Soil on soil

Business is slow.  It's been slow for years, if I'm being honest.  People don't come to the Agway like they used to.  Used to be, if you wanted to mulch a lawn or lay a tarp, you had to come to the Agway.  It was a community place -- all the leading lights of the community would come through.  You had no better chance of crossing paths with Mayor Ted and putting a word in his ear about noisy trucks clanking down your street or the wasp-cloud swarming the video store so no one could get inside than you did at my Agway.  Seems like community doesn't mean so much these days.

People just don't take pride in their homes like they used to.  Used to be you built your own house -- picked your own lot, cleared your own woods.  You leveled your own terrain, you poured your own foundation, you erected your own edifice, chased off your own hogs.  It was long and it wasn't easy, and it's the reason today we have so many crooked houses and why so many people are injured by split beams and warped windows that shatter during autumn windstorms, but there was pride in it.  Now people just hire contractors who build their houses straight, and they just don't worry about it.

If I had to guess though I'd say the other reason business is slow lately is the big Ag-Mart across the street.  It's the only chain place in town besides the Blimpie and the Cumberland Farms, and I guess it impresses people.  180,000 square feet, bright lights, wide aisles, all the merchandise you can imagine.  It's a hell of a place, I'll give them that.  Nice, new tile, not packed dirt floors like at the Agway.  No angry dog on a chain that barks at you whenever you walk past the register.  No broken glass slicing up people's hands when they're scooping paint out of the paint bin.  They don't even have paint bins there -- they keep it in cans.  Well, some like it one way, some like it the other, I suppose.

When that Ag-Mart was going up, everyone told me, "don't worry about it, Linus.  We love you in this town.  We're not gonna let 'em drive you out of business, we're gonna keep coming here just like always.  But I was here when they put the Cumberland Farms in and Terry's Gas was out of business in a month's time.  I remember the hordes, picking through Terry's store, filling buckets with gas straight out of Terry's gas bins.  I see those same folks now, touring the aisles of Ag-Mart, carts overfilled.  They bring their families, they bring blankets, lay them on the tile and have picnics, right there in the store.  And they see me and they give me a smile, and it's more than having no shame, it's that they love it.  They love that I'm losing, and they backed the winner.

Just the other day in there, I saw old Bill Gutcher.  I asked him what he was doing and he said, you know, just need some things.  Things you could only get here, I asked?  I went through his cart.  Shovel, bags of soil.  Nothing you couldn't get at my Agway, I told him.  Soil, he asked?  In bags?  Well, no, not in bags.  But soil is soil, it doesn't need to be in a bag.  I dumped his cart onto the floor.  Well, what'd you go and do that for? he asked.  I said, isn't it obvious?  I grabbed his damn soil and took it across the street to my Agway.  I slit the bag open and dumped it out, right on the top of my soil bin.  There it sat, Ag-Mart's bagged soil on top of mine, soil on soil, a completely different color.