Like an offspring's college graduation, it is an event tinged in deja vu, at which my attendance is motivated more by a sense of duty than by any lively interest, particularly since I am identified in the program as a member of the Dinner Committee and have made a modest effort at soliciting table sponsorships, most notably my own of $1000. But then, as the evening progresses, a journey which at the outset seemed so routine begins to twist and turn in unique and unpredictable ways, and I depart, once again, inspired and exhilarated by the extraordinary deeds and sublime words of unassuming heroes.
I am speaking of the VCIC (Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities) Annual Humanitarian Awards Dinner, which was held on Thursday, May 29th, at Lynchburg College. Readers unfamiliar with the VCIC may recognize its former designation, NCCJ, the National Conference of Christians and Jews, later changed to the National Conference for Community and Justice -- an ill-advised attempt to sound less sectarian (it succeeded mainly in jeopardizing a well-known and well-respected franchise) and a name which the Virginia Region was compelled to relinquish when it broke with its parent on matters of policy and finance and declared its independence.
The VCIC is a human relations organization whose mission is to promote prejudice reduction, respect for diversity, and better understanding among differing races, religions, and cultures. It conducts a wide variety of instructional and interactive programs for young people, educators, non-profit administrators, and business leaders in schools, in churches and synagogues, and in the workplace.
Legend has it that the NCCJ's first meeting in 1935 was held near the site of tonight's dinner, the Burton Student Center at Lynchburg College.
Tonight's dinner is one of several the VCIC conducts annually throughout the state of Virginia -- the others are in Richmond, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach -- and while its purpose is ostensibly to proclaim the humanitarianism of five deserving citizens, it is hardly a secret that the organization funds its activities and overhead from the proceeds of these events. Thus, our honorees are to be commended not only for their achievements and contributions to the betterment of their fellow men but also for bowing to a little crass commercialism, for it is in tribute to them that their friends, families, and associates will tender the $125 ticket price. As a friend astutely cautioned his father after he was inducted into a Business Hall of Fame, "Before you accept another award, find out how much it's going to cost me."
Actually, most of the revenue is generated from corporate donors, rather than from single ticket sales. Several years ago the VCIC abandoned its Citizens Committee -- composed of volunteers who would contact individual prospects -- in favor of an Executive Dinner Committee, which solicits corporate sponsorships that range from $1000 to $5000 and entitle each sponsor to a table of eight.
The VCIC has been remarkably successful in penetrating the business community; the program lists thirty companies, including one $5000 Humanitarian Sponsor, Lynchburg College, whose president, Dr. Kenneth G., is chairing tonight's dinner.
This success can be attributed to several factors: universal acceptance of and appreciation for VCIC's mission; aggressive recruitment of executives to serve on the Dinner Committee and to chair these events; and the relationship-building skills of perennial VCIC president, Jeff S., who from his office in Richmond has made himself a formidable presence in the Lynchburg community, substantiated the credibility and effectiveness of the organization, and earned the esteem, friendship, and support of many local businessmen, no small feat when one considers its replication throughout the state.
Not only is Jeff S. an accomplished ordained minister, an expert on human relations, a talented educator, and an inexhaustible mine of religious, political, and economic information (and opinions), he is also a superb salesman.
Of course, a spate of other non-profits raise money from similar events -- roasts, balls, celebrations, and raffles -- but, quite frankly, the VCIC seems most adept at obscuring this one's pecuniary purpose. There are two reasons for this.
The first lies in the very nature -- and composition -- of tonight's gathering, which sets it apart from those aforementioned. Here, to echo the words of another observer of social phenomena, the medium is the message, the medium in this case being simply the fact that four hundred persons of varying racial, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds dine together in both a real and symbolic demolishing of those impenetrable barriers which -- as much as we like to believe otherwise -- persist in our society.
If the VCIC is the only organization in our community which visibly, vocally, and continually promotes prejudice reduction, tolerance, and mutual understanding and respect, it is the only one capable of assembling so large and diverse a group in awareness, acceptance, and fulfillment of such a mission. Those in the audience are not just observers; they are participants as well, and by their presence they are making a forceful statement: they realize what is at stake and -- if only for a brief, fleeting moment -- are prepared to act.
Two analogies come to mind. Just as at a wedding one internally renews his own vows, or at a funeral one contemplates his own mortality and resolves to treasure his remaining days, so tonight every person in attendance is charged to recommit himself to the ideals of the VCIC.
The second reason relates to the special meaning of the award being presented. Our five honorees embody those ideals -- both in their own diverse backgrounds and in the breadth of their achievements -- and are certainly deserving of the title "Humanitarian." But, as this crowd is about to learn, there are many ways to be a humanitarian.
Several years ago a recipient of this award grabbed his listeners' attention with the witty remark that he knew what a vegetarian ate but he wondered what a humanitarian ate. While laughing out loud, I would submit two subtle truths underlying his flippancy: what really is a humanitarian, and, at least in this venue, does it really matter. Because whether or not the persons being honored technically satisfy the dictionary definition -- "one who is concerned with the needs of mankind and the alleviation of human suffering" -- they have certainly worked to assist individuals less fortunate than themselves and have made their community a better place.
And therein lies the sticking point. As Neil Armstrong so famously misspoke when he first set foot on the moon -- "There's one small step for (a) man (he should have said); one giant leap for mankind" -- is it a man, or is it mankind, whose interests a humanitarian has at heart?
The twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, teaches that the highest level of philanthropy is to endow a person in need with a gift or loan, enter into a partnership with him, or find him employment, all in order to strengthen his hand so he is no longer dependent on another; the second highest level is to give to the poor without knowing to whom one has given and without the recipient knowing from whom he has received. Thus -- if one considers the terms "humanitarian" and "philanthropist" interchangeable -- he whose works benefit the interests of mankind is a greater humanitarian than he whose works benefit a handful of individuals.
