Need a nice place for your retail business?

The venue for Sunday's party was this building in Frankfort.











History would doubtless suggest that this facility was once known as the Bankable Building.  Bankable, if I am not mistaken, was a cigar brand.









The locals know the building as the National Cigar Company, the home of El Verso Cigars.  Cigars were rolled here for 96 years.  At times in its history, the company employed up to 150 people here.  When they closed the doors in March 2015 seventeen employees lost their jobs.  Federal taxes were cited by the owners as a principal factor in the decision to close.

There now remains but one cigar factory in the United States.  It is located in Tampa, Florida.

This building was recently purchased by BBBH's granddaughter and her husband, Crystal and Chris Reichert.  They are making plans to develop a group of boutiques, artisans, and cafes to occupy the acre of floor space available.

The listing agent named here is BBBH's d.i.l.

Disaster for Small Town Shoppers

   

In a stunning surprise move, Alco announced today that they are closing their stores.  In our community, the announcement came by way of placard men standing on street corners.  I think it safe to say that virtually no one expected this.

Big deal, you who live in urban areas might be thinking, you who have such a plethora of shopping venues that it is hard for you to pick the one you will start with.  Not that way here.  "You have moved me to a place that doesn't even have a Walmart," BBBH wails betimes.  However she has adapted to small-town living and she typically visits Alco several times per month.  I mean, even I visit Alco, should I need a ream of copy paper or a can of coffee.

And now what is left?  Drugstores and a Dollar General; and by the way, Dollar General and its ilk have been credited largely with the financial woes of Alco.  Things change; and as I have been fond of pointing out for the past half-century, not all change is progress.

What about a half-century ago in this town?  Shopping opportunities virtually unlimited, and most merchants clustered around the courthouse square.  J.C. Penney, Danner's Five and Dime, Gambles, three jewelry stores, two shoe stores, a haberdashery, two women's boutiques, a great office supply store, a furniture store, hardware and drug stores, and a bunch a more, as we are fond of saying, all within steps of each other.  All gone.  Wait.  Not quite.  We still have a jewelry store and two hardware stores downtown, and just around the corner is, you guessed it, a Dollar General.

Yes, you might ask of me, but would you go back to that time in exchange for the conveniences of today?  In a heartbeat!  And I would be better off in ways too numerous to list.  Well, for the most obvious thing, I'd be thirty years old again, wouldn't I?

Alco was founded by Alva Duckwall in Abilene, Kansas in 1901.  Today they are closing all 198 of their stores  spread across 23 states.

Labor Day

 Labor Day was established in the latter part of the nineteenth century* in recognition of laborers.  It has become a holiday, presumably a day in which the laborer can lay aside the burdens of his work for at least that day.

Here's an irony.  Now we have that probably one-quarter of all laborers in the US work in retail concerns.  Retail sales on Labor Day have become such a large part of the industry that the day is second only to Black Friday in dollar volume.+  Now who makes the transactions? Why, the laborers who work in retail. And not only do they work on this, their holiday, but many of them are required to work extended hours!

Happy Labor Day, y'all!

*1894
+Or so I read somewhere.

Shopping

We drove the fifteen miles to the Lowe's this afternoon.  Could have bought local, but in this instance I wanted the brand-name.  We have had an Insinkerator disposal fourteen years with no stoppages, leakages, or other difficulties.  Until now.  It leaks.  I mean, it has withstood the pressures of our garbage for a very long time, so no big surprise.  We all get a little corroded after exposure to the detritus of our lives, so why should the disposal not suffer similarly?  Clearly, I wanted to replace it with an Insinkerator.

One stop, one purchase, and on the way home again.

However.  I fell into conversation with the salesperson of whom I had asked directions to the desired item.  (I hate big-box stores.  But I digress.  And repeat myself.)  When he discovered we lived in Perfect, he grilled me as to my "native/alien" bonafides.  I told him I had lived in Perfect for 44 years, so I felt I was qualified to be designated a Perfectonian.  "Not so," he said.  "If you weren't born there, didn't go to school there, you are still an alien."  He further asserted that as he had been born and educated in Perfect that he, though he has not lived there in over forty years, was still a Perfectonian.  He then asked how I was "accepted" and we had a lively and interesting discussion, which revealed among other things, common acquaintances.  One of his classmates had been my closest associate in my professional endeavors; another had been a member of the staff I supervised.  Further conversation revealed that he had earned an MBA  in the pursuit of his goals.  I said it was not every day I encountered an MBA on the sales floor at Lowes.

"Oh," he assured me, "you would be surprised.  I have a good friend who has a PhD and is similarly employed.  The retail world is rife with over-educated sales personnel."

It was an interesting afternoon.  I found entertainment in a place I would least expect to find it.