Safety, sterility, and the general store

Today I ended up needing gas in Nowheresville, PA (also known as Ruff Creek). The interstate sign promised me a BP station (and nothing else) and the car was down to one bar... so off we went to the local BP.

The BP sign was fresh and green, bright cheery 21st century advertising. We're used to it. But what was unusual was how it stood out, garish against the muted landscape. Expecting the standard gas and go quickie mart next to the filling station, I was a little surprised to see that the sign next to the BP sign, was a rusted 1950's vintage general store sign. The building itself was a little dilapidated, but having need of a bottle of water, I wondered in. Passing the bags of dog food on display that gave the shop the air of a feed store and opening the door, I was greeted by a scent I couldn't quite place. After a few steps, my foot slipped a little, a quick adjustment, a look down... the wooden floor had recently been oiled. Ah, that was the scent. A fifties era painted tin sign told me I could get my hunting license at the counter. It was an old-fashioned country store, and I had stepped back in time.

Most people would drive on by. If my tank hadn't been empty I would have too. Surely no one other than the fuel desperate would have much reason to pull off at metropolitan Ruff Creek (no doubt pronounced "crick"). Surely passers by don't often wonder into general stores whose exterior blends into the landscape, where the dilapidated facade fails to call to strangers. But inside the welcome was warm, the atmosphere worth the trip alone.

I found the contrast shocking. How long has it been since you stepped into a general store with fresh oiled wood floors? Usually they floors are all the same, industrial tile. The goods are all the same, prepackaged, premeasured.

In Pennsylvania, farmers markets are endangered by legislation which tries to measure out food "safety" so that large corporations give us our pre-packaged, premeasured sterility. While local famers, markets out of time, wood floored general stores are driven out of business by the same "safety" concerns that drove used clothing stores to close over legislated fears over lead paint on children's buttons. (If my kid is eating buttons I have bigger worries than a microscopic amount of lead.) We worship at the idol of safety, sterility, conformity.

Relationships aren't safe... exchanging greetings with my favorite Korean grocier, the general store clerk, the farmer who grew my produce... but relationships, and the risks involved in them, actually produce more safety than TSA, FDA, the CDC or whatever government agency has been charged with "public safety" today. Instead of stabbing an innoculation for every passing germ into my children's and my own flesh, buying soulless prepackaged measured "nutrition" and shopping only in brightly lit, standard issue Targets and Walmarts, I'd rather support the local mom-and-pop shop, eat a little dirt along with a fresh garden carrot, slurp up a little local honey from the county fair.

And maybe in the short-run I may catch a little bug now and then, but in the long run, germs build immunities... and that's a metaphor for life.