With all due respect to Maimonides, I have always believed that the aid and care one person provides to another requires greater sacrifice, commitment, and energy than faceless philanthropy -- a sentiment I expressed at the time I received this same Humanitarian Award in 1999. After all, the effort expended in writing a check or attending a non-profit board or committtee meeting seems negligible when compared to delivering hot meals every day to an elderly shut-in, mentoring, counseling, or tutoring a parentless child, caring for a terminally-ill family member or friend, or volunteering at one of the myriad social service organizations which assist the homeless, hungry, and incapacitated -- like the Gateway, the Free Clinic, the Salvation Army, or Daily Bread. In my remarks, I called those who perform these deeds "unsung heroes," because they do their work silently and selflessly and seldom receive the accolades they deserve.
In recent years, I am delighted to report, the VCIC has recognized several of these altruistic individuals. In fact, one of the joys of tonight's celebration is learning about the quiet benevolence of persons largely unknown to us.
Anonymity is hardly descriptive of our first honorees, George and Rosemary D., who, in accordance with their wishes, are receiving their awards as a silver-haired couple. George D., CEO of Central Virginia's sprawling regional health system, Centra Health, is one of the area's most visible and influential citizens. Possessed of unusual vision, genius, intensity, and leadership skills, Mr. D. has been instrumental in building one of the most respected and quality-oriented health-care institutions in the Southeast. As a member of his Board, I am repeatedly amazed at his ability to articulate, master, and manage the challenges of the most complex organism ever devised by the human brain, the modern hospital -- all the while maintaining remarkable composure and a refreshing sense of humor. His passion and vigor never falter; in fact, they overflow, and his non-professional pursuits have reaped the rewards: Lynchburg College; CVCC; and the United Way.
His statuesque companion, Rosemary -- friend for fifty-five years, sweetheart for forty-five, and spouse for thirty-nine -- is, if more reserved, equally engaged in a variety of activities. A master swimmer, she has been a relentless -- and usually victorious -- competitor on many athletic fields. Her enduring love for children is evidenced in her lifelong career as a teacher, coach, and Bridges volunteer.
Speaking as the inseparable pair they have been for half a century, George and Rosemary share some lessons and values they have learned from important people in their lives -- lessons and values which underlay their individual and collective successes. From their mothers, they learned that there is no such word as "can't," and that every person is responsible for his actions. From the many children who have crossed their paths, they learned that every child deserves a chance. From their colleagues at work, play, and volunteering, they learned that teamwork wins more games than superstars. From their friends and associates, they learned that friendship can never be replaced. From their Methodist faith, they learned that the Golden Rule is a directive, not a suggestion. And from each other, they learned that the power of two is exponentially greater than the power of one.
A paricularly entertaining aspect of this evening's program is a video biography of each honoree -- scripted, produced, and narrated by local television personality, Ms. Noreen T. Noreen is a striking black-haired beauty who brings her natural congeniality, broadcast presence, baritonal inflection, and glorious smile to the podium as Mistress of Ceremonies.
Thus it is with expectant trepidation that I turn to the closer of the two large screens that flank the stage to view the backstory of the next honoree, retired bank executive and a long-time friend Stuart F., for whom Ms. T. craftily recruited me to give an unrehearsed testimonial.
Noreen and her studio editor have a marvelous talent for making even the most non-photogenic person look respectable on camera. Apparently, while being filmed, I managed to suppress enough of my innate anxiety to speak intelligently about Mr. F., wisely omitting the corny jokes I had told about him at his retirement dinner some months ago -- although Noreen would have snipped them out anyway.
Stuart, I said, is the rare person who, when he makes a commitment, always follows through. I recalled working with him on the Centra Health capital campaign, during which he rigorously insisted that the Business Development Committee seek out additional prospects and make more calls, this at a time when I was, frankly, ready for a break. Stuart's confidence, tenacity, and encouragement were key to the campaign's success.
In addition to his full-time banking career, which ultimately propelled him to the local SunTrust presidency, Stuart is a thirty-three year veteran of the Naval Reserve. Along the way, he found time to serve on the boards of the Chamber of Commerce (rising to the chairmanship), Lynchburg College, CVCC, Centra Health, and NCCJ.
Stuart's sly sense of humor -- after all, he roasted me after I roasted him, much to my surprise, and dismay -- surfaces in the brief remarks he makes. He acknowledges three of his former SunTrust bosses in the audience -- Al K. (former president); Stuart T. (former commercial vice-president), and Sandra R. (not his boss, of course, but his secretarial assistant). He thanks his two brothers for being role models who set an example for him in his youth -- generally a bad example. They were often sent to their rooms for misbehavior, from which he learned that actions do have consequences, and it would behoove him not to emulate them.
Stuart F. and I have stronger ties than many people know. Twenty years ago, as a commercial loan officer with SunTrust's predecessor, United Virginia Bank, he loaned my father, brother, and me an ungodly sum of money to buy out our partners. He looked me in the eye and said, "Now Marc, one day you'll have to pay this back." And we have paid it back, at least eighty per cent of it, which is more than I can say for a lot of other loans banks have made in recent years.
Some months ago, my mother introduced me to the next honoree, Laura M., at a luncheon we attended at the Virginia University of Lynchburg, from which I inferred her interest in the Black community. My mother later hired Laura to tend to some plantings at my father's grave site in the Jewish cemetery in Madison Heights, from which I deduced her horticultural proficiency. Little did I know -- until tonight -- that these two avocations would be married in a stunning labor of love for this seventy-five-year-old woman.
Ten years ago, Laura took up a daunting task -- restoring and preserving White Rock Cemetery. "I didn't see a burning bush or hear the voice of God, but I knew this is what He wanted me to do for the rest of my life," she says.
