In small Southern towns almost everything used to be bought from a kindly old local merchant whom we all knew personally. If we didn't like him for whatever reason, we didn't give him our custom, that is unless the clerk, his teen age daughter, was pretty. Sit-up & Rear-back and Monkey Ward were the only mail order firms we dealt with then, and although the A&P and the 'filling stations' were owned from 'out of town', they were run by locals held to our strict standards of conduct.
Times have changed and now it seems that residents of small hamlets and large cities alike buy by mail or e-mail and pay to a different location. Our inquiries are filtered thorough a lengthy logic tree with its roots in a different country, but they do record that "our calls are important to them", whoever "they" are, wherever "they" may be.
We don't know the individual whom we buy from anymore, so I'm beginning to believe that it's best to buy the best product at the best price, regardless of the vendor's attitude or his location.
Forgive me if I've used this analogy before, but I think it's valid. The famous painting of the beloved incompetent old doctor sitting by her beside while the little girl dies from diphtheria is sweet nostalgia, but most of us would rather have a young obnoxious competent 'hotshot' phone in from the golf course a prescription that cures our little girl.
I guess I prefer to buy a superior gouge from an inferior dealer than give my custom to a superior dealer for an inferior gouge. Seems that there's not much middle ground these days, but I hope you all will dissuade me or tell me it isn't so.
Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter