. Trollope” because that’s how she was referred to at the time her book made such a sensation), and I used it today because it captures so well the feelings of most of my fellow northern Michigan residents. But naturally, most of the book is given over to subjects other than climate and weather. It was after reading both the Rev. Isaac Fidler’s and James Stuart, Esquire’s accounts of visiting the young United States, comparing them, and musing over the difference in the two gentlemen’s impressions, that I decided the time had come for me to read the famous account, read by both Fidler and Stuart, of American life written by Englishwoman Frances Trollope, whose visit began in the last days of 1828 and extended into 1832. 

 

Look again at those dates above. Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave Beaumont made their nine-month visit to “America” (i.e., the United States of) in 1831-32, so their time here would have overlapped with that of Mrs. Trollope, but I can find no evidence that the three ever met. The latter expressly says in the preface to her book (speaking of herself in the first person in the preface but in the first person in the main text):

 

She leaves to abler pens the more ambitious task of commenting on the democratic form of the American government; while, by describing, faithfully, the daily aspect of ordinary life, she has endeavored to shew how greatly the advantage is on the side of those who are governed by the few, instead of the many.

 

In other words, she isn’t going to get into politics, but it’s obvious to her, after over three years in the U.S. that England, with its monarch and aristocracy and established national Church, has the better form of government for all concerned. That, of course, is her opinion. Her observations and the conversations she committed to paper as quickly as possible so as not to lose either the words or the tone—those cannot be as easily dismissed as her opinions, if one does not share or appreciate them. 

 

Fidler and Stuart, men, along with Monsieur de Tocqueville, focusing on politics, had little to say of the life of American women, and Fanny Trollope gives detailed observations on that topic. 

 

In general, she sees the two sexes mixing very rarely. In public gatherings (mostly religious but occasionally a lecture), the norm is for men and women to sit separately. Men do their drinking at night, away from home, in places where women are not welcome (probably not allowed), and even in the home, the midday dinner meal lasts only about ten minutes, with husband and wife separating as soon as they leave the table, while at breakfast the husband reads his newspaper until he leaves for his office or shop. Boarding house meals are similarly silent and rushed.

 

As dancing and theatre-going are mostly out of bounds for 1830s Americans, young people meet at preachings or are introduced in the homes of friends. “Refined” young American ladies in this time period would never dream of allowing so much as an elbow to come into contact with any part of the body of a man or boy at a dinner table or on a staircase! When Fanny proposed a “pic-nic,” she was advised by a very proper young lady that it would be very improper for men and women to sit together on the ground. In cities, there are occasional balls. When refreshments are offered, men and women go to separate rooms. (How, though, I wonder, did they dance without touching?)

 

Mrs. Trollope gives it as her opinion that American manners would be much improved if there were more mixing of ladies and gentlemen. For one thing, she suspects the men would do much less chewing of tobacco and spitting on the floor, which was one of her constant complaints. This spitting occurred even in the House of Representatives, although the Senate, she allowed, was more dignified: its members sat up straight, rather than lounging and putting up their feet, and there was very little spitting. From the gallery, she was unable to hear much of the discussion on the floor.

 

Everywhere in the country, however, she found conversation among men almost exclusively political, while the women, in their limited sphere, gossiped among themselves and spoke of dress. Mrs. Trollope was frequently bored to tears and wondered how the women could stand the tedium of their lives. She hoped to find literary conversation in her American travels, but this hope was dashed again and again. Americans of the merchant class were not conversant even with Shakespeare and could hardly imagine they were missing anything. Their ambition was all financial, getting ahead the focus and aim of their lives.

 

Despite fierce denials met with in the United States, and despite James Stuart’s suspicion that Mrs. Trollope exaggerated or invented much of what she reported, I found her observations quite believable and calmly expressed. As to the narrow American focus on getting ahead financially, this is confirmed in de Tocqueville’s writings. Mrs. Trollope finds confirmation of her impression given by an Englishman she met.