White Rock Cemetery had not been cleared for thirty years, until Laura stumbled upon "this buried treasure" during a Habitat for Humanity Build. She started alone, "digging, weeding, thrashing, and tilling . . . day after day, week after week, month after month." In the words of her friend, Ann G., "She became intrigued by what was there, who was buried there. Her initial curiosity became a passion and an investment of her life, heart, and soul."
Laura committed herself to restoring the memory and honoring the lives of Blacks buried in the cemetery. She says, "The most exciting thing that happens is when I identify someone and know the name of one more person out there." And Ann echoes, "She has a connection and bond with these ancestors that she never met, that she'll never have any contact with. Yet she feels an obligation to them, a very loving obligation."
To embrace passionately a worthy cause is admirable enough; to bring along others is to approach saintliness. Laura secured grants for tools, equipment, supplies, and tree and brush removal. She solicited gifts for a Perpetual Care Fund. She established Historic White Rock Cemetery, Inc. And she recruited hundreds of volunteers, including many from Lynchburg College.
Says Ann, "Her enthusiasm and commitment were contagious. Those students went back over and over again. We couldn't get them to be involved in anything else, but they wanted to be side-by-side with Laura." Why? Because "she's a lot of fun--and just a joy to be around. She makes you want to work real hard, and get sweaty and dirty, but you also want to laugh. You enjoy just being in her presence and think how fortunate you are to call her your friend."
Tonight's last honoree is Sterling W., a man I know only as the Executive Director of the Jubilee Family Development Center, a community center for inner-city children and youth in the Florida Avenue neighborhood. I visited it once several years ago and, impressed by its facilities and programs, have made regular contributions ever since. But in the next few minutes I am to learn a lot more about the driving force behind Jubilee.
Sterling W. was an accountant for the FDIC in Washington, D.C., (where, incidentally, he received one of the corporation's most prestigious awards) when one of the boys whom he tutored on weekends ended up in jail. At that point, he decided to abandon his secure government career and to devote his life to preventing similar tragedies from befalling other troubled youth.
He returned to the site of his alma mater, Lynchburg College, and, along with volunteer Susan C., co-founded Jubilee -- originally a small after-school day care center designed to serve the children of the single-parent residents of a nearby Habitat Build. But under Sterling's vision and leadership, it exploded into a full-fledged campus providing social, educational, athletic, and recreational activities to 228 youngsters from all parts of the inner city. Says Susan,"No one dreamed that the Jubilee Center would become what it is today. No one except Sterling."
In Sterling's video biography, two Jubilee students give testimonials. "Because of Jubilee's tutorial program, I am now honor roll." "The moment when I was falling the hardest, he was there to pick me up, put me back on my feet."
But directing Jubilee, saving kids' lives, is not enough for Sterling W. He is Vice-Chairman of the Lynchburg School Board, having served for nine years. He is assistant pastor of Prayer of Faith Temple. He is a foster parent -- and says he is the one gleaning the benefits. "When a kid comes back and tells you how much he appreciates what you've done, how much he loves you, when he thanks you for taking time with him, that means a lot," says Sterling.
I have never watched the Oprah Winfrey Show, so it is no surprise that I missed it the day Sterling W. was introduced and received Oprah's Use Your Life Award.
Like Laura M., Sterling's commitment to his cause is infectious. Says Susan, "He's touched my life and motivated me to get involved. He serves as an example to all of us that we have something to give back to our community, that we shouldn't be timid or procrastinate, that we should use our talents."
As Sterling springs to the podium, his enthusiasm and exuberance reverberate throughout the auditorium. He breaks out into a broad smile that covers his whole face. He glows with happiness, gratitude. He speaks rapidly and extemporaneously, his only notes a few names he is fearful of overlooking as he thanks his supporters. I don't remember -- and didn't write down -- a word he said, having decided to write this blog many days afterwards. But it hardly matters. Like others in the audience, I am entranced by his unbridled passion, his soaring eloquence, his limitless love for his children and his calling. If he moves us to tears, they are tears of joy, as we exult in the revelation that, if we can't precisely define a humanitarian, at least we can recognize one when he walks among us. Here certainly is a person attending to the needs of mankind -- one child at a time.
Enlightened, invigorated, perhaps sworn to a higher standard of community service or self-improvement, we rise to congratulate the honorees and to thank them for their work and their message. For a brief time, in this surreal setting, we have escaped our domestic duties, our social comfort zones, our professional obligations, and the racial, religious, socio-economic, and cultural silos we inhabit. The words and deeds of five Lynchburg neighbors have awakened us to injustice, pain, and despair, the communal responsibilities we too often ignore, and the power each one of us possesses to repair our fractured world -- if only we would strive to be more humanitarian.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
African-American
At the risk of offending any African-American readers of this blog, I am compelled to admit that I have always been discomfited by that term. Growing up in the sixties, during the gestation and maturation of the Civil Rights Movement, I came to understand that the accepted nomenclature for a member of the Negroid race had evolved from the rather shameful "colored person" to the more dignified "black," which neatly counterbalanced "white" with no inferior connotation.
Then, sometime in the late eighties or early nineties, an official cadre of social scientists and human relation experts (or whoever is invested with the authority to make these decisions) deemed it fashionable and politically correct to identify Americans of diverse ethnicity by their national or ancestral origins. Hence, Indians became Native-Americans; Mexicans became Hispanic-Americans; Japanese became Asian-Americans; and blacks became African-Americans. (Thankfully, this epidemic of hyphenation has passed over the synagogue and spared us Jewish-Americans, who remain Jews.)
This delicate subject surfaced in my consciousness after I finished reading Barack Obama's eloquent memoir, "Dreams from My Father." After all, Obama, the son of a white woman and the black Kenyan student whom she met and married while attending the University of Hawaii, is a bona fide African-American; raised by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii, he could just as easily, under slightly different circumstances, have grown up in Kenya, under the watchful eye of his father. In fact, Obama's exploration of race dynamics and his own racial identity is the underlying theme of his narrative.
