Let's talk about on-line sales

for the small time hustler.  One of the ironies that I'm facing, of course, is that I'm not at all different than all the other small time hustlers around Mountain Home.  The only difference, if there is any difference, lies in the resources I have available.  For one, I'm better educated, and I have a broad enough educational and employment background to make, as it were, "improvements." Lord that sounds arrogant in ways that I don't intend, and perhaps irrelevant to the world we're in, but pragmatically speaking, if one thing doesn't work, try something a bit different.

We'll never have the sales base in Mountain Home itself to sustain the store, I know that now with little or no doubt, but we do have some sales base.  Without the store, I would not have been able, for example, to sell  the fly rods on line.  No wholesale distributor will sell me fly rods to flip on eBay, but they will sell me fly rods to stock our little store.  While the bulk of my sales on line are things I have crafted, like the tying tables, selling the fly rods does boost the ante somewhat and creates a turn over of merchandise.

So, if the little store is going to survive -- and L, last night, in bed, said she wanted nothing more than for it to survive -- the on-line sales will need to be a significant part of the strategy.  For the numbers minded, right now, I have $512.60 in sales for the month of August.  In the store I have another $350, so that's about $850 in sales total.  There are some things I could do to boost the on-line sales, mostly just having a greater variety of things to sell and explore different venues.

For example, as we moved away from tying to sell the side tables, I had pretty much given up on Etsy.  Since they have gone public, however, they have become more aggressive in their push advertising and I've seen more Etsy ads of late.  Side tables are clearly not the thing -- we've pretty much had to give the damn things away -- but the crafter side of fly fishing, the hand crafted rod cases and fly boxes, and the fly tying, might be more in the Etsy "community's" wheel house.  Something to explore so I've posted two of my rod cases, and two of the tying tables, and just keep posting things as I make them.  We'll see ...

       

Sunday was an oddly good day

for sales.   The store was closed, but I sold one of my tying tables on eBay to an international customer for nearly $90.  I should and do feel a bit guilty about that.  It is not, in my opinion, worth $90.  The $40 I normally get, yes, but not $90.  It looks like this:

I also sold a fly rod to a customer in Texas.  So, in one fell swoop, I have about $300 in our Paypal account.  I'll sell a couple more tables before the end of the month, which will bring the on-line sales up to about $600 for the month, which will make the month viable -- a glimmer of hope at the end of a long tunnel.

Of course, we also drove up to the Stage Stop, a truck stop that's about halfway between here and Boise, for breakfast.  It's worth the trip for a traditional breakfast, or heuvos rancheros.  It's become a small tradition, because they "opened" a farmer's market behind the truck stop in what used to be one of the maintenance bays for large trucks.  The two women who run it are associated with the truck stop, and talked a great game with a great deal of enthusiasm.  L, with her characteristic optimism, put some of her craft items in it for sale on consignment, but when we checked after breakfast, it was a half hour past the opening time, and it still wasn't open.  It's the one time, and L will "follow up," but it was deflating.  You can't have big banners saying you're open and then no be.  People will stop once, but will assume you're closed for good.  I would.  She has not yet found a venue where she can sell the things she makes, some of it quite unique and pretty and clever, and now at first blush it's not obvious that the Stage Stop will be that venue.

In the meantime, we stopped on the way back at the RV sales lot, and looked in the windows of one they have on consignment.  It looks to be a bit dated, but in reasonably good condition for about $5K.   L does not covet much, as she put it, but she does covet a camper.  She pictures us going around the country, fishing and just being in beautiful places.  I must say, the image has a great deal of appeal, and will have even greater appeal, I'm sure, this winter.  

Here's the thing

We came to Mountain Home for a number of reasons, not least that it is close to, but not a suburb of Boise where our kids and granddaughter live.  It is about a 50 minute drive if you don't run into construction or traffic of one sort or another.  Housing too was affordable.  We could pay cash for our house off the proceeds from the sale of our Salt Lake house.  It is also centrally located for some of the best fly fishing in the west with the Owyhee, the South Fork, Henry's Fork, and Silver Creek all within a couple hours drive.  We knew that Mountain Home was not posh, but it was quiet and livable.

So far as our personal circumstances go, we didn't anticipate a few things.  The one that concerns me most is health insurance.  I had made too much money in my previous life to qualify for Veteran's, even though Lora and I were both veterans.  Because I was unemployed and had our retirement money as a more or less liquid asset, we didn't qualify for the health insurance subsidies under Obamacare.  We paid full freight on our health insurance for a while.  Our premiums were just over $800 a month for insurance that came with a 10K deductible and a 50% copay after that.  Routine medical care would never be covered, and for anything catastrophic, the hospitals would get their 50%, but the remaining debt would bankrupt us regardless.  I was puzzled why we were paying so much to protect the providers, and so, after a few months, we simply quit paying.  We received one notice from the insurance company, a form letter, which tells me that it wasn't unusual or unexpected of people to just quit paying.  Of all the money we have spent thus far making the transition to this new phase of life, I regret that money the most.

