Shared Realms

Yesterday I walked about a mile and a half to the East Sac Hardware store, plantar fasciitis and all, to buy some lawn mower wheels. My mower is fifteen years old, has no throttle control, a replaced carburetor, a handle held in place by four pipe clamps, and now, I drove it till the wheels fell off...literally. Every one of my neighbors would have ditched it years ago and replaced it with a cheap imported mower. Then 6 years later, they'd be buying another cheap imported mower.

Nice that I have an option, here at work, not to have to drive to the hardware store. I rode the bike into work, walked to get my lunch and wheels, and did it all with virtually no direct energy purchases. That's what pre-WWII communities provide -- and what everything built since has failed to provide.

In Elk Grove, we have no hardware stores. Only 120,000 sq ft depots, all three of which are located miles away from everyone. Your only option is to drive, and they stock them to the rafters with cheap imports. 7" imported Chinese injection molded plastic lawnmower wheels, and if you don't like it, tough shit. That's all they offer, and you're gonna take it, stupid Amelican consumer.

And you know, I was able to buy 8" steel wheels at this local-owned shop yesterday. These will last longer than the rest of my mower, sad to say, but that's the point. Merikan made, and only marginally more expensive. And the profits I paid to the store will stay local, not shipped off to fatten CEO/CFO/CIO salaries, bonuses, compensation packages, stock options, and severances in Atlanta, GA or Morresville, NC.

This is hugely important to your Franklin Monologueonian. I chatted with the owner as he led me in the backroom to hunt down these wheels. I asked how long he'd been there -- twenty seven years himself. The thing is, he takes care of two buildings in East Sacramento -- his own home and his business. What is the probability that an associate manager at Lowe's gives a damn about his business' tilt-up building? He doesn't, and when the next predatory depot-sized store opens up a few miles away offering an additional dollar and a quarter an hour, off he goes.

This hardware storefront abuts the sidewalk, something illegal in Elk Grove and damn near everywhere else in this auto centric nation because of our setback requirements. This makes the sidewalk something people are willing to use, even if they never enter this store, because it contains, it encloses, it makes the street a decent place to walk. Not a fucking no-mans-land some two hundred and eighty seven feet from a depot entrance. Along this street there are sufficiently large tree plantings and parallel parked cars that provide a physical buffer between anyone walking on the sidewalk and fast moving cars on Folsom Blvd. Cars and pedestrians share this realm. Spend a few minutes walking from the sidewalk at a Home Depot to their store entrance and discover how the pedestrian striped markers are never contiguous, and how you get to dodge motor vehicles driven by inattentive consumers if you're stupid enough to be walking in.