Think Locally…

Alice Waters is the owner and chef at just one of the many fine restaurants that I can’t afford, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. After many years of dining out, I’ve learned that I can not afford to eat at ANY restaurant with “Chez” in the name. Anyway, Chef Waters is well known as a proponent of the use of local products in her restaurant. Reading about her got me to thinking how far we’ve moved away from the idea that local products, local businesses and local services are good for us and good for our communities and good for our nation.

We need to support local businesses (if we can still find them) with unique local products (if there still are any such things) and local viewpoints. If we don’t do something, everything will be the same no matter where we go. Take Chili’s for example. Now I have no objection to Chili’s. They serve pretty good ribs, and they have a terrific warm chocolate dessert that I’m sure has killed more people than texting while driving has. And those people died happy (the diners, not the drivers). But wherever you go, from sea to shining sea, when you eat at Chili’s, the food will be exactly the same. It will look the same, it will taste the same, and it will be served to you by the same server with the same Chinese symbol tattooed on the upper arm, which the server was told (by the tattoo artist) means “Serenity” but in reality is the Chinese symbol meaning “Brake Fluid.”

A short while back I was in Philadelphia for the first time in many years. Decades ago I used to visit my late aunt there…the one that everyone else in the family referred to, only half-jokingly, as “Crazy Trudy.” Whenever I would visit, she would take me to lunch at Wanamaker’s Department Store. The store was huge, with a wonderful central gallery that went from the first floor all the way to the top, and a luxurious restaurant overlooking the gallery. The food, served on fine china by liveried waiters, was really good, the live organ music was a nice touch, and best of all, it was THE famous Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia…it was special…one-of-a-kind. It had been there since the 1876 Centennial, and it had it’s own character, it’s own personality, it’s own products. It was as “Philadelphia” as the Liberty Bell. It’s a Macy’s now. It carries the same products as every other Macy’s, has the same displays as every other Macy’s, and it’s as “local” as a McDonald’s.

Speaking of which…we’ve got a town here in south Florida (SoFla to those locals who are concerned with the ever-rising cost of printer cartridges) named Davie. It’s a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale. Davie fancies itself a “Western” community, even though driving east for just fifteen minutes will cause your car to fill with Atlantic Ocean water. It has some horses, an annual rodeo in its very own little rodeo arena, and three “Western Wear” stores, inexplicably selling “Cowboy” clothes (Stetson hats, flashy boots made from the skins of every conceivable animal, belt buckles the size of manhole covers) to nearly every Jewish attorney in the Ft. Lauderdale metropolitan area (“Happy Passover, Pardner…”). The Davie McDonald’s used to have wallpaper with a horseshoe motif, and, hanging on the wall, a medium-sized glass “shadow box” frame with labeled samples of various types of antique barbed wire. I thought that it was pretty interesting. It wasn’t much, but it differentiated this McDonald’s from others. Several years ago, they refurbished this McDonald’s (and changed the oil in the fryer for the last time) and lo and behold, the horseshoe wallpaper and the barbed wire display mysteriously disappeared. Too local, I guess. I know that it’s silly, but that was when (and why) I stopped going to this McDonald’s.

And even though I have never had a cup of coffee in my life, don’t get me started on Starbucks and the premeditated murder of America’s local “coffee shops.”

I used to be able to find local seafood products everywhere. You can’t swing a dead catfish down here without hitting a fishing boat. Now, it’s beyond challenging if not downright impossible to find anything caught anywhere near here. As a matter of fact, most of the seafood I see in the stores wasn’t wild at any point in its life. It didn’t even have to be caught…it was “harvested.” Farmed tilapia, farmed salmon, farmed shrimp and so on…none of it local, or for that matter, none of it American at all. And I can get the exact same farmed seafood anywhere in the country. The Kahler Hotel in Rochester, Minnesota used to serve locally-caught Pike, and it was delicious. Today, the Kahler’s menu is replete with the same imported farmed seafood as everywhere else. This problem goes WAY beyond seafood. Does your city or town have ANY local merchants, local craftsmen, local farmers, local ANYTHING? How do you go about finding them? Do you buy a local tomato, or a cheaper Mexican one? Can you even FIND a local tomato?