We were watching our retirement monies dwindle, and we started our little shop in part to be "self-employed" and to reduce our assets so at least we would qualify for the health care subsidies.   L was also concerned for my well being.  She thought that, without a purpose, I would go into a cycle of decline.  The shop was also conceived as a "purpose" for me and a way to become a part of the Mountain Home community.  We really believed the little shop would sustain itself, at least, and any "profits" would be reinvested to help build the inventory.

We enter into things, L and I, with such elation and misplaced optimism, and this was no exception. We really didn't expect to make big bucks off the business.  I am, perhaps, less concerned about a "purpose" for myself than L.  I really don't believe life or living has much in the way of a "purpose" or that God has some idea in mind for me in some grand design that I am obligated to take on faith.  I really believe, can't help but believe, this is it, and if there is anything resembling a purpose for us, it is to make this world, right here, right now, a better place to live.  Any rational human being would see immediately that doing so requires self-sacrifice and compassion for others.  I say "rational human being" with a sense of irony.  There is little in the way of rationality that the question, "well what about me?!?" and a sense of entitlement doesn't quickly dissolve.  BE asked me, when we fishing last, whether I was a religious man, and I had to answer, "no, not particularly."  If I were to make anything of contemporary religion, I would say it gives too facile an answer to the question "what about me?!?" and encourages a sense of entitlement at the expense of others outside the circle. The more fundamentalist versions also seem to justify the most destructive and cruel behavior -- raping apostate preadolescent girls in the name of God -- really?  I don't need or want a "purpose" beyond trying to navigate this existence with as much compassion as possible.  There is plenty that I can do to fill the time left to me.

So far as the Mountain Home community goes, there's no here hereabouts.  It's not yet a bedroom community to Boise, though there are some hopeful signs that it might develop in that direction.   The two customers we did have this week were both "new in town," and had come for reasons not unlike our own.  Because of the air base and the interstate, it's not exactly a true rural community either.  There are those, like BE, who are largely constrained to Mountain Home by an incipient poverty.  They really can't afford to go to Boise.  For the remainder (and I have heard myself say this on more than one occasion) Boise is 50 minutes away, but with the exception of gas and groceries, which one more or less needs locally, it's ONLY 50 minutes away.  Those constrained to Mountain Home  represent a growing American type.  They are Republican, not because the core polity of the Republican party will ever do anything at all for them, but because they are against gun control and social engineering in ways that progressives are not.  I would like to say they are fiercely independent, and they really believe they are indeed fiercely independent in the way the anthemic Hank Williams Jr song portrayed them in his song "a country boy can survive,"

I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun and a rifle and a four wheel drive
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive

Although the shells and powder may actually outlast the available game, I doubt that most "country boys" could cast their own shell casings or create their own powder should that not be the case, and it would take a goodly number of stills to keep a single "four wheel drive" in fuel.  These lyrics, of course, would have us believe in their independence, and it is not intended as ironic, but I hear it satirical anthem to a vast ignorance of the interdependence of life today, even for "country boys."

In reality the country boys are deeply dependent and entitled.  It would be interesting to see just what percentage of the local country boys are on some form of subsidy.  Some, like social security, have a contributory legitimacy to them, but many, like "disability," are questionable on an individual by individual basis.  A few of the customers who have come into the store, like BE, also like to tell the tale of the accident that precedes the check.  There's a perverse pride that goes with this, as if being a Darwin award finalist were an accomplishment, and it justifies a number of things, not least drug abuse, which oddly, in turn, helps justify the disability check.  Beyond that, there are a few farmers, but mostly they are odd job people (despite his disability, BE mows grass for pocket cash) or "pickers."

On the latter, our store-neighbor came in yesterday, all excited for us -- there was a big garage sale going on with lots of camping gear!  L and I had already talked about it.  The garage sale customers are either buying for the own use, in which case they wouldn't be customers in our store regardless, or they are "pickers" and will likely be looking for places to unload their "pickings," in which case they might come by the store.  They, of course, won't be customers for us, but expect us to be customers for their "pickings."  We could, I suppose, take it on consignment over the short term, but we won't be buying anything else -- it's consignment or nothing.  Probably mostly nothing.

