"Don't let Yankee grow any more, boys," [Robb] said... "the plumbing won't take it!"
- Robb Sagendorph (Yankee Magazine founder, Harvard '22), quoted by Judson Hale (Yankee Magazine Editor, Dartmouth '55) in The Education of a Yankee.
A relaxed, favorite restaurant or pub gets a great write-up. We are happy for the owners, of course. But it becomes more difficult to get a seat. New staff are hired, and they don't know your "usuals". New patrons descend and demand different services. Prices and quality can be put into play.
Or a charming vacation spot makes some influential top 10 list, and becomes swarmed by new people with new expectations. **cough** Nantucket **cough** the Vineyard **.
And everyone has an L.L. Bean example or story. Think back to the little thrill you felt when opening the doors that were never locked, whether it be on your way up to summer camp or the cottage, or the numerous (and infamous) midnight Bean runs, never done alone, always in packs (no pun intended). And you never had to worry about what you bought.
In short, the fun is gone.
It becomes time to move on.
Once a club, church, or school, which had until then grown through mutual love and passion of those involved, becomes associated with success, it attracts sharp-elbowed people en masse that can change the bearing of the organization forever.
Social competitiveness is many things, but fun is not one of them.
Whenever possible, we go to local farms and small stores not chains. We can relax there.
The answer is not holding back growth, even if we could. Rather, we have to be ever comfortable to realize that once something has grown too big, it may be necessary to move on and find or start something new that has the same feel as what we loved.
This is so true. Often the places I used to love years ago feel too crowded, too commercial, too impersonal now, and I end up looking for the next best thing. As the owner of a small coffee roaster and coffee shop, I am always considering how we can grow our business while keeping our small shop feel. I hope we never turn into a place that people used to love when we were smaller. One way we hope to accomplish this is to expand into multiple smaller locations, so we can continue to roast in small batches in each one, rather than centralize everything into a warehouse somewhere. Only time will tell. ☕️☺️
ReplyDeletePerfectly, and sadly, stated.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a universal fear in corporations and some smaller businesses that if you’re not growing then you’re dying. One or the other. This misguided version of Mies Van Der Rohe’s axiom – Less is More – has led to untold numbers of company calamities (see Bean, L.L., and Brothers, Brooks).
ReplyDeleteOf course, if your only aim is Gordon Gecko style (good) greed - at any cost – then all this expand, expand, expand makes perfect sense. The baby going out the window with its’ bathwater image obviously then applies.
And it’s a rare enterprise that believes “If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it,” and is content to just focus on the fun and happiness they’ve always provided their customers. These admirable companies have no desire to grow beyond what has already given everyone involved joy.
Please let the fun continue. Don’t outgrow yourself.
None of us are getting out of this world alive anyway.
We will always try new! We also go to the old, now popular, spots at off times. The owners appreciate it and we feel taken care of. Take advantage of "local's summer" in New England. The weather is still perfect, but the crowds have moved on.
ReplyDeleteHow I miss Vin and Eddies!
DeleteAs Yogi Berra once said, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
ReplyDeleteLocations may be difficult to keep from changing with popularity, but individual businesses are entirely in the control of their owners. They don'rt HAVE to expand, hire indifferent staff, sacrifice quality for profits, and abandon their old customers who made them successful in the first place. They CHOOSE to do all that. Not all do. And those that don't go down that road will still have a business when the fickle crowd moves on and leaves the expanded businesses over extended and empty, with nothing left but a memory of "remember that little diner that used to be there on the corner? GREAT pie."
ReplyDeleteI can relate to the LL Bean example. I attended college in Maine in the mid 1970s. I have wonderful memories of climbing into my friends van and making midnight treks to LL Bean. Being students, we didn't have much money, but always found bargains on the 'lower level'. Wool socks, discount sweaters and chinos. Great memories.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you mention churches can go this way. Yesterday my wife and I were talking about how we missed our old church and wanted to go, but that it just wasn't the same and we wouldn't enjoy it if we did.
ReplyDeleteWe're just old fashioned mainline Protestant folks who were taught not to bring up politics in church. Good music was celebrated, bad singing was tolerated, but there were never harangues about the hot button issue of the day. We always expected most people in our church leaned vaguely left, but it wasn't a topic of conversation.
Then in 2015-16 that wall started to have some cracks, and 2020 just demolished it. And now the old church just isn't the old church anymore. We have no idea where to turn to find a mainline church that hasn't been coopted as a political organization.
Try a new one every week, go a little early to sit in the very back row for easy "slip out". Currently there is a massive church reconstruction internally in the states now.
DeleteSeek and ye shall find.
I found the CSN radio station is a good reference of local church advertisements: services and hours, what they sponsor radio service wise, or produce.