In Florida, agricultural products must be, by law, labeled with the country of origin. I have not been able to buy American-grown garlic for years. From the taste I can’t really tell the difference between American garlic and imported garlic, but that’s not the point. Every year I see something or read something about the Annual Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. Thousands attend. They even have a guy walking around dressed as a huge garlic bulb, and all manner of garlic products are featured, including, of all things, garlic ice cream. Now I can’t imagine that garlic ice cream has become so popular that the countless tons of garlic that Gilroy produces ALL go into that product (garlic ice cream slogan… “Bad Breath AND Clogged Arteries…You Really CAN Have Both…”). But they sure aren’t shipping it to stores near me. Is California garlic really a “local” product? It is when you compare it to the Chinese variety for sale in my local supermarket.

I was, fairly recently, in Maui, Hawaii, and found a beautiful “craft” shop in the town of Paia. I saw a wonderful carved wood plaque that had flowers and trees, and said “MAUI” on it. When I turned it over to check the price, I saw the “Made in Thailand” sticker, and I could not put it down fast enough. The mother-of-pearl headband that my wife purchased in the same shop was from France. I tried to buy some locally produced “Aloha” Shirts (the official uniform of The Association of Old Guys Who Don’t Give a Damn What You Think). After looking at dozens of them made in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and so on, I was about to give up, when I FINALLY found some, actually made in Hawaii, at, of all places, the Maui COSTCO. COSTCO? Really? COSTCO? But if I hadn’t gone to that COSTCO (COSTCO Slogan… “Are You Sure That Five Gallons of Mayonnaise is Enough?” ) I would have had to purchase colorful and alarming shirts that were NOT made in Hawaii, which I did not want to do. It’s bad enough that my souvenir Eiffel Tower (purchased within sight of the real thing) was made in China. I would LOVE to know if anyone has seen, in the last twenty years, an American Flag Lapel Pin MADE IN AMERICA. I’m THIS CLOSE to offering a bounty for one.

Okay…I just read this over, and I’m starting to rant. Not a good sign at my age. But I think that you get the point. Alice Waters is on to something. We need to get the local character back, wherever we are. It won’t be easy, but it is worthwhile. A nation with nothing but Chili’s, Macy’s, Starbucks and so on, is a nation deprived of itself. We need to get back to the notion of the local product, the local vendor, the local craftsman, the local landmark…whether it’s a store, a farm, a coffee shop, or even a restaurant like Chez Panisse. Without landmarks, how will you ever know for sure where you are?

Many Happy Returns…

Next up in our series of money saving tips…the one household purchase that you can make that is guaranteed to not only pay for itself the first time you use it, but will continue to provide huge savings year after year. Go out and buy yourself a large size box of kitchen matches, and watch the big money start piling up. I suggest that you purchase “Diamond Strike Anywhere Kitchen Matches” in the economical 250 count box. 250 of these will save you a fortune! Don’t thank me…I’m here to help…it’s what I do.

Okay…so I haven’t actually done this yet, but I think that I’m going to. Here’s why.

My wife likes to shop. She likes it a lot. And I like to shop with her. Now I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t want to go all sexist on your ass here, so for the sake of full disclosure…I’m 100% guy. My idea of “getting in touch with my feminine side” involves glancing at the television briefly while walking (quickly) through the family room while my wife is watching Grey’s Anatomy (or, as I call it, Grey’s Monotony). But even though I am positively reeking with intense guy-ness, the very un-guy process of shopping is something that we like to do together. While shopping we encourage each other (“That looks GREAT on you…it makes you look nearly as good as you did way back, many, many years ago, before you started to…oops…I mean…that looks GREAT on you!”). We tell each other the truth (Yes, those jeans DO make your ass look big, and no wife wants her husband’s ass to look big.”). And we give each other reality checks (“Do I think $300.00 is too much for a handbag that you’ll use maybe twice? Is a bear Catholic?”). By the way…just in case you failed to notice, I’ve used the word “ass” three times, no, make that four times, so far in this one paragraph.