Here's why.  L and I in the local spirit "picked" a few things at the last auction, but of the things we "picked," one tent was missing most of the pieces and the front flap zippers were all torn out, another was in better shape but also had a broken front flap zipper.  The first tent belonged in the landfill, and we sent it there a bit poorer, but wiser.  Shame on the person who sold us that tent, knowing it was unusable trash, but then again, shame on us.  We should have known better.  For the most part, there are few bargains in this world.  The cliche "one man's trash is another's treasure" is not often true.  More often, one man's trash is just, well, trash.  

The "pickers" remind me of so many magpies pecking away at road kill.  We didn't go into the shop to scavenge a buck, but to become part of a community -- a community that really doesn't much exist as a community.   Call it another optimistic fail in the long series of optimistic failures that have defined L's and my life together.  We're not going to move out of Mountain Home physically, at least not in the next couple of years, and we do like our little house here, but really that's about it.  My experience with the shop has made me feel even more disconnected, distanced emotionally and economically from this town.  If the momentum continues with Boise, there is some hope that Mountain Home will become a true bedroom community and gentrify, which will even further marginalize the locals, but that may not come to full fruition.  Boise isn't Chicago, and I don't know that Boise will turn Mountain Home into the next Naperville.  More likely, it will continue to be impoverished second cousin just down the road, a couple of pawn shops, a Walmart and some fast food gas stations on the interstate.  More likely it will persist in what feels like an ever diminishing state.

Meanwhile, the magpie pecks at the road kill

He says the highway dust is over all
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing, not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing?

I had an email exchange

with one MB yesterday.   He starts off with:

Chris, I remember talking to you about the fly boxes that you make. I think I remember you saying that you had to buy the inserts (foam) in a very large quantity. If that is right do you have some of them for sale. I have been thinking about making a few boxes just to try it but I cant seem to find the inserts. Can you let me know if you still have some of them and how much they would cost me to buy if you want to sell any.

That seems benign enough, and it really is.  MB is a local who, like so many others, survives on the edge of things.  He is small, about Lora's height, and wears a long thin beard that reminds me of beards in the paintings of Chinese sages.   His primary source of income is derived from a disability check (though his disability is not particularly apparent) with another source derived from picking furniture and "up-grading" what he picks.  He does have some imagination, and Lora even commented once on one of his pieces -- a bathroom vanity top that he placed on top of an old sewing machine stand.

I responded:

I do.  They're 1.75 a set for the cheap ones.  Full disclosure though, the hinges and the magnets are the expensive part.  If a fly Fisher is going to use it, he would not want hinges on the outside of the box that can catch in a vest pocket, ditto a latch.   A friction fit lid won't work either because he'll need to hold it in one hand while he takes the fly out with the other.  Also, just so you know, I haven't sold one yet in the shop.  People admire them, but don't buy them.  My last batch sold on eBay for 12.95, which with fees is about breakeven.  If you use exotics, not even close.  I might try again at Xmas ...

All of which is true.  When I first started making them, I priced them very low, at eBay's suggestion, on the assumption that they would bid up.  I was pretty naive at the time.  Though I'd remembered to include additional costs for postage, I didn't include eBay's final value fees (10 % of the final sale price) so when they sold at $9.95, I came close to losing money on them.  A set of 10 hinges cost about $10 with taxes, the two magnets are about 50 cents apiece, so about $3.00 in hardware alone.  I paid full freight on the inserts at $1.75, so now the cost is up to $4.75.  The cost of the epoxy for finish is a bit difficult to estimate, but it's about $1.00 per ounce, and it takes about an ounce, so now the cost of making it is up to $5.75.    I lost a dollar on postage and the final value, so the cost creeps up to $7.75.  I didn't include the cost of the wood because they were made from scraps and left-overs from past projects.  So I made about $2 each on something that took me about 5 hours of direct labor to make.  At the time, that was OK, because I enjoyed making them and sold them, not to make money, but to avoid having them pile up around the house and garage.

Here's what they look like:

At $9.95 they sold out.  When I listed them at $12.95, they sold sporadically, and some I had to re-list a couple of times before they sold.  So, $12.95 is about what the market would bear.  Here's why:

It's made in China, and sells on eBay for $9.61.  Shipping is less as well.  While we all decry the influx of cheap manufactured goods from China, those same cheap manufactured goods, it seems, place an upper limit on what most people are willing to pay.  Some are willing to go the extra few bucks for the cache of "handcrafted in Amuricah," or because mine are better (I think), but as my one customer would put it, "I don't have a problem paying less."

