There's a Place

Annie, a waitress with spring-steel arches, taps the toe of a thin-soled, lace-up, black canvas shoe, the kind moms wore in the 1960s.

I have watched Annie at work for years. She runs the place as though she owns it. She loves her regulars. Calls them honey, but she knows their names – and the names of their children. 

Annie is taking a breather between the breakfast crowd and the lunch bunch. She and I are talking about the “coffee shopping” of the American cafe. Six people, a boss and five employees, settle at a table, order just coffee and occupy the table for an hour and a half. They do that once. Then, to the gratitude of regulars, Annie breaks it up the next time.

“Anything else for you guys?” Annie moves slightly to one side, so the moguls can see the would-be breakfast customers standing in a knotted line. Waiting for a table. Thus, does this waitress traffic cop keep things moving through her world.

Embrace your space is the go-local war cry. Embrace your space, yes, but don’t take up space.

Have your business pow-wow in a library meeting room. If they’d finish clearing out the books, magazines, DVDs and CDs, we could get some serious meeting done in the libraries.

Buy screws at the hardware store up the street, pick up French bread at the neighborhood grocery, maybe some slightly overpriced beer or wine if the selection’s good. Wally and Amazon sell stuff cheap, but they won’t hand you a float and flapper when you’re up to your elbows in the toilet tank.

Forget the dinner rolls? Call in a grocery drone strike or run over to Nguyen’s. See if he’s got any hot crawfish for an appetizer.

Saturday afternoon. Your child has his face glued to a screen. Unpeel the kid’s countenance. Take him to the levee to see the mightiest of local rivers. Driving to dance practice, direct your daughter’s attention to the local life on the sidewalks outside the car windows.

Sometimes, it’s the business place that doesn’t fulfill the promise of local is better. Remember restaurant conversation? It’s like someone my age trying to remember vertical leaping. The oh-so-local, farm-to-table—“The pork’s local, right?”—is so loud you have to shout your order, let alone conversation, over the alcohol-fueled braying.

If I walk my bicycle into a shop with a flat tire or an unslung chain and the mechanic stops putting together a $3,000 bicycle to speed me on my way, I’m buying my next bicycle from him.

Barber shops. Look for the red and white striped pole and the photo on the wall of the owner in the dress blues of the United States Marine Corps.

Neighborhood drug store if you’re lucky enough to have one: Move your prescriptions there. Buy stocking stuffers and fingernail clippers. Pick up this magazine by the door.

Local publications. Love ‘em. Hate ‘em. Make up derisive names for them—the State-Crimes, Morning Aggravate, Mobile Cash Register. They’re free on the internet, you know. They do a good job of lifting news stories from the print editions which are supported by a dwindling number of local readers with paid subscriptions.

Local television can be pretty silly until it tells you that the gunfire is getting closer to your living room windows.

Local radio. Blah-dee-blah-dee-blah broken by eight advertising spots. In the next hurricane, try punching up your favorite Seattle jazz station to see when your street’s getting electricity back.

Long ago, when Hemingway was hot, local yokels were people who didn’t thrive past the town limits.

Local’s good now, if we cultivate it.

Yokel? That’s a bumpkin. Rhymes with local.  

Ed Cullen’s wry observations on life in South Louisiana will be familiar to readers of The Advocate, where he worked for forty years. Letter in a Woodpile, a collection of his newspaper and radio essays, was published in 2006.