I heard an Englishman … declare that in following, in meeting, or in overtaking in the street, on the road, or in the field, at the theatre, the coffeehouse, or at home, he had never heard Americans conversing [this would be American men] without the word DOLLAR being pronounced between them. Such unity of purpose, such sympathy of feeling, can, I believe, be found nowhere else, except, perhaps, in an ants’ nest.

I have read elsewhere (perhaps in Dickens?) about the constant spitting of chewing tobacco and the haste with which Americans rapidly gulped down meals in silence. Could Mrs. Trollope return today, she would find Americans enjoying more leisurely meals but snacking and sipping and gulping throughout the day, too. She would find conversation of men and women to include lively discussion of professional sports, books, films, and more, along with politics and financial matters. 

 

Our own pictures of American life in that period, whether in the North or the South, in cities or plantations or on the frontier, is generally oversimplified to the point of falsehood. Seeing our country not through history textbooks or hagiographies of famous men but through the eyes of visitors from overseas, making contemporary observations firsthand, makes for eye-opening reading. And if those observers sometimes disagree on specifics, don’t we do the same now, in the present? It’s a reason not to read only one account and think you have gotten a complete picture.

 

***

 

Well! After writing the paragraph above, I picked up the book again to continue my reading, and what did I come upon?

 

While reading and transcribing my notes, I underwent a strict self-examination. I passed in review all I had seen, all I had felt, and scrupulously challenged every expression of disapprobation; the result was, that I omitted in transcription much that I had written, as containing unnecessary details of things which had displeased me; yet, as I did so, I felt strongly that there was no exaggeration in them; but such details, though true, might be ill-natured, and I retained no more than were necessary to convey the general impressions I received.

 

Further along, near the end of her book, she devotes an entire chapter to the American reception of another English visitor’s writings following his visit to the U.S. Travels in North America, by Captain Basil Hall, was met with exactly the kind of angry denial that was to greet Mrs. Trollope’s own work, although when she finally procured her own copy of his Travels, she found that this visitor of goodwill ”earnestly sought out things to admire and commend” in America.

When he praises, it is with evident pleasure, and when he finds fault, it is with evident reluctance and restraint….

Both Captain Hall and Mrs. Trollope (and the captain had traveled all over the world) found it more difficult to be understood by Americans than by men and women of any other nation, which Mrs. T imputed to the exceedingly thin skin of Americans, who wanted to hear nothing but praise. I do think we have improved in this regard since the 1830s and realize that our way of life is not perfect.

The subject was metaphor, the teacher said.

 

Here is one of those silly, unimportant little issues that turn me unreasonably peevish. I was reading a book review online, and the writer of the review, a teacher of writing, praised the book author’s use of metaphor, proceeding to give half a dozen examples—all of which were similes, not metaphors! This would probably not matter to me at all, except that I wrote my doctoral dissertation on theories of metaphor, and metaphor is a puzzle for those who wrestle with literal meaning. Simile is no problem. Something is like something else. Fill in ‘something’ and ‘something’ with two different things, and you’ve got a simile. A metaphor, on the other hand, says that the first something is the second something. 

 

“My love is like a red, red rose.” Fine.

 

“Juliet is the sun.” A different kettle of fish!

 

Simile, I’m thinking, is a pretty easy case to make, because, at least for a philosopher, any two things are alike in some way or other, however remote. Persuading someone of identity, merely by stating it, requires a skillful writer and a reader who trusts that writer. 

 

At least, so seems to me. Your thoughts?

Blue sky over blue water

REMINDER --

Once There Came Two Englishmen

First, The Lo-o-o-ong Birthday!

 

Before beginning with the Englishmen, I want to note that the birthday I was so reluctant to welcome stretched out to about two weeks, from the first early package in the mail to the last birthday dinner, at which my hostess provided me with my very first experience of the famous Sanders Bumpy Cake from Detroit! I had heard of it but had never seen, let alone tasted, one before. What a treat!

