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.
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