“Northampton shop”

A 1972 forest-green Oldsmobile Cutlass drives North along Route 30 to the great Sacandaga lake. The car belonged to her grandfather recently departed. The first sister has her apartment in Massachusetts, where a white cat waits for her. Like the first sister, the cat enjoys travel and each other’s company. They value independence. To achieve this, she works for three different newspapers and also a part-time job at a pharmacy to afford a tiny little apartment. The apartment is in a converted barn on the border of Massachusetts and Rhode Island near Fall River. But it makes her independent, and independence is a gift. The first sister, like the grandfather, looked at the struggle of self-reliance as a virtue, not a handicap. Today she is driving up to meet the rest of the family at the summer camp. A Boston Globe press pass is attached to her purse; she is, at last, her own person. 

  She started her drive in the late morning. It was one of those beautiful mornings in upstate New York. In high summer, trees are green against a cobalt blue sky with low humidity and little puffs of clouds floating by from the west. Route 30 heads due north, and after passing the village of Broadalbin, the Adirondack mountains open in a vista before her. It’s a picture of a perfect drive on a perfect day that you would see on a cover of a travel brochure. A day that only occurs once or twice and always in late July or early August. As she talks to her passenger, one of the younger brothers more interested in swimming in the lake and being in the boat, she gets a picture of the perfectness of her surroundings. Working as a reporter, she is always looking for a story, and because ideas come from local papers, she wants to get a newspaper.

As she passes the town of Northampton, she starts looking for a shop or store. At last, she sees what looks like an old barn at first, but as she drives closer, she sees the sign that says open. “let’s stop here; I want to get a newspaper,” she says to the brother as she pulls the car into a gravel driveway. Around the property on the front of the business is various farming equipment rusting in the sun. A wagon wheel, an old-fashioned plow, the remains of a 1930s Model T, and a sign that says, “General store.” The term a general store in Northern New York can and almost does mean everything and anything the proprietor would want it to mean.

Some of the outside “antiques” had been there so long small trees were starting to pop up. Along with a combination of antiques, some real, some imaginary, was a collection of various eclectic items whose actual purpose is known by the locals living in the vicinity. From firewood, Swiss army knives, camping gear, seeds, fishing lures, Live bait, Shotgun shells, animal traps, warm woolen mittens, Snowshoes, Binoculars, socks, Cans of Sterno, sweet corn, inflatable floats, postcards and stamps, ice cream, clothing, and perhaps newspapers.

 The first sister stopped and parked the car. It was, in fact, the only car in the parking lot. She pushed an old screen door with a bell on the top that made that tiny ring as she entered. The younger brother followed behind. At first, there was no one in the shop. So, she walked around looking at the various items for a few minutes, old military uniforms, paint-by-number kits, kites, hand-woven baskets, cap guns, and a stand that said newspapers but was empty. “I’m so sorry I was in the back,” the storekeeper said, appearing through an old doorway with animal traps dangling from the sides, wiping her hands with a towel. “I was just in the middle of making strawberry preserves. Do you like strawberry preserves?”

The storekeeper was a lady in her early 60s. She had the look of a person who worked hard all her life. Hands were worn, and she wore the dress and apron of a 1950s housewife, with a warm, friendly face in her horned-rimmed glasses looked at first sister and said, “May I help you”? The first sister had the feeling that she was the first and only customer she’s had all day and replied, “do you have any newspapers”? “No, we sold the last Leader-Harold this morning, and we don’t get the gazette up here,” the storekeeper responded, seeing no other newspapers and not wanting to embarrass her by asking her if she had the New York Post or Daily News. The first sister politely replied. “Oh, thank you, I’ll just look around.” The storekeeper watched the Sister for a few minutes. The Boston Globe Press pass dangled from her purse and caught the eye of the storekeeper, “are you a reporter”? Well, yes, I am,” the first sister responded. The mood of this storekeeper changed from that friendly Northern New York, “Hi, neighbor, just passing by,” to the over-excitement as if she had too many cups of coffee. “I’ve got lots of stories here,” she said. “Do you want to hear a good story” the storekeeper began talking as if hooked up to an adrenaline pump. “I want to tell you all about these stories. I have a lot of stories”, Soon, the storekeeper told the first sister about her entire life. She couldn’t stop talking, and the first sister, being polite, didn’t want to interrupt. Soon the first sister was sitting with the storekeeper, having a cup of coffee. The storekeeper showed her all sorts of craft ideas, scraps of newspaper clippings, photographs of her husband, recently departed, and all these plans she had for her business.

There was the story about her husband, who worked for 30 years logging and died of a heart attack when he retired and never collected Social Security. Then a son went to California to study something that she forgot about, and then there was the farm that was once a dairy farm but closed, so she tried to repurpose it into an antique store. Then the escaped prisoner and the friend of the uncle’s brothers, the cousin’s nephew, who thinks he saw him in the woods. Then there was the time of the big car crash on Route 30 that almost killed the man. Then there was the time about the lost teenager in the woods, and then there was the time. The stories kept going on about this. The first sister seemed unable to get a word in edgewise. She wasn’t that kind of reporter. She reported on human interest stories, scrimshaw, basket weaving, and soap box Derby races. She did, however, report on selectman and council member’s meetings at town halls and school board meetings which were bread and butter to a reporter, a way to make a daily living but not something of any interest. Even the fishing Derby they held in February seemed interesting, but she wasn’t a fishing person. To be a good reporter, one must look for a story objectively and not be part of the story. But this trend had been more prevalent since she first started going to the field of newspaper reporting. She saw more and more and was evidently on display with the little storekeeper in upstate New York. Storekeepers’ ideas for stories were not the story, the story, Is the reporter or the first sister reporting the story. After about one hour, the first sister looked over at her younger brother, who was fidgeting and looking outside the window. He wanted to get going to the camp. “These are all very interesting ‘she said to the storekeeper, “give me your phone number, and I’ll call you later, “the storekeeper complied, and finally, they returned to the car and returned to the summer camp.

Back in the car, the first sister felt uneasy, and she didn’t like to be the story. She felt the need to be objective, but the storekeeper pushed her to be subjective. Subjectivity was a trend; more and more, other reporters were lapping this up like a dog laps up water on a hot day. The first sister’s desire to seek facts, even in a human-interest story, ended with a lonely shopkeeper seeking attention. People like the storekeeper have been putting newspaper reporters on a higher standard, almost revering them as if they’re on Mount Olympus and everyone else is somehow a child of a lesser God. The first sister didn’t like that feeling. She believed the important thing was for the reporter to be anonymous.