The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch Page B

Mountains may have formed their backbones, but dreams light their eyes.
    Living in a shrinking community meant every customer had to be wooed, feted, and treated like a precious commodity. They needed to believe in us, but the very fact that we’d chosen to settle in their town negated trust in our prowess. Four book clubs within half an hour’s drive never entered the store in its first year, even though we put out the word that we did bulk orders. Without rancor, and without ever really putting it in words, their members assumed—as one told us later—that we wouldn’t be as good as someplace bigger, somewhere else, or just surfing the Net. What could a bookshop in the tiny town of Big Stone Gap offer sufficient to change established buying habits?
    A woman came into our shop the day after one of Christopher Paolini’s books became available for preorder. When I explained that we didn’t have it on hand but I could order it for her, she sniffed. “I figured a place like this wouldn’t have it; I’ll get it in Kingsport.” I tried to explain that no one would have it until the preorders were released, but she walked out midword.
    In Scotland, it’s known as “too wee, too poor, too stupid” when a small place (like Scotland itself) is considered ineffectual. My M.D. pal Elizabeth says she and other regional docs often hit against that unspoken assumption when traveling: “Our IQ plummets seconds after they ask where we’re from.” Yet stereotyping is not a simple art form; both Elizabeth and my photographer friend Elissa have experienced denigration of their skills within their own communities. Neighbors prefer to seek medical care or photographs from a city agency. And that’s leaving aside the allure and convenience of online services and retailers.
    Elissa took me to lunch one day—I think friends and regular customers kept feeding us because they thought we would starve otherwise—and I told her about Garth’s soliloquy. Elissa, four feet eleven inches tall and not a pontificator by nature, blew a gasket.
    “Americans en masse have been conditioned to think that bigger is better, box stores and online are the only places worth shopping, buy your stuff from some major brand label and don’t accept anything that looks out of the ordinary. Nothing that was made by your neighbor could be any good. Why shop local when local is so small and familiar, and online is so cheap and easy and dazzling?
    “Here in our neck of the woods, we’ve been suckered and snowed until we don’t understand the value of supporting ourselves. We could benefit so much as a town from the talents of the people who live here, but instead we die by our own self-strangulation, because if somebody does start a service or a store, they have to run the gauntlet you’re running now, Wendy. ‘Are you one of us? Are you good enough? Do you think you’re too good? Are you trying to change us?’ Or they have to put up with that ‘Yeah, but it’s from here so it must be crap’ crap. And that’s a real pity, but that’s also how it is, and I don’t think it will ever change.”
    I stared at her, and Elissa took a sip of Coke. “That’s how I feel,” she said. “You gonna eat those fries?”
    A limited belief in the prowess of anything considered local, coupled with hefty suspicion of nonnatives, is a tricky hand to play. Amid the innuendoes and nuances, relationships between insiders and outsiders—and who gets called which—can be as subtle as a homemade quilt. You glance at it and see a pattern, but when you look again, you notice alignments and contrasts that change the pattern’s intent; a third look reveals tiny stitches rolling over the colored pieces in contours and swirls, holding the whole thing together. All this makes it a little tricky for well-meaning souls from outside to waltz into town and act natural.
    We had been, however briefly, insiders, but now some people wanted us to be outsiders again. Time to