Barack Obama's life experience is atypical of Blacks of his generation. Not only was he the offspring of a 1960's interracial couple -- one of whom was African and thus not a descendant of slaves -- his grandparents, who helped raise him, were uncommonly liberal in their racial attitudes. The family's migration to Hawaii was driven in part by his grandfather's natural wanderlust, but also by a nagging discomfort with racism, grounded in his own painful, neglected youth. Obama writes of his grandmother's being denounced by a co-worker at a Texas bank for calling a black janitor "Mister" and of his twelve-year-old mother being taunted for befriending a black girl.
When Obama's father leaves his wife and young son, first, to accept a scholarship at Harvard and, afterwards, to return to Kenya, his mother divorces him, remarries an Indonesian, and moves with her second husband and her son to Jakarta. Unable to afford the International School which most foreign children attend, she sends Obama to public school and supplements his education with a correspondence course, waking him at four every morning to teach him English lessons.
"Her message," writes Obama, "was to embrace black people generally. She would come home with books on civil rights movements, the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the speeches of Dr. King . . . To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to know."
Obama gets an inkling of those burdens -- and the hidden enemy, bigotry -- when he comes across the photograph of a horribly-disfigured man on the cover of a Life magazine. Like thousands of other black men and women, the man had undergone a chemical treatment to lighten his complexion and gain entrance into a much happier white world.
When the correspondence course runs out, Obama's mother sends him back to Hawaii to live with her parents, who enroll him in the famous Punahou prepatory school. In a white household, in the company of only three other black students, Obama sees himself in a quandary. He writes: "I was trying to raise myself as a black man in America, and, beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant" -- except for Ray, a senior transfer from Los Angeles, who tries to impress upon Obama the realities of black-white relationships, warning him that "we are always playing on the white man's court, by the white man's rules." While Obama studies Malcolm X, Ray exclaims, "I don't need no books to tell me how to be black."
Like Malcolm X, Obama pines for simple racial purity. He writes: "One line in his book stayed with me. He spoke of his own wish that the white blood that ran through him might be expunged . . . I knew that traveling down my own road to self-respect my own white blood would never recede into abstraction."
Enrolling at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama resists the temptation to assimilate into the majority white culture, to follow sheepishly other blacks who, unlike him, are eager to escape the urban malaise of Compton or Watts, or even suburban blacks, who crave an individualism not defined by their skin color. Instead, "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout," Obama chooses for friends the more politically active black students, the foreign students, the Chicanos, the "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets." When a friend describes her childhood growing up on the south side of Chicago -- "a vision of black life in all its possibility" -- which fills Obama with longing, and he expresses his envy, she ironically responds, "Isn't life something? All this time I was wishing I had grown up in Hawaii."
She also plants a seed -- that resolving his identity crisis means moving beyond having to choose between his black father and his white mother. He writes: "You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim in how it is shaped. You still have resposibilities." Obama reflects that his "identity might begin with the fact of his race, but it didn't, couldn't end there."
Seeking a place to put down roots and test his commitments, a place to anchor his self-image as a Black American, Obama transfers to Columbia. While he finds no more black students there than at Occidental, he is consoled by having landed "in the heart of a true city, with black neighborhoods in true proximity," although, in fact, he is disturbed by their instability, their faultlines, their race and class problems.
Obama graduates from Columbia, works for a Wall Street consulting firm for a year, resigns that job, and, after six months of unemployment and sending off resumes, becomes a community organizer. He writes: "Communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. They had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens . . . Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned . . . I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life."
Ultimately, Obama's organizing efforts produce frustration and disillusionment. Trying to put together a meeting of churches to discuss a gang shooting, he is told by one minister, "The last thing we need is to join up with a bunch of white money and Catholic churches and Jewish organizers to solve our problems." A $500,000 grant to a suburban university to set up a job bank in the Altgeld public housing project in Southside Chicago is squandered, leaving unemployment in this -- and many other -- black neighborhoods endemic, widespread, and persistent, and its citizens cynical and resigned.
In such an environment, Obama flirts with Black Nationalism; its twin strands of black affirmation are seductively attractive: on the one hand, solidarity, self-reliance, discipline, and communal responsibility; on the other, a blanket indictment of whites as responsible for the ills of the black community and the despair of its psyche. But both unravel when put to closer scrutiny.
The first founders on economic realities, which prevent blacks from withdrawing completely from the controlling business interests. Obama imagines a black worker saying, "The white folks I work with ain't so bad, and even if they were, I can't be quitting my job. Who's gonna pay my rent tomorrow or feed my children?" The second contradicts his mother's staunch belief in the morality of a white society populated by many individuals of good will. Obama concludes that, "Notions of purity -- of race or of culture -- could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American's self-esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness (and his) would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we inherited."
The politics of the day prove to be ineffective at improving the conditions of blacks or ameliorating racial polarization. Even the election of black Mayor Harold Washington raises expectations which turn out to be illusory. "Many blacks," writes Obama, "have given up the hope that politics could actually change their lives." The Mayor makes city services more equitable only at the margins. He appoints a few more blacks to important administrative positions, but upsets his base of support by making deals to consolidate his power, failing to tackle poverty in any meaningful way, and ultimately changing nothing as far as the despondent residents of Altgeld are concerned. Nevertheless, his sudden death while in office leaves Chicago blacks "dazed, confused, uncertain of direction, frightened of the future."
Obama's one great success is an emblematic Pyrrhic victory. When a handful of Altgeld residents unite for a bus trip to the Chicago Housing Authority Director's Office to protest the presence of asbestos in their apartments and the lack of basic services, Obama is encouraged by their growing empowerment. His enthusiasm collapses, however, when, at the meeting, the director is challenged to answer questions directly, refuses, and then angrily stalks off the stage in the ensuing pandemonium. Nothing is accomplished. A month later, when the same group meets with a HUD representative to lobby for the Housing Authority's one-billion dollar request to fund repairs on projects throughout the city, it is told, "The Chicago Housing Authority has no chance of getting even half the appropriation it has requested. You can get the asbestos removed. Or you can have new plumbing and roofing where it's needed. But you can't have both."