One other thing that we have in common regarding shopping is that neither of us like to try things on in the fitting rooms. There are numerous reasons for this. Have you been in a fitting room lately? The days of the locking door, the good lighting and the sparkling three way mirror are on the way out, I guess. Now, we are treated to ripped shower-curtain style enclosures and if the fitting room has a mirror at all, it’s filthy, and about the size of the one in your car. The lighting in your average fitting room can be either so dim that you can’t find your shoes when you’ve finished, or so harsh and bright that you develop a tan while changing. There are discarded straight pins everywhere on the floor, poised to attack, and when I remove my shoes to try on pants, one of them invariably finds its way into the softest part of my foot. And worst of all, taking everything off, putting something on, walking out to the front to show your spouse, walking back, putting something else on, and repeating the process…oh…three or four hundred times on a average shopping day can get a tad tedious. So we often purchase items that we THINK will be just fine without first trying them on, expecting to try them on at home, where the lighting is just right, the mirrors are clean and full length, and the floors are, for the most part, feral-straight-pin free.

When you try your items on at home, not everything fits, not everything coordinates with what you thought that it would, not everything looks as good on you as it did on the hanger (which explains why so many models, both male and female, are chosen for their uncanny resemblance to hangers) and some items…well…you just decide that you don’t want them after all. And this is where the Kitchen Matches come in handy: When you have purchased something and brought it home, and decided that you don’t want it after all, Here is a way to save yourself some SERIOUS money. Firmly grasp the item that you wish to return, and take it out into your back yard. Then go back into your house, get some old newspaper and your box of “Diamond Strike Anywhere Kitchen Matches” and go back outside. Crumple four sheets of newspaper for each item that you wish to return, put each “return” item on top of the four crumpled sheets, and light each pile on fire. This will save you a fortune in the long run.

The only other alternative is to return the item(s) to the store, and this is a VERY costly mistake to be avoided like the plague. Here’s why.

In this economic situation, everyone is cutting back, particularly retail stores. The way for the store to save the most is to have the minimum number of employees, and so, when you require some help from an actual human being, be prepared to wait. Here’s how it goes when we go back to a store to return something:

ME: “Wow…will you look at the line for returns. This may take a while.”

MY WIFE: (Already dazed and confused by the colorful handbag display near the return counter) “What?”

ME: “I SAID…Wow…will you look at the line for returns. This may take a while.”

MY WIFE: (Sadly looking off into the distance at the racks of clothes) “I’ll wait with you (LONG SIGH…).”

ME: (Trying to be the Good Husband) “No reason for both of us to stand here until Justin Bieber’s voice changes…why don’t you go look around, and I’ll find you when I’m done.”

MY WIFE: (Trying VERY HARD to conceal her delight) “Are you sure?”

ME: (As if I had not been down this road before) “Yes.”

And so off she goes, and I wait and wait and wait…until I’m able to get that $12.99 t-shirt back into the loving hands of the highly bored employee (who I’m certain is being punished for being REALLY, REALLY SLOW by being assigned to process the returns).

And so I’m now finally done, and, clutching my return receipt for the princely sum of $13.90, I set off to find You-Know-Who. And when I find her, she is pushing a shopping cart that resembles the colorful little clown car in the circus, only more tightly packed. By the time we’re done “discussing” the contents, we’ve carved the total cost of the “must-haves” all the way down into the low four figures. So we go and pay for these items. And the cycle begins anew. Had we not gone back to the store to return that $12.99 t-shirt, then this iteration of the Italian leather designer handbag, the six blouses, the four pairs of pants, the jeans, the shoes, shoes, shoes, and so on, would have never taken place, so please, take my advice, and, rather than return items to the store, take them out into your back yard and set them on fire. It’s a lot cheaper.

And you know that second batch of items I just told you about? I suspect that my wife put one item in that batch (another t-shirt, I think) that she has no intention of keeping. And I think I know what she’s up to. You wait here…I’m going to get my matches.

The $39.00 Chicken Salad…

Here’s some more evidence that I married the right woman.

If you’ve seen Toy Story 2 and enjoyed the music, particularly the “Woody’s Roundup” theme song, then you’ve heard a band called “Riders in the Sky.” I like these guys. They perform, in full cowboy regalia, the classic western style music of the thirties and the forties made popular by such heroes of my youth as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. The music is fun, and I wanted to see them in person. Although my wife claims to like them, I know (and she knows that I know) that she plays along with the joke just for my benefit. I found out that they were coming to Lake Wales, a town about four hours from my home, and I looked forward to going. It was an afternoon performance, so we could leave at a civilized hour, enjoy the show, have dinner, and take a leisurely drive back home. So we bought our tickets online, and everything was in place.