The beautiful cyclamen above, my favorite hothouse plant of early spring, had better be my last birthday gift this year, but could anything be lovelier?

 

And Now, Two Englishmen in Pre-Civil War America

 

Observations on Professions, Literature, Manners, and Emigration, in the United States and Canada, Made During a Residence There in 1832, by the Rev. Isaac Fidler (NY: J. & J. Harper, 1833)

 

Three Years in North America, Vol. II (from the second London edition), by James Stuart, Esq. (NY: J. & Harper, 1833)

 

Arriving in New York in December of 1831, after seven weeks at sea, Rev. Isaac Fidler reports that he found lodging for himself, his wife, two children, and a servant lodgings in a boarding house for $21 a week, water and three meals a day included. They subsequently moved into an unfurnished apartment, dismayed at the cost (more than a furnished flat at home, the author tells us), as an entire house, which would have been their preference, was far beyond their means, even after the servant left them for better wages with an American family.

Like so many others, Rev. Fidler’s reasons came to America with the hope of improving his situation in life. 

 

Educated for the church, but destitute of interest or patronage, I remained a mere teacher at home, with little to encourage my ambition….

 

He had hopes of finding employment in an Episcopal church in the United States. When disappointed here, as he had been in England, Fidler tried his luck in Canada, but Mrs. Fidler did not care for that country, and so back to England the family went, having spent altogether less than a year in North America.

 

James Stuart, on the other hand, as indicated in his book’s title, was here for three years, his travels were much more extensive, and, as a man of apparently independent means, he was at leisure to look more carefully into the regions through which he traveled. (Stuart, actually a Scot, was married but childless; if his wife accompanied him to America, she makes no appearance in his book.) Despite a background in law, Stuart had been embroiled in more than one controversy in England that led to duels. He seems, however, to have passed his visit to our shores peaceably. 

Both Fidler and Stuart note American shrewdness and fixation with finances. Both also read Mrs. Trollope’s popular book, Domestic Manners of the Americans, before undertaking their stateside visits. Fidler, who also read Stuart’s book before publishing his own, was convinced of the absolute truth of Mrs. Trollope’s negative stories and hoped Americans would take her lessons to heart and improve themselves. Americans, for their part, denied the Trollope stories, and some American booksellers refused to carry her book—which only persuaded Fidler that the stories must be true, “as they always denounce as false whatever truth offends them.” (Thus claims of either “Guilty” and “Not Guilty” indicate guilt, as Fidler sees it here. Interesting.)

 

Stuart’s opinion, happily, was otherwise. He spent much longer in North America, traveled to every part of the country, and spoke with Americans from all walks of life, while Fidler concentrated on those who had been born in England and had emigrated as adults. Stuart also visited every denomination of church and attended at least one camp meeting (it was apparently a single camp meeting that Mrs. Trollope had painted in lurid terms), and he saw no such excesses of lewd behavior as she had reported. 

 

(Frances Milton Trollope was the mother of the English novelist, Anthony Trollope. When the latter traveled to the States himself—the northern states, at least, during the Civil War—he was grateful to be received hospitably, given his mother’s harsh published views.)

 

Stuart reported favorably on American cuisine (e.g., judging American canvasback duck as tasty as Scotch grouse) and gave fascinating details of the period’s modes of travel.

 

…The river was hard frozen, and we expected to cross on the ice; but the passage of the mails on the ice is, it seems, prohibited by the rules of the post-office of this country; and persons are employed to keep an open course for the small rowing boats, in which the mails are transported. We embarked and were pushed forward by three men, who propelled the boat by long poles shod with iron….

 

Fidler’s American travels seem to have been restricted to New York (city and state), New Jersey, and Boston, Massachusetts. He noted that Americans were “prejudiced” against British aristocracy, and he considered most American writing to “exhibit a curious medley of prejudice, ignorance, and bombast.” All of North America, in fact, struck him as crude and unrefined.