Determined to find a way to bring about real change, Obama applies to law school, "to learn power's currency in all its intricacy and detail, knowledge that would have compromised him before coming to Chicago but that he can now bring back to where it is needed." He is not embarrassed to leave; none of his clients begrudges him his success. Having immersed himself in the black community, his color sufficient criterion for membership, he knows now "that most black folks aren't like the father of his dreams, full of high-blown ideals and quick to pass judgment" but "practical people who know life is too hard to judge each other's choices, too messy to live according to abstract ideals."
Besides simple acceptance, there is another meaning to community. Obama writes, "You could be black and still not give a damn about what happened in Altgeld . . . But to be right with yourself, to do right by others, to lend meaning to a community's suffering and take part in its healing -- that required something more . . . It required faith." A faith beyond a faith in one's self. A Christian faith. A commitment to God and the Church and, with them as facilitators, to "the black family, education, the work ethic, discipline, and self-respect."
Although drawn to the Church, Obama remains a "reluctant skeptic . . . wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won." Before he can make this leap of faith, he decides he must learn more about his now-deceased father and his African heritage. He goes to Kenya.
Obama has lived in many places -- Hawaii, Indonesia, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago -- but something happens to him thousands of miles from home that has never happened before; an airline official helping him locate a lost bag recognizes his name. He writes: "My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges that I did not understand" -- the progeny, so to speak, of his father's polygamous marriages, the rival children and wives of which are engaged in a five-year-old lawsuit over the remains of a meager estate.
"His family seems to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets, and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama Senior's long-lost son." But along with this joyful connection to his extended family comes tension and doubt--the same kind of "survivor's guilt" he might feel when his own financial success is set against black poverty and powerlessness, whether in Kenya or Southside Chicago.
Naively, Obama has envisioned Kenya as a single, harmonious whole -- in which his own complexities can be sorted out -- only to discover a discordant, divided society permeated with resentment against foreigners who own businesses, vestiges of colonialism (like the patronizing of white tourists), and ancient but fierce tribal prejudices and loyalties.
Narratives about his grandfather Onyango and his father Barack -- constructed by family members, particularly his "Granny" -- reveal personalities as conflicted as his own.
Onyango was a curious, restless young man who, hearing of the arrival of the white man at a nearby town, went off to see these strange people for himself. When he returned, he was shunned by his own father and other members of his village for wearing white man's clothes. He moved to Nairobi and went to work for the white man, learning his language, his system of paper records, his dining habits, his household organization. He respected the white man for his power, his machines, his weapons, and the way he was always improving himself -- although he never believed the white man superior to the African. For Onyango, knowledge and the ability to work together -- as opposed to the black man's tribalism -- were the sources of the white man's power; he wanted his son Barack Sr. to be as educated as any white man.
But when that son married a white woman, he vehemently disapproved. "He didn't want Obama blood sullied by a white woman." Onyango threatened to have his son's visa revoked. Eventually, Barack Sr. returned to Kenya without his wife and son.
Barack Sr. was also a man of contradictions. He was rebellious, proud, impetuous, and independent -- qualities which estranged him from his father Onyango. When he returned to Kenya after getting his degree from Harvard, he entered government service and enjoyed a successful career -- until his idealism got the better of him. A member of the minority Luo tribe, he began to speak out against tribalism, the majority Kikuyu government, and its president, Jomo Kenyatta -- ignoring the warnings of his friends and associates. He was banished from the government and blacklisted; no ministries or foreign companies would give him work. He began to drink; he had to borrow money from relatives just for food. His friends stopped coming to visit him because it was dangerous to be seen with him -- but he refused to apologize or change his attitude.
Later, after Kenyatta died, Barack Sr. was restored to government favor, went back to work, and regained some of his money and influence.
In spite of his arrogance, Barack Sr. had a generous heart. He would give to anyone who asked; he couldn't say no. And he never held a grudge, even when his luck changed, he lost everything, and the people whom he had helped forgot him and laughed at him. When he was rehabilitated and doing well again, he went back to helping the same people who had betrayed him.
Standing at his father's grave, Obama weeps as he reflects on his father's tragic flaw. He was a man who, while embracing the instruments of modernity with "polish and panache," abandoned too much of the past: "The laughter in Granny's voice, the pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the market, the stories around the fire. The loyalties that could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles. Words of encouragement. An embrace. A strong, true love. For all your gifts -- the quick mind, the power of concentration, the charm -- you could never forge yourself into a true man while leaving those things behind."
Africa is bound to disappoint Black Americans -- like Obama -- who come looking for the authentic, says historian Rukia Odero as the two of them enjoy an African meal -- fish cooked in Indonesian spices -- and drink British tea. They consider whether "there is anything left that is truly African. " Dr. Odero has, in fact, resigned herself to a daughter whose first language is English, with bits and pieces of others thrown in. She tells Obama, "I'm less interested in a daughter who's authentically African than one who is authentically herself."
Having already observed that his aunt's Nairobi home "was just like the apartments in Altgeld -- the same chain of mothers and daughters and children, the same absence of men," Obama somberly concludes that "on this earth one place is not so different from another."
From Hawaii to Chicago to Africa, Obama's journey has raised more questions about his place and purpose in the world than it has offered answers. Other readers have suggested two paths by which Obama ultimately resolves his inner conflicts and discovers his "authentic self."