I didn’t tell my wife, but I had a plan. I knew that Lake Wales was the home of a legendary Florida restaurant named Chalet Suzanne. Their most famous dishes were their Lobster Newberg, and their signature appetizer, a broiled, caramelized Grapefruit served with Chicken Livers. Chalet Suzanne also had a reputation for being the most expensive restaurant in Florida (this was before the emergence of South Beach as the Mecca of wretched excess that it has become) with its very own FAA-approved airstrip, so that wealthy diners could fly in for dinner. Now I’m not all that fancy, and neither is my wife, but I thought that just once, as long as we were going to be in the neighborhood, she might like to be treated to dinner at such a place. It was going to be a surprise.

The concert was, as expected, great fun. We got to meet the performers after the show, and we really enjoyed walking around Lake Wales. It’s a beautiful place, with an old-fashioned downtown square. But the sun was going down, and it was time for dinner. After much searching (and after demonstrating several times that the old cliche about men not stopping to ask for directions is untrue), we came to Chalet Suzanne at the end of a dirt road featuring potholes the size of major appliances. It looked like a charming little Swiss village, if charming little Swiss villages were festooned with half-burned-out Christmas lights in May, and if charming little Swiss villages were in dire need of painting. But we didn’t spend two hours driving in circles for the visual impact…we were going to try the famous food. So we parked in the rutted gravel lot, and walked into the restaurant. The entry vestibule of the most expensive restaurant in Florida smelled of urine, which was even more incongruous when contrasted with the many framed awards on the walls. They had a menu on a small table near the receptionist station, and we thought we’d have a look before being seated.

My wife grew up in a series of small towns in central Florida. She “ate a lot of government cheese,” as she puts it. She is a wonderful woman…kind, loving, generous of spirit…and the nicest person I’ve ever encountered. She was just barely out of her teens when we met. One of the things that I’m most proud of is that I’ve managed to give her a pretty good life for more than twenty years. She has gotten used to the finer things in life without requiring them in order to be happy. A perfect balance. So as she read the menu, with the $95.00 (à la carte) 6 oz. filet mignon, the $10.00 (plain) baked potato, and so on, she began to question my sanity. I thought that I might make her feel better if I ordered the least expensive item on the menu. It turned out to be a scoop of chicken salad (à la carte again) at $39.00. This seemed to bother her more than the $15.83 per ounce steak. She looked at me with that “are you out of your f-ing mind” look that I suspect all husbands in good marriages see with some frequency, and out we walked, past the burned out Christmas lights, through the gravel, into the car…we drove around the potholes, and back onto the highway. At least one of us is sensible.

I’m a good money manager…I can easily afford an expensive dinner. But, as my wife pointed out, the fact that I can doesn’t mean that I should.

We ate at a Burger King in the parking lot of a strip shopping center near the entrance to the highway that would eventually take us to the turnpike. The Whoppers were delicious, and two for $3.00. The place didn’t smell of urine, and all of the light bulbs were lit. Best of all, I was there with the great love of my life, and the Whopper dinner served in paper wrapping on plastic trays was more romantic than Lobster Newberg, candlelight and strolling violins could have ever been. I got her one of those silly paper crowns that Burger King used to have available to give to children, and I made her wear it. She thought that I was kidding. I wasn’t. She looked so very beautiful. We took the money that we saved on dinner that night and went to see Riders in the Sky again the next year…and still had enough left over for pizza after the show.

I think of that trip to Lake Wales often, both for what didn’t happen, and for what did.

I looked at the Chalet Suzanne menu online a few days ago, and noticed that the prices have gone down a bit lately, perhaps because of the overall financial condition of the nation. It’s still a really expensive place though. In addition to lowering the prices, I hope that they’ve also fixed the lights, painted the place, and gotten rid of the urine smell, but I’m not going back to find out. As for our eventual dinner choice I was reminded once again that evening that when you’re really in love, and when she is too, a hamburger under fluorescent lights is a celebratory feast. And that $39.00 scoop of chicken salad? It seems to be not so much a meal as it is perhaps an ineffectual treatment for a sad and all-too-prevalent disease…a disease characterized by a big, dark, empty space in the center of the heart…a disease from which, thank goodness, neither my wife nor I suffer.