Its like a wide variety of an audio "sampling plate" of sorts and of what is offered or sponsored locally. Not all fire and brimstone as I thought basing my own 1980 dated education. I listened then found online websites of assorted pastors offering daily services, many types of information, family, legal, financial, humor, etc found on CSN. Side note: The pastor who sounds like Jeff Foxworthy is a good service to hear.
There are a growing number of Christian churches that are overtly political, witness their involvement in political strategizing. There are also a number of large scale issues that are presented in churches all too often in a too political manner rather than simply trying to unpack how Jesus would respond to them and, by extension, how we might be called to respond. The minister/priest/rector/pastor who successfully handles this nuance preserves unity and builds their church.
Delete@Kaaterskill, I sympathize. I'm moving and can't find one that hasn't been, in your words, "coopted as a political organization." I think it must have to do with the decline of mainline churches and their need to prop themselves up by being more "relevant."
Delete@Sartresky I think the politicization comes both from above and below. It comes from below when the priest/pastor/minister fails to tamp it down from within the congregation.
DeleteBut increasingly I think it's coming from above, i.e. from the pastor/minister/priests.
Last night I had dinner with a friend who is on staff at one of the handful of remaining seminaries that's well endowed and stable. He noted that there's been a marked shift over the past couple decades in the seminarians. It used to be that a typical seminarian at his seminary was excited by the prospect of furthering their study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and doing a rotation through the public hospital to minister to the sick and dying.
But those aren't the people who are going to seminary anymore. Now the energy is around various identity politics, and their vision of ministry is participating in the flavor of the month social movement. It doesn't sound like there's really any energy within the seminaries to put the kibosh on this politicking and reorient their energy toward conventional ministry.
I hope you find a good parish, but the tough part is that the clergy are so uneven that as soon as there's turnover you might need to move again.
Love your neighbor as yourself. Seldom followed
DeleteSorry to co-opt the thread for the political and religious discussion, but if the Great Commission, love one another as I have loved you (note there are no exceptions), has political implications in many circumstances, is it any less of a directive?
Delete@10:57am I was raised in a tradition that thought it was morally and ethically coherent to talk about principles without introducing specific policy positions. That framework seems to no longer make sense to many people, or at least not motivate them to get out of bed on Sunday morning.
DeleteWhat's a little ironic about our repulsion from our church's politics-forward position is that we actually agree with the politics. We're basically lefties in a lefty church. It's not the content, it's the emphasis and volume.
My wife and I both work in policy-adjacent fields. Various sorts of politics are our work lives. By the time Friday rolls around, we're ready to park all that and unplug a bit. We're not motivated to go to church and get a bad rehash of MSNBC. Let's sing the liturgy, say the prayers, do the readings, and hope for a brief sermon. Just like our forefathers.
Same, Kaaterskill. I actually agree with the politics, I really do. But I go to church to receive the sacrament, not to be lectured to as if I were a child.
DeleteI agree on the issue of church changing. I am Protestant (Lutheran) and my husband is Catholic and we are open to both, and we live outside of the US (my spouse is not American) so are exposed to church and life in general in two countries. We tend to be fairly moderate on political issues but aren't ultra-political ( I used to be but feel the party I used to identify with was hijacked!). But often church feels like a political speech (for example, at a service of thanksgiving the pastor was lecturing about the evils of McDonald's and large corporations!!!!) I haven't really felt good at church in a long time on both sides of the Atlantic.
DeleteI am also not a fan of screens in the sanctuary-- that is what a hymnal is for!!
But I miss church. When I go 'home' to visit many of the friends I still have in my hometown are people from my childhood church. And I miss the kind of sermons earlier pastors gave. I might not have always agreed with them but they made me think, yet weren't political or pushing a particular agenda.
--EM
So very true, and just as noticeable down here in Virginia. LL Bean, Brooks Brothers, favorite restaurants in Washington and NY, and so many local spots in my own town have been changed beyond recognition, or simply ceased to exist. Treasure the ones that are left, and support any new places that that you discover that eschew the cheap, the frenetic and the trendy.
ReplyDeleteCharlottesville, nice to read you again...fellow Virginian "sacksuit" here. I hope you and yours are well. My family and I plan to take a trip to Charlottesville in the fall and it is my hope that Eljo's might still offer proper 3/2 roll blazers...I don't think they have become too popular yet...wish they would.
DeleteWill
Red's Eats in Wiscassett is now the Disneyland of lobster rolls. Moody's Diner in Waldoboro is the same. I never go to either any more--the same for L.L. Bean---it's true the fun is gone.
ReplyDeleteSince Covid, Maine has exploded with tourists and people from away who have now made Maine their new home..ugh, I could rant for days on this...
Perfectly stated! Cheers!