First, he embraces Christianity. Before leaving on his African trip, he attends Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ and hears him preach a sermon entitled "The Audacity of Hope." Reverend Wright describes a painting, "Hope." Hope is embodied in a harpist bruised and battered sitting on a mountaintop towering above a world "groaning under the same strife and deprivation, rejection and despair" that members of his congregation face every day. But the harpist gazes upwards, and dares to hope, to praise God, to make music on the one string she has left. Faith in Jesus Christ gives even the most downtrodden the audacity to hope. Obama is deeply moved. At the end of his memoir, when he returns to Chicago after graduating from law school, he joins the church.
Secondly, he enters politics. Instead of repressing his bi-racial bloodlines, he will present himself symbolically and actively as a force for change and unity, breaching racial, socio-economic, and partisan barriers. And he will leverage his experience as an organizer to inspire and empower diverse communities to take control of their own destinies.
I would submit a third path, the act of artistic creation, and argue that it was the writing and publishing of this book -- during which he literally exorcised the racial demons which haunted his self-consciousness -- which enabled Barack Obama to assume a truly comfortable identity. In the introduction, he acknowledges that he intended to write a book about race relations, but found "his mind drawn to rockier shores," and what emerged was "a record of a personal interior journey -- a boy's search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a Black American." The fact that he struggled to finish and eventually retreated to Bali for several months with his wife Michelle suggests some degree of inner turmoil.
Obama has admitted his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue, and events out of chronological order. Some critics have been quick to point out factual errors: conversations about race that never happened; a Life magazine photograph that doesn't exist; intimations of perceived discrimination that are disputed. But these shouldn't detract from the sincere coming-of-age story of a biracial man growing up in a variety of venues, and grappling with issues of racism, prejudice, civil rights, self-esteem, poverty, and family relationships -- a work of self-discovery that by its very existence answers the troubling question it poses: Who am I.
Obama's memoir has become uniquely intertwined with his political career; each has enhanced the other in his meteoric rise to prominence. Both languished in obscurity until his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, after which a re-released edition of the book started flying off the shelves. "Dreams from My Father" and its sequel "The Audacity of Hope" continue to rank high on best-seller lists and are as much a part of his persona as his admittedly thin resume. With three million copies in print, his life story has become an "incredibly lucrative franchise," (Scott, New York Times, May 18, 2008) and made him a wealthy man, a celebrity, and quite possibly the next President of the United States.
Then, sometime in the late eighties or early nineties, an official cadre of social scientists and human relation experts (or whoever is invested with the authority to make these decisions) deemed it fashionable and politically correct to identify Americans of diverse ethnicity by their national or ancestral origins. Hence, Indians became Native-Americans; Mexicans became Hispanic-Americans; Japanese became Asian-Americans; and blacks became African-Americans. (Thankfully, this epidemic of hyphenation has passed over the synagogue and spared us Jewish-Americans, who remain Jews.)
This delicate subject surfaced in my consciousness after I finished reading Barack Obama's eloquent memoir, "Dreams from My Father." After all, Obama, the son of a white woman and the black Kenyan student whom she met and married while attending the University of Hawaii, is a bona fide African-American; raised by his mother and grandparents in Hawaii, he could just as easily, under slightly different circumstances, have grown up in Kenya, under the watchful eye of his father. In fact, Obama's exploration of race dynamics and his own racial identity is the underlying theme of his narrative.
Barack Obama's life experience is atypical of Blacks of his generation. Not only was he the offspring of a 1960's interracial couple -- one of whom was African and thus not a descendant of slaves -- his grandparents, who helped raise him, were uncommonly liberal in their racial attitudes. The family's migration to Hawaii was driven in part by his grandfather's natural wanderlust, but also by a nagging discomfort with racism, grounded in his own painful, neglected youth. Obama writes of his grandmother's being denounced by a co-worker at a Texas bank for calling a black janitor "Mister" and of his twelve-year-old mother being taunted for befriending a black girl.
When Obama's father leaves his wife and young son, first, to accept a scholarship at Harvard and, afterwards, to return to Kenya, his mother divorces him, remarries an Indonesian, and moves with her second husband and her son to Jakarta. Unable to afford the International School which most foreign children attend, she sends Obama to public school and supplements his education with a correspondence course, waking him at four every morning to teach him English lessons.
"Her message," writes Obama, "was to embrace black people generally. She would come home with books on civil rights movements, the recordings of Mahalia Jackson, the speeches of Dr. King . . . To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to know."
Obama gets an inkling of those burdens -- and the hidden enemy, bigotry -- when he comes across the photograph of a horribly-disfigured man on the cover of a Life magazine. Like thousands of other black men and women, the man had undergone a chemical treatment to lighten his complexion and gain entrance into a much happier white world.
When the correspondence course runs out, Obama's mother sends him back to Hawaii to live with her parents, who enroll him in the famous Punahou prepatory school. In a white household, in the company of only three other black students, Obama sees himself in a quandary. He writes: "I was trying to raise myself as a black man in America, and, beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant" -- except for Ray, a senior transfer from Los Angeles, who tries to impress upon Obama the realities of black-white relationships, warning him that "we are always playing on the white man's court, by the white man's rules." While Obama studies Malcolm X, Ray exclaims, "I don't need no books to tell me how to be black."
Like Malcolm X, Obama pines for simple racial purity. He writes: "One line in his book stayed with me. He spoke of his own wish that the white blood that ran through him might be expunged . . . I knew that traveling down my own road to self-respect my own white blood would never recede into abstraction."
Enrolling at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama resists the temptation to assimilate into the majority white culture, to follow sheepishly other blacks who, unlike him, are eager to escape the urban malaise of Compton or Watts, or even suburban blacks, who crave an individualism not defined by their skin color. Instead, "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout," Obama chooses for friends the more politically active black students, the foreign students, the Chicanos, the "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets." When a friend describes her childhood growing up on the south side of Chicago -- "a vision of black life in all its possibility" -- which fills Obama with longing, and he expresses his envy, she ironically responds, "Isn't life something? All this time I was wishing I had grown up in Hawaii."
