Hometown quality really does still exist

Matt Pearl

This past week, I had the pleasure of writing a short feature article on Lou Noble of Lou’s Antiques and Gifts in Stanberry. She, like I, has a foot in several portions of our readership area.

She’s a Flag Springs girl who went to school in King City — and like virtually everyone who lives out there, had about an equal claim to attend Union Star. A Stanberrian since 1960, Lou has a unique shop that defies conventional antique store logic.

How so?

The store itself is a collection of refinished wooden furniture, a menagerie of projects that reflect Lou’s love for her work of making the old feel new — while holding the original character that the years contain within each piece.

Talking about the changing world with Lou — the furniture emporium age of buy it, break it, replace it and forget it — I thought about how rare it is in this day and age for anyone to buy a piece of furniture with the purpose of keeping it as an heirloom.

And it’s not a sad thing that our nation has such wonderful conveniences, that the availability of affordable goods has allowed us to have more.

But it is a tough pill to swallow — that we have all learned to value our past so little that most of us have little interest in preserving its lessons or the hard work that went into life years ago.

Pride in one’s work used to be expected, a contract that is made when one person is doing a job or performing a service for another — it’s far more difficult to offer a shoddy product to someone who you will face personally in the days following the transaction.

How many times has a chain store executive looked you in the eye after selling you a faulty product?

Lou sold my wife and me an a century-old armoire about five years ago. During our conversation the other day, Lou and her daughter, Pam, both recalled every detail of the piece when it came up in our conversation. The mirror, the construction, the finish — everything.

Now look me in the eye and tell me you honestly think a megastore clerk would even recognize you, much less what you bought, as long as five days ago, much less five years ago.

There is an inherent bond between a craftsman and his or her quality product.

It makes me feel ashamed for every time I chose to pump my dollars and my support into a store that doesn’t particularly care whether I enjoy what I bought or not.

You know the kind of place where, at the register, the clerk asks if you want an extended warranty, a polite way of suggesting that you buy insurance on their junky products, which protects them, the seller, from any responsibility and puts the complete risk of the purchase upon you, the person who shelled out your money to buy the product in the first place.

And then we walk out of the store relieved that we spent a little extra in case things go wrong.

I should be fair. At some of these megastores, there is no checker. You can scan and bag your own items, but pay the same as you would have if you had received personal service.

And we will all feel frustrated when our local shops are gone; and in the days when the big chain stores 25-50 miles away are the only choices, then we will be sorry.

When we pay a convenience store price for a gallon of milk, I hope we blame ourselves.

But while hometown quality still exists — and it does — I hope we are wise enough to seek it.