Farewell, small merchant.(Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences)

Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences By Ann Satterthwaite Yale University Press, 384 pages, $39.95

When my parents, my brother, and I moved to Wesleyville, Pennsylvania in 1959, a rambling clapboard store called Plubell Hardware stood in the center of town, selling supplies to farmers, employees from nearby manufacturing firms, and a procession of home handymen. Plubell's was an old-fashioned place where the floors were a varnished brown hardwood and the plaster walls went up and up. Just how far up, I discovered during a school vacation when I washed the grime off those walls for $1 an hour.

At Plubell's, when a customer wanted nails, owner John Schiefferle or one of the men working for him would weigh the nails on a scale, pour them into a paper bag, and ring up the sale on an immense manual cash register. John MacKinlay, the shop teacher at Wesleyville High, admonished the boys in his classes to master hardware terminology because, he said, anyone unable to ask for nails by their proper sizes--8 penny, 10 penny, 12 penny--would surely be embarrassed when shopping at Plubell's.

But in the 1960s, old retailing ways were thrown into obsolescence--at great cost to Plubell's and other independent, owner-operated stores and to most communities that supported a local merchant class. Discount chains and self-service transformed merchandising. Eastway Plaza, just outside Wesleyville in neighboring Harborcreek Township, opened in 1960, drawing trade away from Plubell's and the other small merchants in town. The Plaza's Fairway store offered nails and other building supplies in transparent plastic bags with pre-measured contents, prices marked. The need for a talk with a sales clerk was eliminated. The Plaza's discount department store sold housewares and toys for less than Plubell's did. So in 1971, when Mr. Schiefferle reached retirement age, no one could be found to keep his business going. The store was closed, its ancient building demolished. The site became a used-car lot.

Memories of Wesleyville's once-upon-a-time business district came back to me while reading Ann Satterthwaite's wide-ranging history of shopping. Satterthwaite, a planning consultant in Washington, D.C., sees shopping not only as a means of satisfying material needs but as an important way of participating in community life. Frequent visits to small establishments run by local ...