She also plants a seed -- that resolving his identity crisis means moving beyond having to choose between his black father and his white mother. He writes: "You might be locked into a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim in how it is shaped. You still have resposibilities." Obama reflects that his "identity might begin with the fact of his race, but it didn't, couldn't end there."
Seeking a place to put down roots and test his commitments, a place to anchor his self-image as a Black American, Obama transfers to Columbia. While he finds no more black students there than at Occidental, he is consoled by having landed "in the heart of a true city, with black neighborhoods in true proximity," although, in fact, he is disturbed by their instability, their faultlines, their race and class problems.
Obama graduates from Columbia, works for a Wall Street consulting firm for a year, resigns that job, and, after six months of unemployment and sending off resumes, becomes a community organizer. He writes: "Communities had never been a given in this country, at least not for blacks. They had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens . . . Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned . . . I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life."
Ultimately, Obama's organizing efforts produce frustration and disillusionment. Trying to put together a meeting of churches to discuss a gang shooting, he is told by one minister, "The last thing we need is to join up with a bunch of white money and Catholic churches and Jewish organizers to solve our problems." A $500,000 grant to a suburban university to set up a job bank in the Altgeld public housing project in Southside Chicago is squandered, leaving unemployment in this -- and many other -- black neighborhoods endemic, widespread, and persistent, and its citizens cynical and resigned.
In such an environment, Obama flirts with Black Nationalism; its twin strands of black affirmation are seductively attractive: on the one hand, solidarity, self-reliance, discipline, and communal responsibility; on the other, a blanket indictment of whites as responsible for the ills of the black community and the despair of its psyche. But both unravel when put to closer scrutiny.
The first founders on economic realities, which prevent blacks from withdrawing completely from the controlling business interests. Obama imagines a black worker saying, "The white folks I work with ain't so bad, and even if they were, I can't be quitting my job. Who's gonna pay my rent tomorrow or feed my children?" The second contradicts his mother's staunch belief in the morality of a white society populated by many individuals of good will. Obama concludes that, "Notions of purity -- of race or of culture -- could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American's self-esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness (and his) would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we inherited."
The politics of the day prove to be ineffective at improving the conditions of blacks or ameliorating racial polarization. Even the election of black Mayor Harold Washington raises expectations which turn out to be illusory. "Many blacks," writes Obama, "have given up the hope that politics could actually change their lives." The Mayor makes city services more equitable only at the margins. He appoints a few more blacks to important administrative positions, but upsets his base of support by making deals to consolidate his power, failing to tackle poverty in any meaningful way, and ultimately changing nothing as far as the despondent residents of Altgeld are concerned. Nevertheless, his sudden death while in office leaves Chicago blacks "dazed, confused, uncertain of direction, frightened of the future."
Obama's one great success is an emblematic Pyrrhic victory. When a handful of Altgeld residents unite for a bus trip to the Chicago Housing Authority Director's Office to protest the presence of asbestos in their apartments and the lack of basic services, Obama is encouraged by their growing empowerment. His enthusiasm collapses, however, when, at the meeting, the director is challenged to answer questions directly, refuses, and then angrily stalks off the stage in the ensuing pandemonium. Nothing is accomplished. A month later, when the same group meets with a HUD representative to lobby for the Housing Authority's one-billion dollar request to fund repairs on projects throughout the city, it is told, "The Chicago Housing Authority has no chance of getting even half the appropriation it has requested. You can get the asbestos removed. Or you can have new plumbing and roofing where it's needed. But you can't have both."
Determined to find a way to bring about real change, Obama applies to law school, "to learn power's currency in all its intricacy and detail, knowledge that would have compromised him before coming to Chicago but that he can now bring back to where it is needed." He is not embarrassed to leave; none of his clients begrudges him his success. Having immersed himself in the black community, his color sufficient criterion for membership, he knows now "that most black folks aren't like the father of his dreams, full of high-blown ideals and quick to pass judgment" but "practical people who know life is too hard to judge each other's choices, too messy to live according to abstract ideals."
Besides simple acceptance, there is another meaning to community. Obama writes, "You could be black and still not give a damn about what happened in Altgeld . . . But to be right with yourself, to do right by others, to lend meaning to a community's suffering and take part in its healing -- that required something more . . . It required faith." A faith beyond a faith in one's self. A Christian faith. A commitment to God and the Church and, with them as facilitators, to "the black family, education, the work ethic, discipline, and self-respect."
Although drawn to the Church, Obama remains a "reluctant skeptic . . . wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won." Before he can make this leap of faith, he decides he must learn more about his now-deceased father and his African heritage. He goes to Kenya.
Obama has lived in many places -- Hawaii, Indonesia, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago -- but something happens to him thousands of miles from home that has never happened before; an airline official helping him locate a lost bag recognizes his name. He writes: "My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances, and grudges that I did not understand" -- the progeny, so to speak, of his father's polygamous marriages, the rival children and wives of which are engaged in a five-year-old lawsuit over the remains of a meager estate.
"His family seems to be everywhere: in stores, at the post office, on streets, and in the parks, all of them fussing and fretting over Obama Senior's long-lost son." But along with this joyful connection to his extended family comes tension and doubt--the same kind of "survivor's guilt" he might feel when his own financial success is set against black poverty and powerlessness, whether in Kenya or Southside Chicago.
Naively, Obama has envisioned Kenya as a single, harmonious whole -- in which his own complexities can be sorted out -- only to discover a discordant, divided society permeated with resentment against foreigners who own businesses, vestiges of colonialism (like the patronizing of white tourists), and ancient but fierce tribal prejudices and loyalties.
Narratives about his grandfather Onyango and his father Barack -- constructed by family members, particularly his "Granny" -- reveal personalities as conflicted as his own.
