John Butleron the perils of discount shopping
There is a small, well-preserved town in New Hampshire called Bedford with so many visual elements of American mythology that wandering through it has the quality of a dream. Stars and Stripes flutter on the porches of painted wooden-frame houses, and basketball hoops are nailed above garage doors. No one has ever shouted in one of my dreams, and Bedford has that dreamlike sense of quiet. You never caught a glimpse of someone throwing a basketball at the hoop.
My parents lived there for two years, and I visited during college holidays. I recall exploring the landscape in my mother's car and trying to figure out if I could make it all the way down to New York and, if so, whether I would find parking. I drove past field after field of hay, and an occasional man harvesting sweetcorn. It was hard to figure out where everyone was if they weren't where I was. I was pretty much everywhere, looking for something to do.
Though they are barely distinct on the map, Bedford to New York was out of the question - but there was enough exotica to interest me within the four walls of my new home. This colonial-style mansion was a corporate let, twin carports accessible through automatic doors, an indoor barbecue in the kitchen, a jacuzzi upstairs and some other son's weights in the basement. I was cutting grass aboard a ride-on lawnmower for the first time when a neighbour strode across the garden with his hand outstretched. Trying to brake, I pressed the accelerator, and nearly sliced his toe off.
My parents never saw Mr Mortimer again, and this was significant. It's hard to overstate just how much everyone kept themselves to themselves in Bedford; just how little company could be found. If you went for a drink it was to the local restaurant, and although the state motto of New Hampshire is "Live free or die", the person you were drinking with had to present himself at the bar before the barman would pour two drinks for you. The locus of the community was the church - and if not the church a more democratic institution: the mall.
On these visits I felt like a beneficiary of the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Clothes were so cheap and of such good quality that we ran around the store, scooping up bundles of them. Return policies were tilted aggressively in favour of the buyer, so that you could buy something one day, notice an 80 per cent discount on the same item the next day, collect the difference in price and use it to buy another item, which was then further reduced, and so on. The vortex of infinite reduction was disorienting. Were you being paid to shop? I got to know sales assistants stationed kilometres apart, in the huge, derelict malls with echoing Muzak. I told the woman at the aftershave counter that I was from Ireland, and she replied that she also knew someone from Iowa.
In menswear a heavy-set Italian-American watched with sad eyes as I wandered through his section. Lou had braced himself for disappointment until I bought a dapper wool suit for $80. When I returned it the next day, for a further discount, he seemed genuinely pleased for me. How can you hustle for business in an empty store on the edge of a town by a freeway, in a small state near Canada?
Since returning home my parents have formed an understandable connection to Bedford, with its miraculous tonal shift between summer and fall, the hauntingly beautiful backdrop of forest and rock. They love it because they don't have to live there. Last winter I flew from Los Angeles to Boston's Logan airport, returning to Bedford with my parents and two sisters for a shopping trip masquerading as a holiday. Wisely, I had been enlisted as the driver, because any of the passengers would have slammed the car into a brick wall if they thought a bargain of any kind were to be found behind it.
Our holiday found itself a nice, organic groove. In the morning we would eat a buffet breakfast at the hotel, then find John proper coffee. Thus fortified, I would point the car along a pristine motorway bisecting the New England forest, towards an outlet town. My job was to see if I could inspire enough confidence for at least one passenger to momentarily release their grip on the door handles. This meant driving below the speed limit and holding the car straight while being overtaken on all sides by honking trucks loaded with discount sweatshirts. If I had to overtake, a chorus of voices would remind me of the speed limit. Rather than taking it as a comment on my driving, I chose to believe that the barely controlled level of tension within the car was caused by retail anxiety, and it would require a valve sooner rather than later.
Upon our arrival, shoppers vanished into retail venues. Dad and I would wait in the parking lot - engine running - while inside the womenfolk committed daylight robbery, toting weak dollars at helpless cashiers. It sounds like sinful materialist worship, but these clothes were for kids, the joy was in giving, the list compiled during the course of another year living in our overpriced economy.
After a while I would do some low-level mooching myself, and run into a sister - the top of her head visible above a mound of discount childrenswear. She would grant me a few minutes to speak, but her eyes would remain glassy throughout, focused on the wall behind me. I would speak and she would scan racks, crunching numbers of size, discount, dollar and euro. She would meet my eyes to read the verdict, then vanish, lost again to the racks of eternal knitwear.
John Butler blogs at http://lozenge.wordpress.com