 

Fidler, not having traveled in the South, did not give an opinion on slavery but did note:

 

In New-York no white person will sit down to eat at the same table with a coloured person, nor associate in same company. … I talked with several coloured people [in Canada], and always found them, in conversation, rational and sensible.

 

He spoke apparently at length with one “coloured” woman while briefly attached to a church in Canada.

 

I encouraged her to join our Sunday school, which she did a few times; but had not acquired ability to read, before she left the neighborhood. Her husband had been a slave in the States, and had made a premature [sic] liberation of himself by crossing the boundary line. Yet he could not gain a living by his skill and labor. He was a helpless and dependent creature. I perceived the necessity of conveying useful instruction to people inured to slavery, before emancipation and the rights of freedom are bestowed. Liberty to the captive is assuredly no blessing, where this had not been previously provided. 

 

(Liberty no blessing? That, of course, was the English clergyman’s view, not an opinion given by the formerly enslaved man, whose “premature liberation” of himself would seem to indicate that he preferred freedom, despite its difficulties.) 

 

Fidler spent much more of his North American time in Canada than in the U.S. As a Church of England clergyman, he found Canada’s Anglican religious observances congenial and would have been happy to settle there permanently, had his wife been so inclined. As for religion in America, he considered Methodist to be “bigots” and expected that in time the Episcopal church would become the national church of the United States, but he had not attended the meeting of Congress that Stuart did, or he might not have made such a prediction. [See my discussion in this post, under the section “Reading the Past,” for that background.]

 

Stuart traveled extensively in the antebellum South, as well as west to St. Louis, and thus had more to say about America’s “peculiar institution” (slavery) than Fidler. In Charleston, for example, he noted his landlady 

 

… give a young man, a servant, such a blow behind the ear as made him reel, and I afterward found that it was her daily and hourly practice to beat her servants, male and female, either with her fist, or with a thong made of cowhide.

 

He quotes another writer telling a story a serving girl in the same landlady’s establishment, punished by “twenty-six lashes inflicted … with a cow-hide” while another “young negro slave who waited in the house” had to stand by and count the lashes. Nor was this the end of the girl’s punishment, as the Frenchman she had defended herself against complained to the police, had her arrested, and she was then whipped again “in his presence.”

 

“I regret that I did not take a note of this miscreant’s name, in order that I might give his disgraceful conduct its merited publicity.”

 

Note that the unnamed “miscreant,” quite rightly, is the Frenchman, not the punished serving girl.

 

Both men frequently note prices, Stuart going far beyond Fidler in that regard, paying attention to commodity markets and the resources of different regions, as well as personal finances. At one point he makes the acquaintance of a fellow Scot in Illinois, who had first settled in New York but then been tempted further west by newspaper stories describing prairie land in Illinois.

 

He therefore came directly here from New-York, and procured 500 acres of the very best land in the state, as he thinks, of rich soil from three to four feet deep. It produces from thirty to forty-five bushels of wheat, and excellent corn and oats in rotation. It would do it injury to give it manure. The land is so easily ploughed, that a two-horse plough ploughs two and a half acres per day. There is never any want of a market. Everything is bought by the merchants for New-Orleans, or for Galena, where a vast number of workmen are congregated, who are employed in the lead mines on the north-western parts of the state. There is also a considerable demand for cattle for new settlers. Cattle are allowed to run out on the prairie during the whole winter….

 

Returning to the parson: Except for his lack of satisfaction and gratitude, Fidler’s style of writing reminds me of Mr. Collins (a fictional reverend) in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, as he exhibits the same overly conscious sense of social hierarchy as did the clergyman in the novel and similarly preens himself on his own judgment. Noting in his book’s preface that he has done all he could to avoid repeating anything Mrs. Trollope “had already said in a very popular and attractive style” and anything in Mr. Stuart’s book (the style and content of which he passed over in silence), Fidler writes of his own authorship in the third person: 

 

He flatters himself, therefore … that those who have read the above works may yet peruse his with some advantage.

 

Oh, yes, the advantageous perusal! 