The real kicker, however, came in MB's response to me:

Hey, thanks for the info. I totally understand. Are you using barrel hinges or regular ones? I would probably do the magnets rather than a latch as well. I have done some jewelry boxes and used magnets for the latches. Do you use a router to cut out the insides or do you actually make tops, bottoms, and sides separately? I saw some plans on making them using a router and templates that looked like it isnt too hard. Using a router though with exotics would be a lot of waste of costly wood. I am sorry to hear that you havent sold any in the store yet. I think everything is hard in this little town especially when trying to make any money. You would think with all the fishing around here that there would be more call for stuff like yours.

He wants me to tell him how to make the boxes?  OK, so I can do that, but why would I allow him to encroach on my territory?   He has already told me, "I cant seem to find the inserts."   That tells me, of course, that he has already looked for them elsewhere, and is coming to me as a last resort or as a convenience.  I want to tell him, "figure it out," but what the hell.  I can tell him.  I'm the one after all who opened the door by talking about the costs of hardware and the like.  So I responded:

Yes, we’ve got the inserts in the shop, and yes 5 mm barrel hinges from Woodcraft.  They’re the only one’s that I’ve found with small enough hinges.  If the sides are more than 1/4 wide, the boxes start to look really really clunky.  The magnets are 5 mm as well, from a different source.  My boxes are multi step.  The sides are mitered separately and glued up — then routed to fit the foam inserts and reduce the width (itself a three step process) — then tops and bottoms attached — then routed for the edge banding and banded and sometimes inlaid (just like purfling and rosette on a guitar) — then cut apart — then finished and fitted.  I don’t route it out of a solid chunk of wood, but my way is pretty labor intensive and if you finish the way I do, with a clear epoxy on the face, it’s about a weeklong process and with so many steps, a few fails.

The sympathy, the "I am sorry to hear ..." is a bit cloying, however, because of what follows:

Hey, while I am thinking of it did you ever get some fly tying classes going yet? I think I want to try tying some for myself. I dont have any of the equiptment or supplies for it yet but my birthday is coming up towards the end of Sept and my wife knows I would like to get some stuff to do it. Do you carry any of the starter tying kits? I got a few pink albert flies from Zac at the farmers market a couple weeks ago. They worked great at crane falls lake and at little roaring river lake at trinity lakes. (that is where there are 4 little lakes you can drive right up too about 18 miles up from featherville idaho. I went to the south fork yesterday but the pink alberts were not working there. I still have to figure out how to match the hatch better. ( I really dont know how to do that very well yet). As far as the inserts for the fly boxes goes do you have them in the store? I may come in next week and get some from you and maybe I can admire your boxes like everyone else does.

This bit about the tying lessons too is cloying for a whole host of reasons, but mostly the line "I got a few pink albert flies from Zac at the farmers market a couple weeks ago."  He's talking to me like I'm his fishing buddy, but I'm not.  I'm the guy with the fly shop, and he has never been in the shop, not once, when he didn't have some piece of yard sale junk that he wanted to sell to me.  He has exhausted his search for the inserts, and now wants them from me as a convenient last resort, but buys the few things he does buy from Zac at the farmer's market.  OK, but really dude?

This is a kick in the shins for a couple of reasons.  Zac owned the previous fly shop that we replaced.  I reached out to Zac several times, inviting him to help supply the shop with inventory, and I would have paid him for it, but he never really responded.  Zac  (this might be a bit unfair because I've never met him) is one of the fly fishing snobs who could have helped, but didn't.  I could understand why he didn't.  I could understand some resentment on his part of the "who do they think they are" sort, and I could understand why he would sell at the farmer's market, and I can even understand why MB might buy some flies from him, but what I can't understand is why MB would tell me that he bought flies from him when he has (or ought to) know that I'm in the business of selling flies.  Really dude, is your sympathy just so much polite crap or are you really that dense?

I spent a whole academic career pretending that I hadn't suffered an insult, and they were clearly intentional and biting and as personal as they could make them.  I really can't tell if MB is coding a message a not.  Probably not.  He probably really is that irony deficient, but either way, intentional or not, I'm also sick unto death of pretending that I haven't suffered an insult.  My response to this part of the message is perhaps a bit petty:

Glad Zac’s flies worked for you, but that might help explain something.  So far as lessons are concerned, we’re debating starting in September, but don’t want to make a firm commitment at this time.  May just go fishing instead.  Zac (or someone) might be offering some through the Rec Center.  Go or no go, however, I do have starter kits ... 

which I will likely sell at a discount on eBay when we close the shop.  To be frank, I really don't care one way or the other if I see him in the shop, and actually hope my response is politely off-putting enough to keep him out.  Really dude, f-off, you're not my buddy and you haven't even been a customer.  Go find your inserts the same way I did from Cabelas, from Idaho Angler, from Zac for all I care.  It's not rocket science.      