Fear and Loathing at the Return Counter…

Here is another in my continuing series…”Why People Don’t Get It.” Okay…maybe it’s not a continuing series, but it should be.

I am constantly amazed at the simple, little things that facilitate successful daily living that so many people just don’t seem to grasp, no matter their level of education or breadth of experience. When you tell profligate spenders that they should save their money for the things that they might really need in the future, they look at you as if you were speaking to them in Serbo-Croatian. When you suggest to someone that they might want to call a taxi instead of driving “in their current condition” they are insulted. With the holiday shopping season getting underway, our topic for today is…dealing with customer service representatives.

It’s tough being a customer service representative, especially around the holidays. On more than one occasion I have stood in line and listened to the people in front of me verbally assault the poor man or poor woman behind the counter, including colorful language (and here in south Florida that means several languages) and running commentary on the legitimacy of the customer service representative’s parentage. It is not the fault of the customer service representative that you bought something, destroyed the packaging, threw away the price tag, lost the receipt, misused the item and ruined it, and now think you should get your money back. The customer service representative did not cause this, nor did he or she manufacture the product with which you are so dissatisfied. The customer service representative cannot turn back time, nor can he or she repair whatever it is that you have found so problematic. What is the only thing that that customer service representative can do? That’s right…help you. Help you by…refunding your money…exchanging the item…upgrading you to a better item…and so on. Why would you want to abuse and berate someone who has only one choice to make as far as you’re concerned? Why give them a reason to decide against you when it’s time to make a decision?

I don’t understand why so many people can’t figure this out. You’re looking across a counter at a person making maybe eight dollars an hour to stand there for eight hours each day and talk with unhappy people. It’s a hard way to make a living. So I try to be nice, and the more sour the attitude of the customer service representative (yes…customer service representatives can be just as nasty as the customers, and I don’t wonder why), the nicer I try to be. Sure…sometimes it’s an act on my part, but the more it works, the less of an act it becomes. The most amazing aspect of this is not that I always get my way…which I do. The amazing part is how quickly a little joke, a smile, or a simple pleasantry will brighten them up. It could very well be the first and only time so far in the day that someone has treated them like a valuable human being, instead of like something you would scrape from the bottom of a shoe. As I always tell others when discussing this and similar issues…the trick to getting what you want from a stranger is to be the best part of their day. It works.

This even works on the telephone. You’d be amazed how easy it is to make a complete stranger laugh over the phone. And once you have them laughing, the rest is easy. I guess a lot of folks think that since they’re not face to face with the customer service representative, they’re not in imminent danger of being spat upon or worse, so they can be as nasty as they want to be. But why? The best attitude, on the phone or in person is this: How can the two of us work together to solve my problem? Sometimes just saying this straight out works like a charm. Study after study on altruism indicates that, given the opportunity, people want to help others when they can. In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln mentions “the better angels of our nature.” Don’t give others reason to act against those better angels and against your best interests.

Now for the reveal. When I was in graduate school, I worked part-time for the late, lamented department store chain…Jordan Marsh. And I don’t think I need to tell you here…I was that customer service representative. When someone was nice to me and made me smile, I bent over backwards to see to it that they got what they wanted, even if it was “against store policy.” When someone was unpleasant, obnoxious, demanding, rude or otherwise difficult to deal with, I went out of my way to thwart them, even making up “rules” that meant I “couldn’t” accommodate their needs (“I’m so sorry sir, but we cannot accept returns of blue shirts on odd numbered Tuesdays”).

So, fellow customer, when you read this, if you think it applies to you, then it probably does. Be nice. If you are a customer service representative and you are reading this, please remember…I am an older man, strikingly handsome and virile, tall and bald, with brown eyes and a love of humor. And the secret password is “Swordfish.” If I show up at your workplace after the holidays, trying to return some godawful crap that someone unloaded on me as a “gift”, I’ll use that secret password. When you hear the word “Swordfish”, remember that I’m on your side, that I was one of you lo these many years ago, and that I am most deserving of all the help, kindness, understanding and consideration that you can muster. And I swear that when I received this item, it had no packaging, no receipt, no price tag, and it was already broken.