 

Ah, but now, my own confession! It is impossible for me to read Fidler objectively, since the 19^th-century reader who once possessed the copy now mine added extensive marginalia, in soft pencil, from beginning to end of the narrative. At one point early on, that reader noted “True” in the margin, but more often, as he got deeper into the book, he was writing the word “Lie” “You lie!” or even, once, “Big Lie.” 

Here the long-ago reader remarked to the author, "You old Sponge."

I found the entertainment value increasing with longer marginal notions. Here are a few samples:

 

      “Old sour Crout”

      “Fiddler Diddaler”

      “Charitable Parson Fiddler”

      “Fiddle it off, Parson”

      “You lie, Parson”

      “Quarrelling Parson Fiddler”

      “Fidgetty Old Mrs. Fiddler” [She was never satisfied, according to her husband.]

      “Oh you old humbug”

 

The anonymous reader with his pencil even takes leave of the author on the last page of the book with “the hopes of the Reader that you will never return here” and makes reference to the writer’s “amiable spouse” and the writer’s own “amiable, candid disposition” with obvious sarcasm. I must say, it was fun sharing my reading with Anonymous from almost 200 years ago! Fidler alone would have been far too solemn!

Back to the Present?

 

One reason I have shared these two books today, other than having made extensive notes on them months ago, is to avoid discussion of current events. My head is not in the sand, never fear (though as often as possible I put my mind “somewhere else” at bedtime), but on Sundays now I am staying resolutely offline and away from the news, taking the day to restore my spirit. And although planting anything outdoors this early would be premature—no wild leeks poking up in the woods yet, no peepers peeping in the ponds—it feels good to rake the yard and to spend time at the dog park with Sunny and her friends. Small beginnings of the young season, too, are to be found, for those with searching eyes. Whatever transpires in the summer to come, right now I am grateful to be granted another spring.

Cattle Come Calling

The country at large was focused on the Super Bowl as the weekend approached, but one little winter household in the ghost town of Dos Cabezas, Arizona, could not have been less interested in sports. We were absorbed by a very different event, an everyday local occurrence out here in open range country but altogether new to us. We’d been told it would happen. We’d looked for it to happen. And at last, they came – the “cows.”

In fact, a couple of them had arrived in our front yard the night before the morning crowd assembled down in the wash. I’d gone out to the car after dark to retrieve a map from the car and heard a rustling nearby when, turning, I was surprised by a very large bovine face not 20 feet from me. Yikes! And there was another one over by the other open gate! Not that closed gates would have changed anything. There are no fences around the yard, only a couple of gates across the part of the yard used for driving in and out. Here in open range country, if you want to keep cattle off your private land, it’s your responsibility to put up the fences to exclude them.

The next day when I investigated in front of the house where the cows had been, it looked like someone – something – had been chewing on the big, fleshy leaves of an old century plant. For the moisture, perhaps? No significant rain had fallen for quite a while. In days following the cows’ visit, we had over 48 hours of rain, a slow, grey, sometimes mizzling, sometimes pounding, long-drawn-out, Michigan-style soaker, but that’s another story, and while ranchers here welcomed the rain, the cows’ visit was more interesting to someone from Michigan, to whom rain is an old, familiar story.

Given my after-dark encounter, it wasn’t a complete surprise to see big animals grazing behind the cabin the next morning. Sarah, though (always on a leash for that first and last sortie of each day, leashless for the adventures in between), was somewhat startled and thoroughly amazed. Sarah barked! Anyone who knows Sarah knows that she almost never barks. She is, however, always alert to changes in her surroundings, and this was a big one, something completely new in her experience. “Never mind,” I told her. “They belong here. You are the interloper!” But, eyes fixed on the big, strange animals nearby, she could hardly attend to her own dog business, so I took her around front, where she finally peed, and then, there at the gate where the cow had been the night before, her eager little black nose worked the ground over to a fare-thee-well. This, she was clearly thinking, is what I call news!