I'm a deficient human being

and I've felt that way most of my life, at least the life I can remember.  I'm not sure, exactly, what the deficiency might be, though here and there I have met people imperious enough to offer their take on the matter, but none of the explanations struck me with an "ah-so-that's-it" sort of enlightenment.  I just know that I'm not the sort of person that gets invited to much of anything.  My dad was asking why I so suddenly threw over my academic career, and I told him that "I'm not the sort of person that gets invited to play golf."  I'm not the sort of person that others let in on the secret plans.  I'm just not, and my defense mechanism is to pretend an insouciant attitude, but I threw over my academic career in part because I could not stand the thought of being lied to, knowing all along the not-so-secret secret, pretending yet again that I was oblivious, smiling, and "supporting" those with held power over me, and doing so without apparent irony.  We all, I think, can imagine what it must be like to live in a dictatorship, where survival necessitates accepting the not-so-secret secret and plugging on.

Lora thought that opening a shop, where we were our own "bosses" would be different.  She also thought that we could become a part of the community, but I'm pretty sure we can't escape ourselves that easily.  I think our little shop is struggling in part because, well, we're not the sort of people who get invited to the party, and those who could have helped, haven't.  We're no longer military, and so no longer really a part of that group.  We're also not locals, demonstrably so, and we don't have enough life left to become local.  Lora mentioned once that there may be some resentment of the "who do they think they are" sort with the locals.  "They think they can just move into town and ..."

There may be some truth to the resentment.   I have heard repeatedly about "the judge," for example, who has a reputation around the area as the "fly fisherman" supreme, but he hasn't deigned to visit our shop.  A couple of his self-professed friends have visited, and for the most part turned their noses up at us.  They are the fly fishing snobs, the cool local kids, offering up suggestions about everything from our location to high end inventory, neither of which we could begin to afford, and neither of which would have made a significant difference.  Yes, it would be great to be located on highway 20, but rental rates out by Walmart are three times what they are in our depressed little downtown.  Yes, it would be great if we could carry a selection of $700 rods and $300 reels from an American manufacturer (Sage), but we didn't have $30 or $40K to invest in rods and reels that few in Mountain Home could afford anyway.  Such help isn't really help.  It's helpful in the way that "be more athletic" or "be prettier" is helpful to the geeky guys and plain girls in middle school.  And besides, even if we could and had followed their advice, they still wouldn't trade with us.  We would be marginally closer to their level of cool, but no matter where we go, there we are.  We're still not going to be invited to the party, and we're really not going to become a part of the community.  

So, yesterday we were again without customers in our little shop.  Two people did stop in, both wanting to sell us something.  One was a kid who wanted to sell us health insurance for our "employees."  I wanted to say, "really dude, two seconds in our shop should have revealed that we don't have employees and even if we did giving them health insurance wouldn't be an option.  We can't even afford health insurance for ourselves."  The other was also a kid who started out with "do you have a wife or girlfriend?"  He wanted to sell me make-up.  Again, I wanted to say, "really dude, you come into a fly shop and want to sell its owner make-up?"  They both seemed like decent kids, uncomfortable in ill-fitting dress clothes, and a bit desperate.  You do want to help them out, but don't know how.  There was one potential customer, but he didn't buy anything and promised to be back.  I doubt that he will be, but one never knows.  Still the ratio holds, for every customer, or even potential customer, there are at least two who have tried to sell us something.

In truth, I have already given up.  Lora has been scrambling of late, trying to put together enough money to meet our basic living expenses.  It breaks my heart to see her doing that, again, and so there is nothing left to invest in our shop, emotionally or otherwise.  We will pay the next six months' rent, and that will come out of our living expenses. We'll keep plugging along trying this or that, hoping for a miracle, but right now the shop isn't producing enough revenue to pay for its basic expenses -- rent, utilities, phone -- much less replace inventory, much less expand inventory to anything that would be closer to the snob's level of cool.   The basic math of small business is this: at a mark-up of 100 percent, you need to sell 2 times your basic expenses to break even and replace inventory.  Our basic expenses come to about $750 per month, so we would need to sell about $1500 a month to "break-even."  Right now, we're selling about $500 a month, so we're just too far from the mark.  I just can't see our sales tripling, no matter what we do.  We'll pay the remainder of the year's lease on the shop, but quietly close down just before Christmas not to re-open.   I am adamant about one thing -- no "going out of business" sale.   I'll dump the remaining inventory on eBay at a discount off retail, and I'm pretty sure I can recoup some of our losses, but I will not allow the vultures of Mountain Home to pick over the bones of our little shop the way they did Nancy's shop.

