D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
December
2008
Santa Cause: Made in the USA
Page: 2Discouraged, I head toward the door, but happen to look up as I pass a display set up for NMSU alumni. All things that alumni of any age could use are here: golf shirts, Depends, checkbook covers, shot glasses, pennants and, ta-dah, golf balls! A set of three of these beauties, made in the USA, is soon going to go into someone's Christmas stocking, even though none of my giftees plays golf. But who cares? It's the thought that counts, right?
I am doing better than I expected playing Santa. The next stop is Las Cruces' most unique gift shop (and cafe), Spirit Winds.
Here, owner Richard Parra houses all sorts of worldly goods, sustainable and imported, fun and serious. Now out of the used CD business, Parra and his staff have moved everything around, creating a more open space, and stocking more trinkets of the fun variety. It is here where I bend the rules a little, and find a skirt for my wife, a charming flowing, silky piece that is made in India. But with that purchase comes reassurance that it was not made under Wal-Mart-type conditions. On a return visit, a casual admiration of a neat little wood-and-bead bracelet finds that it has ended up in my sweaty palm, after striking a pleasant bargain with Parra.
This will go in my wife's dainty stocking which will be hung with care near the double-queen-size pantyhose that I post. Not to worry about her knowing what she is getting, since she never reads my stories anyway.
I next check the big-name franchise bookstore, always a ready source of gift-giving ideas. But when I read the frontispiece of several selections, including the newest one by my favorite author, Charles Bowden, I find the familiar "PRINTED IN CHINA" note. Curious, since the Bowden tome, a collaboration with noted Mexican photographer Julian Cardona, is about the issue of illegal immigration on the border. I decide to again break my own rules and purchase it (but not at the big bookstore) for myself for Christmas.
By now, I am a bit tired of roaming through stores, and am thankful I am not one of those who does so once the "season" officially starts, the day after Thanksgiving. A woefully misnamed holiday, Thanksgiving is slowly being turned into another merchandising day by the tyrants who go wallet-mining for any loose change you might have. No holiday is immune to this marketing; I noted an ad in the local daily fish wrap, offering 11 percent off for all veterans in honor of Veteran's Day. I remember a few years ago when the El Paso Times ran a banner front page headline on the day after turkey day, proclaiming, "THANKSGIVING'S OVER. . . IT'S TIME TO SHOP!!!" "Shop" was in italics, just in case you missed the message.
Anyway, I head home for lunch and an online gift search.
Only the golf balls and WAH MAKER shirt have become unique finds in my search for truth, justice and the American way. But here, I am able to save a lot of time and gas, if not much money, since the dreaded and unregulated shipping and handling charges tend to add up to about as much as you would spend on gas. Nonetheless, it is easier as long as hackers don't intervene, and I immediately find a Web site, www.madeinusaforever.com, which offers "hundreds of products, all made in the USA!"
Well, that is true, and there are a variety of small things — tools, various pieces of clothing, flags (!!), toys and lots of socks. If you need socks, then they have the listings for you. Certainly worthy efforts, but nothing that will bring American industry and manufacturing to the high point it reached in the 1950s.
I also check my personal new source for jeans, All American Jeans, which offers a great pair o' blues, union made, and in my size. No need to endlessly look for the elusive waist size that Levi Strauss offers only through special order (and, no, it is not 54). Even though the company appears to be under new ownership, it still offers about the same line of clothing that I remember from a year or so ago. No progress, but at least they are still at it.
Other mediocre Web sites offer any number of minor US-made items, none of which plug in (try finding anything with an electrical cord that is made in the USA), and I decide that this is the wrong approach, after all.
Big-time retailers have bullied and gouged the public for years, and I am sure that as I write this, many of them are sweating over how this year's holiday shopping frenzy will turn out. Consumers will have considerably fewer choices, with the demise of any number of corporate biggies, but maybe, in some way, that will be good for small businesses or folks who make and sell their work, such as those who live for and by the arts.
And we all know that there is not a charitable organization in the land that could not use your help, or the help of my king-size Uncle Eb, who will now unknowingly be making a contribution to the charity of my choice: As soon as I return brother Klaus' shirt and the golf balls and that thong (made in USA out of rubber) I bought for my stepmother, that money will go to the charity of their choice.
The skirt and bracelet stay, but a few bucks will go to someone needier than I ever hope to be, in my wife's name.
And for the rest of you, here is my gift for you — this piece of advice from writer and humorist Oren Arnold:
"Holiday gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect."
Senior writer Jeff Berg watches the moths escape every time he opens
his tattered hemp wallet in Las Cruces.
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