Although they are all called “cows” out here, most of the open range grazers are steers. They come in all breeds, colors, and sizes. Some have horns. Most seem to be very curious, almost as curious as a dog seeing them up close for the first time.

After our exciting expedition up into the nearby Chiricahuas the other day, I’d gotten from the library and read through a little nature memoir, The Chiricahua Mountains, by Weldon F. Heald. One interesting passage I read aloud to David, to fix it in our minds so that neither of us would make a terrible regional faux pas.

It’s embarrassing, if not downright impertinent, to ask a rancher how many head he runs. That’s similar to inquiring about his bank balance. This was inevitably the first question our friends put to us at the Flying H, and we would answer vaguely, “Oh, quite a few.” Then sometimes I parried the query by saying that I wore the biggest Stetson and had the smallest herd of any rancher at Harold Thurber’s annual cattle sale and barbecue.

Without reading this bit of regional etiquette advice, I wouldn’t have thought of the question in that light and might well have asked it. Saved by a book! And when the author explains, I understand the reasoning, too. In my bookstore back in northern Michigan, I’ve parried plenty of impertinently curious questions over the years. Even when merely people ask anxiously if the bookstore is “doing all right,” I’ve got my answer ready: “Over 20 years in business without a trust fund,” I tell them. “It has to pay its own way, or it wouldn’t survive.”

What question might be appropriate to put to a rancher? David wondered about asking how many acres a ranch might contain, but I thought that inquiry would be just as unwelcome. For one thing, it’s similar to asking how many cows, in that it asks, “How wealthy are you?” Besides, most ranchers don’t own more than a small fraction of the land on which they run cattle. The larger part is Bureau of Land Management land, leased by the year-- leases, however, passing down through the generations like land, which explains why ranchers usually feel the land is theirs and resent having to deal annually with the BLM.

With all this new information coming at me, including reading, with David, The Story of Dos Cabezas, by Phyllis de la Garza, and Basin and Range, by John McPhee, is it any wonder I’ve taken up a more familiar book the last few nights for my bedtime reading? But Mma Ramotswe of the Ladies’ No. 1 Detective Agency, too, owned cattle, inherited from her father, far off in Botswana where cattle equal wealth. There is no escaping the “cows,” it seems, and that’s all right by me.

Turn Back! This Way Lies Madness!

View from my bookstore counter

I’ve gotten into the habit this summer of telling people when they bring their chosen books to the counter, sometimes even before I start writing up the sale (if they’ve got a big stack or an expensive book), “I only take cash or check. No cards.” Better to let them know right away, up front—in case they missed the little sign on the front door, which is my early warning system. You might be surprised how seldom the no-cards reality presents an insurmountable problem. Someone will turn to a friend or a spouse and say, “Do you have cash?” or ask me for the location of the nearest ATM, or they’ll get out a checkbook or go into their secret, hidden cash stash. I’ve found that since I’ve become more up-front about what I accept for payment, I’m more relaxed, and my customers take it better, too. Almost always....

Then comes the rare exception, like the man at the counter on Saturday who told me high-handedly (reminding me of the Rebecca Solnit essay, “Men Explain Things To Me”) that I won’t last long in the business with such a policy. But I’m more relaxed about these rare remarks, too. After all, Borders came, and Borders went, and I’m still here. Of course, as I acknowledge with a smile, it’s only been 21 years, and there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring. I don’t add that there’s no telling what tomorrow will bring for any business, regardless of what kind of payments it accepts. It feels good not to go on the defensive and not to feel threatened.

But you know this is building up to something, right? The man on Saturday couldn’t stop telling me how my business should be run, even after he’d found a $100 bill in his wallet and been told with a smile that I’d been in business 21 years, because in his eyes I was still wrong. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) let it go. “Well, it depends on how much money you want to make,” he remarked next. Okay, I could let that go by. But then he asked, flat-out--and I’m not making this up--“What’s your income?” Excuse me???!!!