We had a couple

of legitimate customers on Saturday.  One bought a used reel with line, and another bought a used rod and reel set.  Together they spent about $132, which didn't quite rescue the week, but made it not a complete disaster.  They were both locals, middle class, but one did reveal that he had been to Walmart, didn't like what he saw, and decided then to pop into our store.  The other was just looking for a cheaper reel, and got what he was after.

The electrical fly tying vise, surprisingly, sold quite quickly on eBay.  I thought it would be a stretch, but it sold to a woman in Boise, without a best offer, at $60 with additional for postage.  I also sold a tying table on eBay for about $40.  Add it all together, that's about $232 in sales for the week, which is still below where we need to be, but closer.  

Sunday was spent in Boise.  We bought blinds for the bunny-room window, and our bedroom.  Monday was spent on the South Fork.  

I was completely skunked, but that's not surprising.  I haven't quite figured out how to fish the South Fork.   Those that fish it most during the summer, do so from a drift boat, but that really means a "fishing buddy," someone to man the oars of the boat while I fish, and vice versa.  If I'm honest with myself, I really don't like fishing with someone else -- the possible exception being Lora -- and I'm sure people pick that up.  For me, catching fish is the pretext for being on the river, the point of which is not so much social, but spiritual.   A real "fishing buddy" would need to be something of a soul mate, and I doubt that it's possible to find that in a male friend at this point in my life.  I could go on about finding someone who shares my "deeper values" and the like, but I'd start to sound a bit like an eHarmony commercial and creep myself out.  Most of the language that surrounds human connection has been cheapened, some commercially, some through pop-psyc analysis, some from over use, including the cliched words "soul mate," but there are few other words available to point at the experience of a deeper human connection. 

Also, if I'm honest with myself, I really don't like people much.  I'm going to mangle the quotation, which I should attribute to Charles Schulz, but like Linus, I love mankind, it's people I can't stand.  My biggest complaint is an endemic irony deficiency -- that is to say, it's a bit like snoring.  I'm told I snore, and I have no reason to disbelieve it, but I can't hear it.  Likewise, most (without doubt including me) cannot see the irony in their on words and actions.  A related complaint is an equally endemic narcissism.  When I say that Donald Trump, for example, exemplifies most of what is wrong with this country today (and yet seems to be leading in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination) I am referring to his irony deficient narcissism.  He feels free, for example, to make the most disparaging remarks about others -- the controversy of late around his remarks about women a point in case -- but woe unto those that make disparaging remarks about him, that challenge his view of himself as a man of genius, a man who has it all figured out, because, well, look, he's very very rich.  He'll tweet them to death.  

The last two people who fished with me both suffered from a irony deficient narcissism.  The one, from Salt Lake, was just an ass through and through.  He was the husband of my wife's friend, and while he felt free to berate her one day when she suggested that social security was a part of our retirement plan.  "So you'll be one who's living on the government dole, my tax dollars," he said, and went on to characterize "people like her who ..."  Lora held her tongue, but she knew that he accepted money from his parents to make his house payment and send their daughter to private school.  That pretty much put the kibosh on her friendship.  The other, a local who grew up here in Mountain Home, took me out in his drift boat.   Frankly, I like him well enough, and he spent most of him time on the boat rowing for me as she shouted casting instructions.  He completely lacks filters, and says whatever crosses his mind, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't deal well with anything that challenged his view of himself as a "rock-star around here."  I didn't feel the need to challenge it, and suspect it's been challenged enough as it is.  

In the meantime, I haven't figured out how to fish the South Fork ...     

So, yesterday

we had three customers come into the shop.  Actually, customer is a misnomer because none actually spent any money.   We have been skunked all week, and counting last week, that makes five full days without anyone buying anything.  We either grotesquely over-estimated the market for our product, are offering the wrong thing at the wrong place, or more likely some combination of the two.  We need to make on average $75 a day to meet basic expenses like rent and to replace the inventory sold to meet the expenses.  So far, this month, we're about $55 a day below that mark.  Unless something strange and miraculous happens, we can't continue and I've spent most of the week grieving for the death of our still born little store.

At any rate, four people came into the store.  The first was a local.  He pulled up in front in a battered pickup, and he had two equally battered fishing rods and a bait canister in the back.  He is one of the essential elements of the junk recycling business around Mountain Home, a self professed "picker."  He had picked the rods up at a yard sale.  He called them vintage, but there was nothing really "vintage" about them, unless age alone makes for "vintage."  The rods were not in horrible shape -- the ferrules were still intact which is a plus -- but the rods were probably $20 rods new, before they had lived their useful life in the back of someone's pickup, and he wanted $5 for the both of them.  I bought them, on the promise that he had other cool stuff more related to actual fly fishing, but then again, I doubt that I'll see him again and honestly don't care if I do.