ReplyDeleteFifty years ago there were crowds at New Haven’s “holy trinity” of apizza parlors. Rarely did we go to any of them. Venice, Rose Garden and “the old” Sorrento’s were among our favored options for the now famous “New Haven style” pizza. The lines have only gotten longer at the trinity. This thanks in great part to internet praise spread far and wide for our ahbeets. The above mentioned options no longer, alas, exist. But there are today other local owner/chef options. You will find pies “comparable” (if not better, I’m thinking of one with breaded eggplant, in particular) to the those served at the locales frequented by the tourists. But you’re going to have to do the research and find them on your own.
ReplyDeleteI always tended to shy away from Pepe's and Sally's, decades ago, because of the long lines. But I was recently in New Haven on a Monday and had no choice, so I screwed my courage to the sticking place and decided to brave Pepe's. Huge mistake. I placed my order over the phone, then went up to the window to tell them I was there to pick up and paid with my credit card. A full hour later, I was still waiting. When I sort of complained very mildly and politely, the response was some sort of passive-aggressive nonsense... and a blatant lie about the fact that my order had been put in. A few minutes later, I just had to give up and skulk away. A horrible experience. And a stupid mistake I will never make again.
ReplyDeletePS The puzzling and depressing thing is that everyone was being subjected to the same ridiculousness and not a single person was making a single peep about it. Just standing there, with seemingly limitless tolerance for nonsense. Very sheep-like. And not in a good way.
Resistance to change is one of man’s most difficult challenges.
ReplyDeleteA candidate for selectman is running up here in Conn’s northwest corner under the slogan: “Change is very very bad.”
DeleteRE Nantucket and MV: In the fifitis and sixties we grew up summers in Osterville down the street from the Wianno Yacht Club, a barefoot walk away where we'd sail and swim all day long into the twilight. At night the streets were quiet after the eagerly awaited ice cream truck came and went. We played in the road with the cousins across the street, rolling and racing old tires under the streetlights to see how far we could go before they toppled over. Our neighbors had a roofless Model A Ford phaeton inexpertly painted highway stripe yellow: "The Yellow Peril". Beach trips along the shore roads packed with us kids to the Outer Cape dunes weekly then taking in the Welfleet Drive-in movie before coming home everyone asleep in piles wherever they could find a soft spot in the back. Now Osterville has become an eyesore of gated McMansions, Bentley and Rolls Royce convertibles, loud BMWs for the kids, none of whom are there for the whole summer relaxing and taking in the quiet pleasures of the place, relationships among family members and long-time summer friends. A sad change but it happens.
ReplyDeleteThe good 'ole Wellfleet Drive-In! Flea market by day, movies by night. They still have the speaker boxes on the poles.
DeleteTo this day my most cherished and favorite greasy spoon remains The Yankee Doodle in New Haven . “The Doodle” as it was affectionately known served the most perfect cheeseburger, pig in a blanket and hand mixed Coca Cola until the end, 2008.
ReplyDeleteI spent year dismayed by its abrupt closing, but now I am thankful that it was there, and that my father took me there countless times on the way to Eli hockey games.
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/nyregion/31doodle.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Amen to this. And RIP to the incomparable Doodle, of blessed memory.
DeleteThe White Spot, Charlottesville, VA., known for 'The Gus Burger', a cheeseburger topped with a fried egg.
ReplyDeleteBroadway in New Haven started to become our Saturday destination when we were 11 or 12. Our pockets were full of money we earned on our own; mowing lawns, raking leaves, shoveling snow, selling programs at the Bowl, caddying, and delivering newspapers. All we needed to get to downtown New Haven was our thumb. We squeezed skis at the Co-op, bought records at Cutler’s, and twirled the MacIntosh dials at David Dean Smith. Our shoes we bought Barrie’s. If we were wearing them when we walked in the door they shined them for us, for free. All of these businesses of course now are gone, replaced by cookie cutter corporates. The Doodle, as you mention, is also gone. Like at the other retailers in the neighborhood, we always felt welcome at The Doodle, no matter our young age. There was something about being treated like an adult at these establishments, despite our rambunctious moments, that somehow, I think, helped in our formation. And we carry that with us today almost 60 years later. The Doodle, a little sliver of a place, was a big part of the experience. They didn’t serve french fries. But they always gave you the extra in the metal container when you ordered a milk shake. There was the pig in the blanket, and the cheeseburgers with the special sauce. While we sat at the counter and finished ours off Yalies, waiting their turn, stood patiently behind us.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful account of a golden era.
DeleteWell, we tried to take out as many Yankees as possible, but y'all kept a coming
ReplyDeleteExactly so! As with agriculture, small and local family ventures are often best. I've found this blog and its earlier iterations to be a great resource for this very reason.
ReplyDeleteAnon 4:10a. Sounds like in your formation you learned to respect store employees, because they respected you. Ability to recognize and help initiate respect across the broad spectrum of human characters would bolster any formation.
ReplyDeleteThe older we get, the more we understand Thomas Wolfe's book, "You Can't Go Home Again."
ReplyDelete