Up to that point, I’d been good-natured and easy-going, despite the stress of a crowded shop and a fairly loud conversation going on right behind me, despite this man at the counter predicting my imminent business demise, but to be asked how much money I make pushed me over the edge. It shouldn’t have, but it did. I told him it was none of his business. And it was not his business, and he shouldn't have asked, but I could have gotten the message across more graciously, more kindly. He was probably just clueless about how to talk to a woman in business. (Or maybe anyone? Some people are just clueless. In fact, most of us are clueless about something--if not one thing, then another.) If nothing else, I could have said “None of your business” without modifying the noun. Yes, I modified the noun. No, it was not a gracious or even a necessary modification.

Then, on top of my harsh retort came laughter from one of the friends who’d been engaged in conversation before stopping to eavesdrop on an exchange he found more entertaining, and out the door the potential customer went, tail between his legs, no longer confident that he had all the answers.

Let me be clear. I’m not upset about losing the sale. Win some, lose some, and taking crap for a buck is not my way. It’s not that.

I wouldn’t change my message, either. It was not the man’s business, and it was rude of him to ask.

But his rudeness doesn’t excuse mine.

Humiliating him publicly, making him a laughingstock, was not my intention. It was, however, the consequence of the way I made my point. I could have drawn my boundary clearly by saying simply, “Thank you for your concern, but I do all right.” Instead, in responding the way I did, someone left my shop feeling worse than he’d felt coming in, and that goes against everything I want my bookstore to be, and for that I’m disappointed in myself. I failed in my own mission.

Do you see? It wasn’t about the money.

That’s not the end of the story, though. Curious about how other people would see the episode, I posted a paragraph on Facebook describing the incident. The results were interesting. One stream in the comment thread had to do with people rallying to my support, saying, “Good for you!” in many different ways. Well, good for me to draw a privacy boundary, I thought, but not good for me to have hurt someone’s feelings. The other comment stream was from those who, while sympathetic to my “plight,” nevertheless thought the man was right, i.e., that I should take credit cards. The people in that second stream took up a position, maybe expecting me to come over to their side, maybe expecting me at least to give an explanation for my ridiculous intransigence. For them it was a debate.

One Fb friend said she would have responded to the question “What’s your income?” with “You first!” Clever, I told her, but that response would imply a willingness to share the very information to which the questioner is not entitled. No, thanks! Another Fb friend commented that she would start shopping more often at my bookstore. Not sure how that connected to the incident, but regulars are always appreciated and welcome! And that’s my real point. I want everyone to feel welcome, and one man now won’t. I ruined it for him.

As I say, the Facebook conversation was interesting. I appreciate my friends’ support and am not offended by their advice, but neither comment stream addresses my real concerns. (1) Answering rudeness with rudeness does nothing to reduce rudeness in the world. (2) As for payment methods, as I told a friend many years ago, with regard to moving my bookstore from Traverse City (where I’d been for a little over two years) back to Northport (its place of origin), “It isn’t a debate. It’s a decision, and it's mine to make.”

Maybe someday some go-getting young couple will buy my business. They’ll put in sophisticated point-of-sale equipment to track inventory and customers. They’ll add credit and debit card capability. They’ll whip up a whole new streamlined website that lets customers halfway around the world order online and pay by credit card. They’ll sell e-books. Who knows what changes lie over the horizon? Maybe those energetic, visionary future owners will decide that a bricks-and-mortar store doesn’t make sense, and they’ll run the “bookstore” out of their basement at home. 

I am not those people. Their business is not mine. I’m here now.

Retail was never my big dream; it’s books I love. But I love my loyal customers and all the friends I’ve made over the years, and I love being my own boss, making my own decisions, and bringing my dog to work with me. For these rewards I have foregone a regular paycheck, sick leave, paid vacation, and a pension. It’s a  cost/benefit analysis, or sorts, but it's also a question of priorities. 

So the next time someone is rude to me I need to remember my own #1 priority: everyone who comes into my bookstore should feel at least as good going out as they did coming in. Many feel better when they leave, and that feels like success.