There's Paint and Things. And then
there's Plywood and Things. And Jeans and Tings. Tings is actually
how it's pronounced here, but only the jeans purveyor spelled it that way on the sign.
It's so upfront. It says right there,
“We sell paint (or plywood or jeans) but we reserve the right to
sell any other thing if we can make a buck doing it.” The owners
clearly don't want to be limited in their commercial endeavor.
I have been waiting patiently for
someone to open a store just named “Things.” Or even better,
“Tings.”
It's a little like the old five and
dime stores, or the mom and pop corner stores, whose signs on the
front door advertised that they sold groceries, cosmetics,
pharmaceuticals and “sundries,” or sometimes notions.” How
did they decide which to sell? I can see Mom and Pop arguing
about it. “I think we should sell sundries. We could make a fortune on sundries!” “No Eb! What would
the neighbors say? Notions have been good to us, let's leave it at
that.”
And if they sold both? Would you want
to be the employee responsible for deciding whether something was a
sundry or a notion? They couldn't pay you enough for that kind of
pressure. “Sundry or notion? Sundry or notion?” How could you
ever decide?
I can almost see someone standing out
front, stroking his chin and saying, “Hmmmm. I have a notion to buy
some sundries.”
That's what I like about the Crucian
way. Tings. (Or things.) Nice and vague. All encompassing. Those are
three merchants who just won't get pinned down.
Other stores names of note: It's tough to beat this one Mr. Cheap Neighborhood. Just your basic neighborhood convenience store. Or Mr. Dollar, which non-intuitively, is not a dollar store. That would be Nigel's 1-2-3.
But you've gotta love the slogan for Mr. Dollar. "If we don't have it, you don't need it." That's pretty direct, pretty in your face. "Just be quiet and buy some tings."
1 comment:
I love the Nigel 1, 2 Tree song.
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