The second too was a local, and another self-professed picker.  He too pulled up in a slightly less battered pickup, and he too had something he wanted to sell me.  This time, though, he had something of actual interest, if not value.  It was an "electrical fly tying vise" manufactured by a company in Boise, that lasted, from what I can gather, about 10 years from about 1990 to 2000.   It basically is a fly tying vise that spins under electrical power.  I can't actually imagine using such a device.  A rotary vise is a useful tool in fly tying, but the effort it takes to wrap the yarn around a hook is minimal.  It doesn't really save labor and I can't see how the electrical power would improve precision, so I'm not really surprised that it was in pristine condition.  Nevertheless, there it was, an "electrical fly tying vise," manufactured in Boise.   He paid less than $20 for it, but wanted $50.  I told him I could try to sell it for him on consignment at that price, but that I couldn't buy it.  It might go for that price as a curiosity to a collector, but that's about it.  I'll post it on eBay and see what happens.

The third too was a local, though not a picker, just an elderly man who, as he put, "came in to check up on me," as though he had some proprietary interest in me and the store.  There are three or four old men who stop in when their wives or daughters are next door at Sherri's store or across the street at the Thrift store.  He rambled on about this and that, and told me about the flies he had bought at Walmart last week and how he had used them on the South Fork of the Boise River.  I'm not sure he actually bought flies at Walmart or that he had been to the South Fork anytime in the near past -- in fact, I'm pretty sure he hadn't -- but he was elderly, and just happy to have someone's ear for a moment, so I do my best to be patient and listen.

The fourth was a military guy, and he promised to be back tomorrow.  He may, or may not, be back, but he was the only one all week who had any potential of being an actual customer, so the ratio is holding at about two to one -- for every potential customer, there are at least two who have no intent of spending any money in the store, but want money from me.  That's not counting the robo calls I get, like clockwork, from people wanting to save me money on just about everything, but nothing that I need or want.  I like the one where a slightly arrogant man with an Indian accent asks to speak to the manager in a demanding voice, and when I reveal that I am the manager, he's put off script, and when I tell him "you call every day, at the same time, and every day I tell you no," he's put further off script and just hangs up.  The next day, same thing.

At any rate, four people came into the store and four left without a purchase, so another day skunked, and I'm working on an entire week.   In the meantime, Lora got a job as a home health and hospice provider.  I do so admire and love that woman.  Her interview was yesterday, in Boise, and she thought she'd blown it out of nervousness, but he's articulate, intelligent, and caring.  That surely came through, and they called back the same day.  

I doubt that anyone

will see this blog, so I will be as candid as I can be.  At this juncture, I should probably say something along the lines of "I really don't care what people think," but anyone who says that is lying.  We all care what others think, and it's a perverse form of narcissism to claim that you don't.  It's as if to say, "I have arrived at a form of perfection that you, perhaps, are too stupid to admire."  That, essentially, is the claim that Donald Trump is making about the American people, that those who do admire him are in accord with his magnificence, those that don't are losers, too stupid to admit their own inferiority.  I don't admire him, think him the harbinger of everything that is wrong with this country, but then perhaps he is right.  I am a loser, though I hope I'm not so stupid as to deny or hide my own inferiority.

Here's the thing.  I live in Mountain Home, Idaho, recently voted the "worst place to live in Idaho."  There are reasons for that.  We've lived here a little over a year, so my view is not deeply, deeply nuanced, but there are some things that do stand out.  First, the military base -- Mountain Home AFB.  It is an enclave that sits about nine miles outside of town and is the main economic base of the city.  If there is a middle class in Mountain Home, it's found there, among the enlisted and officers of the base, though that might be a stretch.  Second,  the "locals" -- the people who "grew up in mountain home."  They are rural folk, living either on the edge of poverty.  They are the toothless, tattooed, people of Walmart with questionable standards of hygiene and an attitude that would be easily recognized on the streets of LA or Chicago or NY.  They constitute a gang of sorts, a loosely affiliated group with a shared set of xenophobic fuck-you-all attitudes that substitute "survival skills" for "street smarts."  Their iconic hero would be Darryl from the Walking Dead.  The military people tend to look down on the locals, the locals tend to depend upon and consequently resent the military.  It's a classic story.

