When I arrived in Almonte in 1976 as a young lawyer my office was in the former law office of Raymond A. Jamieson QC at 74 Mill Street on the 2nd floor.  Mrs. Evelyn Barker, the former Legal Assistant, still hung on to assist in completion of the transition.  Mr. Jamieson had retired after 54 years of practice, having been called to the bar at Osgoode Hall in 1921.

Across the street, just up from where the new post office is, was an ancient building owned by Johnnie Graham, Editor and Publisher of The Almonte Gazette. I naturally subscribed to the newspaper though I hadn’t occasion to use it often.  Once in the 1990s when business took a turn for the worse I published an advertisement of my law office in the newspaper (something Mr. Jamieson had routinely done in the past) but I soon learned that in times of recession there is little to improve commercial activity.  Plus, as everyone knows, there is nothing that succeeds like “word of mouth” whether in the best or the worst of times.

Eventually the newspaper was sold to what I believe was a consortium of rural newspapers headquartered in Toronto. Not long afterwards I was consulted by Louis Irwin (who parenthetically later spirited the Elizabeth Kelly Library Foundation). Louis instructed me to contact the new owner of the newspaper and offer to buy it. Not long afterwards I received a telephone call from a chap in Toronto who identified himself as the recipient of my letter.  He said, “Mr. Chapman, there is something I think you ought to know: we’re in the business of acquisition not disposition.” And that was the end of that!

Today I recalled that succinct moment of my life as I engaged in the sale and disposition of my Evo Latitude tricycle. At my partner’s suggestion, I had written to the editors of The Millstone (our local electronic newspaper) asking them to publish notification of the sale in the Classified Ads section.  That was only a day ago.  Since late last evening – and continuing until early this morning – the phone has been ringing off the hook! The response to and interest in the item has been spectacular. Indeed as I write, only 24 hours after requesting publication of the advertisement, the trike is sold. Regrettably it was my less favourable obligation to advise a number of prospective buyers of this speedy conclusion.

The curious outcome of this otherwise modest account is that is reminds me of what I imagine to be the challenges regularly faced by those in retail business. It seems that as a professional I escaped much of what I assume are the dilemmas surrounding retail.  My business never involved competition, for example. Nor had I ever been bothered by contemporaneous meetings. And payment was never an issue because of that more digestible term “retainer”.

Overnight I began stewing about the prospective trike sale because the person who had first called was not the first person with whom I had arranged to meet.  And when I began thinking that the second caller (whom I was first seeing) might wish to buy, then I felt I should warn the first caller about possibly making an even earlier appointment.  But when I tried messaging the first caller at four o’clock this morning, I discovered she had a land line and Bell Canada was unable to leave a message, with or without a petty $0.30 charge per message.  Naturally I felt it was unimaginable to telephone someone that early in the morning (though I later learned from that person that she was having a restless night and that she was wide awake until 6:00 am this morning). Even after I had adjusted to these unparalleled complications, and having partly fallen asleep after hours of tossing and turning, I received a new message (from a woman in Montréal) who said her husband in Almonte could come immediately with cash.  Meanwhile my telephone had been ringing and a further message had been left that the caller could come at 8:30 am. So now I was been deluged with appointments at the same time.

As you might reasonably expect all this consternation instantly evaporated when a gentleman arrived with cash and paid it to me following a brief inspection of the trike.  Then I reversed my course and notified the other intended purchasers of the sale; as well as emailing the editors of the newspaper to ask them to remove the advertisement. But still the phone calls did not stop.  There were still others to deal with. As an aside, I happily knew (or already knew about) most of the callers. My longevity in the community proved its worth.

The greater distillation of all these comings and goings is that it discloses to me in no uncertain terms that the daily exigencies of anyone – whether professional, retail or otherwise – are never to be underestimated or dismissed as tolerable compared with one’s own obligations. I suspect there is a tendency among many of us to imagine that others have it easier than we for some reason; that the obstructions we face in our mundane activities are more demanding or more tiresome than those of others. The point here is that, from this pale acquaintance with retail, I derived an inestimable appreciation of the enterprise. The details of life are very often more critical than we might presume from a casual regard. Speaking for myself, it has been a long time since I lost as much sleep as I did surrounding this relatively inconsequential venture into the mysterious world of retail.