Errands of our Foremothers

Do you have a butcher?  I don’t.  I don’t have a butcher.  I’m rather miffed at myself about this.  I bet some of you do.  I just bet it.  I bet some of you still have milk delivered to your house.  My friend Karoline told me about how when she was growing up she had milk delivered to her house—glass bottles and all.  I was outraged and sad—we live fifteen minutes from each other.  I have neither milk delivered to my house nor a butcher of easy access.

My boss get his shoes resoled—does this happen at a cobbler?  Not the fruit and pastry kind, ya know, the shoe fixing kind.  I don’t know the location of a single cobbler or shoemaker in all the Commonwealth (oh, I live in Pennsylvania if you didn’t know—I am also positive cobblers exist somewhere here, their locations just elude me.)

A zipper on my luggage broke.  I was told to go to a “zipperman” about it.  And I would really, really like to… but I am unfamiliar with the zipperman.  We’re not friends… yet.  But I would desperately like to change that.  Do you know the where the zipperman lives?  Is it on Mulberry Lane?

How are these things not things I have found a way to incorporate into my life?  How am I badgering you to wear hats and gloves and condemning popular television shows while I don’t even know the zipperman?  Shouldn’t this be ipso facto for a vintage gal, for a Rockabilly broad?

The more and more I think about it, the sadder I am that he—that’s all of these specific workers: the zipperman, the cobbler, the butcher, the milkman—are not in my rolodex.  And yes, I totally have the exact rolodex you’re picturing right now.

See?  You are getting to know me so well.

But now what?

How do I fix this void in my life?  Really, short of befriending Marty McFly (and clearly I already have so much befriending of strange and unusual men to do), I can have very little influence over having milk delivered to my house.  Look, I see the mayor all the time, and I can’t even convince him to have my street properly plowed after snowstorms.  So, I feel like convincing him to put a milk truck into effective service is a quest I will not win.  Plus, he’s out of office in January.

I suppose finding a cobbler is not the most efficient.  First of all, where does one search for a cobbler?  And once I’ve found a list of cobblers/shoe repairmen within an appropriate x number miles of my house, how am I supposed to know who’s any good at this?  Do they have a shoe-dude section on Yelp! by any chance (I don’t recall ever actually using Yelp! myself, now that I think about it).  But the real problem is this: while I love my shoes, I’m not sure if it would be fiscally smart of me to have any of my shoes repaired.  Really, I would probably just be able to replace them.  So…why am I wearing such cheap shoes anyway.

Honestly, the only shoes of mine that would be worth repairing are the vintage ones…which…as it turns out, seem to be holding up in phenomenal fashion.  This causes very much puzzlement in my life.  If my vintage shoes don’t need fixing, but in vintage era they had shoe repairmen, wait…my brain will explode.

I should just leave the shoes to the elves.

I also am not sure about a zipperman.  I wish desperately to know one.  One day I hope I live next to one by some magical happenstance.  But I’m not sure how many times I would find use to visit his shop on business.  Like I said, I have that piece of luggage, but nothing else, really.  So, really, that’s understandable also.

But why aren’t I going to a butcher?  Clearly they exist.  I’m always being instructed by this well-to-do chef or that cooking book or blog to get the best product from my butcher.  But… alas, I don’t have one.  Also: why is everyone just ASSUMING I have a butcher?  That’s rather uppity of you.

I have been to a butcher.  I’m even friends with the daughter of a butcher.  But… alas, he butchers many hours from where we live.  (Although the jalapeño kielbasa he makes may be worth the pilgrimage.  I know: I’ll swing by your house to fetch you on the way.  Ready your hat and gloves.)

I like specifics.   I do.  I like words of very specific context.  I like seasonal ingredients and recipes intended only for specific holidays and celebrations—and don’t even get me started on holiday decorations.  And I like specialized jobs and shops.  Wasn’t this—centuries, millennias ago—a sign of advancement in society?  Remember reading about that moment in your history book?  My guess in somewhere around the 6th grade (because that’s when I learned it), you learned in Social Studies that man made a marked improvement when he was able to specialize in a craft.  No longer did a person have to do everything he needed to have done to survive and prosper.  All of a sudden a human could buy goods and services, trading a good or service he was good at providing—or later, exchanging currency he acquired from said goods and services.  If a person was artistic maybe he spent all his days making pottery dishes, but he needs vegetables to eat also.  Well, the handy thing is, someone up the road is really good at this farming thing.  I’m sure the second guy would gladly trade some produce for some dishes.  Now the potter doesn’t have to farm; the farmer doesn’t have to… well, whatever the verb “to potter” is.  This fad evolved into a style of civilization.  Enter: cobblers and zippermen.

So where have our lives of mini-malls and mega centers brought us?  Don’t give me an instrument that maybe can accomplish forty-three things in passable style—give me a tool that does one thing to perfection.

Am I alone in this?  Can you recommend to me a butcher?  Let’s start there.