There is a third group, the "ex-pats" -- those are the folks who own property or farmland in the surround, but live in Boise and commute, treating the community as a bedroom.  Many of the AF folks, particularly the officers, fit into this category as well.  There is, perhaps, a fourth group, the "might was well be ex-pats," those that live here, but live in willful ignorance of the present decay.  The people who fill the "government" posts in the town likely fit into these category.

I will come back to them, but the basic attitudes of the town are divided between condescension and resentment.  The economic life the town is likewise divided between Walmart and what I call the junk re-cyclers.   Here, I have an admission to make.  My wife and I, wanting to finally put down some real roots and become a part of a community, did a really, really, really stupid thing.  We opened a small business.  It's a sporting goods store, focused on a passion of mine -- fly fishing.  We really had modest expectations, but even those have been disappointed for reasons that now are obvious.  Yesterday, I had three people come into the shop.  One was a local looking for flippers.  He had picked up a float tube at a garage sale, and was now looking for flippers.  He had already checked at Walmart and the thrift store across the street from our shop, and came in on the off chance that we might have some.  We didn't.  Another was a set of locals.  They had evidently caught a bunch of perch at CJ strike, a reservoir near us, and were looking for a filet board so they could "fill their freezer."  They too had already checked at the thrift store and Walmart, and had come in on the off chance that we might have one.  We didn't.  The last was a military guy and his son.  He looked around, complemented the store, and said he would be back.  It's likely that he will, and he'll make a small purchase, but it'll all be too little, too late for us.  I'll stick it out until the end of December, but I've decided that I'm done then.  We'll quietly close our store, and I'll sell the inventory, or what I can of it, on eBay.

Walmart made a fundamental change in the town.  The long term locals recognize it and resent Walmart in some of the same ways that they resent the military.  Before Walmart, the downtown area of Mountain Home was thriving.  After Walmart, it is pretty much a ghost town.  There are a few struggling bars, and restaurants, and a liquor store, but the remainder mostly offer predatory "financial services."   On our block, there is an empty store front, a consignment/used furniture store, us, a branch mortgage office, a quicky loan office, an empty store, another empty store, an engraver, and a day-care.  In the six months that we've been open, two of the store fronts emptied out, one was a real estate agent, another was another consignment/used clothing store.  When our store closes, there will be yet another empty storefront.  Since we have been in business, an antique store and an appliance store have closed down, leaving large empty store fronts on parallel streets where the story is much the same.  The downtown area of mountain home is depressed and depressing unless, of course, you are a fan of dive bars and tattoo parlors.   Any small business that sells anything that Walmart sells (or could sell) quickly went out of business.   While they don't have much in the way of fly fishing, they do have a very modest selection of flies that sell at or below my cost.  As one customer (who didn't buy anything) put it, "I don't have a problem paying less at Walmart."  Those that resent Walmart, nevertheless, don't have a problem paying less.

The appliance store is somewhat the same story with a twist.  They went out of business, in large part, because you can go on line, order a refrigerator from Lowes, and have it delivered in Mountain Home Even with a delivery fee, it's cheaper than one bought in town.  The businesses that still exist in Mountain Home sell things that Walmart doesn't sell or Lowes won't deliver or that can't be bought on line, and the large corporate structures have pretty much made the small mom & pop a thing of history.

The other business that still has a place in Mountain Home is what I call the junk re-cycler.  The thrift store, of course, is in this business.  The thrift store takes donations, puts a price tag on them, and re-sells them.  On the assumption that one man's trash is another's treasure, people are in and out of the thrift store all day long buying other people's cast offs on the assumption that they're getting a "deal."  They may even feel that they're "helping," because ostensibly the thrift stores exists, as their web-site puts it, to "generate a stable source of funding to help support our therapeutic programs and services.  That's the reason we have thrift store in the first place -- to raise money to help the kids who need us, regardless of they family's ability to pay for services."  They are the third largest retailer in town and reality, of course, is often otherwise.  The used items are priced at or above new retail at a place like Walmart.  Perception, though, is the rule, and like my customer, who didn't have a problem paying less at Walmart, they don't have a problem buying something used for less if they think they're getting a deal.   I wonder too, altruistically, what percentage of the revenue generated by such stores goes directly to "help the kids" and how much to "overhead."  Even if all the profits go to "help the kids," it is nevertheless a thriving economic concern that supports a large overhead of under paid (or unpaid) workers who can only afford to shop at Walmart and, you guessed it, the thrift store.

As cheap junk from Walmart is re-cycled through the thrift store, Mountain Home itself begins to look increasingly threadbare and trashy and ultimately irrelevant while those with money isolate themselves more and more from those that don't.  Don't kid yourself.  A good and growing portion of America is beginning to look more and more like Mountain Home.   At least Mountain Home has the Air Base ...