absent.canadian

Everyone should have a little restaurant / diner / greasy spoon that they can get away to.  I have just such a place, and I won’t blog about it simply because I don’t want people who know me to find me there.  And it has nothing to do with being ashamed of it; I just like to have “my spot” where I can get away to anonymously.

“My spot”, as it shall henceforth be known, is a small family-owned restaurant in a neighbouring small town.  To get there I have to drive past streets like “Buck Wallow Road” and “Boyce Mill Road”–salt-of-the-earth streets inhabited by good people.  The entire drive to “my spot” takes me through the heart of North Carolina farmland, and I always make a point of waving to the farmers.

The town wherein “my spot” is located is the kind of place where elderly people sit in lawn chairs in their front yard.  They pay particular attention to passing vehicles they don’t recognize.  It doesn’t take long for the post office clerk and the gas station attendant to learn your name by heart, and the waitresses at “my place” always addresses patrons as “honey”.

I don’t go to “my place” because of the it’s the best food in town–although it is always tasty, hearty,  and (in true North Carolina fashion) filling.  Nor do I go there because I want to be the highfalutin city guy; anything but.

I go there because there’s a strong sense of community.  ”My place” is more than just a restaurant; it’s a gathering space for people to come and celebrate life.  Little league baseball teams stream in after games and intensely discuss the evening’s victory or loss.  The boys come in to compare notes about deer hunting this morning, and laborers from nearby business come in for a few minutes of respite from their work.

At any time, you can go into “my place” and be a part of a community–even if you’re not.

This morning was no exception.  There was a long line to order, and it was only sheer luck that landed me a table near the front of the restaurant.

Beside the front door is a newspaper stand.  As many times as I’ve been in “my place”, I’ve never noticed this stand before.  It’s an old-fashioned style stand with a little metal tube on the side for payment.  It works on the trust system (like so many things in a small town); you drop your two quarters in the tube and take a paper with you.

And that was how I came to read the local paper over lunch today.

Some of my friends who read this blog work in the newspaper industry.  And they probably know that I’ve not been friendly to this industry in the past–mainly because I think the business model for the newspaper is dying, if not already dead.  A child of the Internet, I’m used to finding the information I want within seconds.  Even at “my place”, I can pull out my PDA phone and check any one of thousands of news sites in the blink of an eye, if I happen to be curious about how the Toronto Stock Exchange is doing, or what the latest news is from Darfur, Sudan.

In the past, I’ve also been verbal about the idea that newspapers are–first and foremost–moneymaking ventures.  I try to be careful to acknowledge that the motives of journalists and newspapers aren’t always the same, but in a capitalist enterprise it’s usually the profit motive that wins.

Journalists of all stripes know that blogs–like this one–are a large part of the reason that newspaper readership is down.  And why it will continue to drop.

But today, I was reminded why newspapers still have an important place.  The newspaper I bought this morning is locally owned and locally published.  It’s got the unmistakable feel of a small-town newspaper; enough quality and substance to make it worth the fifty cents, but none of the style and sophistication of a large corporate newspaper.

The big difference is in the content.  If there’s syndicated material in it, it’s well-hidden.  And frankly, that’s not the point of a local paper.  If I want to know what’s going on in world politics, I’ll click over to CNN or the Globe and Mail, or any number of other news outlets that invest millions of dollars in offering me up-to-the-second content on their websites.

No, what I’m interested in is the local goings-ons.  Like the possibility of county taxes going up by ten cents in the new year.  Or the pig-picking being held at the local Chevrolet dealership.  Or the Christmas parade that I’m missing because this post is taking longer to type than I thought it would.

See, local papers are a bit like “my place”.  They’ve got enough of the homemade “folksy” feel to them to make them very comfortable on a Saturday morning, when I need to get away from the usual hustle-and-bustle of corporate life and the cosmopolitan delights of Raleigh chic.  Like the people that live in these small towns, these newspapers are honest and sincere.

Apparently, they also make a profit.  This particular paper has been around for well over 40 years.  I hope my rather modest decision to subscribe helps them stay around for at least a few more years.

I trust small towns.  I grew up in a small town, and I’ll look forward to returning to that same small town in a few weeks, where I’ll celebrate the holidays in the company of my immediate family.  And I’ll pick up copies of the local papers when I’m back home, because I’ll want to know who won the local Lions Club music festival and the pie-baking contest at the fall fair.

Most importantly, small-town newspapers–like small-town restaurants–will always serve their communities better than the multinationals with their golden arches and glossy colour front-page photos.

And–with luck–they’ll also be around for those of us who are willing to make the short drive.  And, with luck, the elderly people sitting out front in the lawn chairs will get used to the little black sports coupe that goes past on Saturday mornings.

Like most Americans, I’m distressed over the economic news this week – but perhaps for a slightly different reason.

I may be one of the few who doesn’t put the blame squarely on Wall Street and irresponsible politicians.  Yes, they have a role, but I think there’s a far more responsible party that needs to shoulder the blame for this.

It’s regular, ordinary Americans.

And my rationale is simple: we’re in this economic crisis largely because of bad debt.  And a large percentage of that bad debt was accrued by the “Main Street” folks the presidential candidates keep trying to appeal to.

It’s no wonder we have corporate leaders and politicians who spend like drunken sailors on shore leave; that’s the general spending pattern of most Americans.  The bigger house, bigger car, supersize-me mentality is epidemic, and Americans love to borrow money to fund this grotesque lifestyle.

Case in point: when I bought my house almost four years ago, my mortgage broker laughed at me for buying such a modest house.  Her perspective was simple: “you can afford more – why wouldn’t you want a larger house?”  Granted, casa Canadian is a modest home in a modest neighborhood by anyone’s measure, but it’s also a home I knew we (back in the day when it was “we”) could easily afford, even if one of us lost our job.  The chances were remote, but we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t lose our house if something happened.

Zoom ahead four years.  I’m still comfortably living in that house and still making the mortgage payments despite being in a single-income household (due to the breakdown of my marriage – completely unrelated to the economic crisis).  Had we bought something more expensive, I probably couldn’t have afforded to keep it.

Cheap credit has extended the idea of “living within our means”.  That’s fine until the credit market dries up; ergo, the crisis we’re seeing today.

Wall Street and irresponsible corporate officers will get their share of the blame, but change needs to start at the grassroots level.  Looking to our politicians to “fix” the problem is like looking to Visa or Mastercard for a solution to your ridiculously high credit card bill.  Since they’re in the business of selling you credit, they’ll probably raise your credit limit, pat you on the head and tell you to spend more money … when you know that the real solution is to stop spending so much money.

Of course, the political candidates can’t look the country squarely in the eyes and say “C’mon America – you’re being a bunch of dumbasses.  Stop spending money like it grows on trees and try saving a little.  Pay down your debts and don’t get into hock so deeply.”  Instead, they’ll cought up a few hundred billion they don’t have and pretend that it’s going to make a difference.

And as long as stupid people crowd around stages to listen to politicians croon about how they have the perfect solution; as long as they drive there from their McMansions in their gas-guzzling SUV’s; as long as they go out after for a double cheeseburger, a crate of french fries and a half-gallon of Coke; and as long as they ridiculously sue their HMO when they keel over from a heart attack and realize they can’t afford proper healthcare – only then, perhaps, will they realise that the enemy has always been right there, staring back at them in the mirror.