Onyango was a curious, restless young man who, hearing of the arrival of the white man at a nearby town, went off to see these strange people for himself. When he returned, he was shunned by his own father and other members of his village for wearing white man's clothes. He moved to Nairobi and went to work for the white man, learning his language, his system of paper records, his dining habits, his household organization. He respected the white man for his power, his machines, his weapons, and the way he was always improving himself -- although he never believed the white man superior to the African. For Onyango, knowledge and the ability to work together -- as opposed to the black man's tribalism -- were the sources of the white man's power; he wanted his son Barack Sr. to be as educated as any white man.
But when that son married a white woman, he vehemently disapproved. "He didn't want Obama blood sullied by a white woman." Onyango threatened to have his son's visa revoked. Eventually, Barack Sr. returned to Kenya without his wife and son.
Barack Sr. was also a man of contradictions. He was rebellious, proud, impetuous, and independent -- qualities which estranged him from his father Onyango. When he returned to Kenya after getting his degree from Harvard, he entered government service and enjoyed a successful career -- until his idealism got the better of him. A member of the minority Luo tribe, he began to speak out against tribalism, the majority Kikuyu government, and its president, Jomo Kenyatta -- ignoring the warnings of his friends and associates. He was banished from the government and blacklisted; no ministries or foreign companies would give him work. He began to drink; he had to borrow money from relatives just for food. His friends stopped coming to visit him because it was dangerous to be seen with him -- but he refused to apologize or change his attitude.
Later, after Kenyatta died, Barack Sr. was restored to government favor, went back to work, and regained some of his money and influence.
In spite of his arrogance, Barack Sr. had a generous heart. He would give to anyone who asked; he couldn't say no. And he never held a grudge, even when his luck changed, he lost everything, and the people whom he had helped forgot him and laughed at him. When he was rehabilitated and doing well again, he went back to helping the same people who had betrayed him.
Standing at his father's grave, Obama weeps as he reflects on his father's tragic flaw. He was a man who, while embracing the instruments of modernity with "polish and panache," abandoned too much of the past: "The laughter in Granny's voice, the pleasures of company while herding the goats, the murmur of the market, the stories around the fire. The loyalties that could make up for a lack of airplanes or rifles. Words of encouragement. An embrace. A strong, true love. For all your gifts -- the quick mind, the power of concentration, the charm -- you could never forge yourself into a true man while leaving those things behind."
Africa is bound to disappoint Black Americans -- like Obama -- who come looking for the authentic, says historian Rukia Odero as the two of them enjoy an African meal -- fish cooked in Indonesian spices -- and drink British tea. They consider whether "there is anything left that is truly African. " Dr. Odero has, in fact, resigned herself to a daughter whose first language is English, with bits and pieces of others thrown in. She tells Obama, "I'm less interested in a daughter who's authentically African than one who is authentically herself."
Having already observed that his aunt's Nairobi home "was just like the apartments in Altgeld -- the same chain of mothers and daughters and children, the same absence of men," Obama somberly concludes that "on this earth one place is not so different from another."
From Hawaii to Chicago to Africa, Obama's journey has raised more questions about his place and purpose in the world than it has offered answers. Other readers have suggested two paths by which Obama ultimately resolves his inner conflicts and discovers his "authentic self."
First, he embraces Christianity. Before leaving on his African trip, he attends Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ and hears him preach a sermon entitled "The Audacity of Hope." Reverend Wright describes a painting, "Hope." Hope is embodied in a harpist bruised and battered sitting on a mountaintop towering above a world "groaning under the same strife and deprivation, rejection and despair" that members of his congregation face every day. But the harpist gazes upwards, and dares to hope, to praise God, to make music on the one string she has left. Faith in Jesus Christ gives even the most downtrodden the audacity to hope. Obama is deeply moved. At the end of his memoir, when he returns to Chicago after graduating from law school, he joins the church.
Secondly, he enters politics. Instead of repressing his bi-racial bloodlines, he will present himself symbolically and actively as a force for change and unity, breaching racial, socio-economic, and partisan barriers. And he will leverage his experience as an organizer to inspire and empower diverse communities to take control of their own destinies.
I would submit a third path, the act of artistic creation, and argue that it was the writing and publishing of this book -- during which he literally exorcised the racial demons which haunted his self-consciousness -- which enabled Barack Obama to assume a truly comfortable identity. In the introduction, he acknowledges that he intended to write a book about race relations, but found "his mind drawn to rockier shores," and what emerged was "a record of a personal interior journey -- a boy's search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a Black American." The fact that he struggled to finish and eventually retreated to Bali for several months with his wife Michelle suggests some degree of inner turmoil.
Obama has admitted his use of pseudonyms, composite characters, approximated dialogue, and events out of chronological order. Some critics have been quick to point out factual errors: conversations about race that never happened; a Life magazine photograph that doesn't exist; intimations of perceived discrimination that are disputed. But these shouldn't detract from the sincere coming-of-age story of a biracial man growing up in a variety of venues, and grappling with issues of racism, prejudice, civil rights, self-esteem, poverty, and family relationships -- a work of self-discovery that by its very existence answers the troubling question it poses: Who am I.
Obama's memoir has become uniquely intertwined with his political career; each has enhanced the other in his meteoric rise to prominence. Both languished in obscurity until his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, after which a re-released edition of the book started flying off the shelves. "Dreams from My Father" and its sequel "The Audacity of Hope" continue to rank high on best-seller lists and are as much a part of his persona as his admittedly thin resume. With three million copies in print, his life story has become an "incredibly lucrative franchise," (Scott, New York Times, May 18, 2008) and made him a wealthy man, a celebrity, and quite possibly the next President of the United States.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Big Red
One morning last week, exiting the YMCA, I found my Taurus wedged between a Ford Expedition and a Lincoln Navigator. It was like being in a tunnel, since my roof barely nudged the bottom of their side windows. The fact that I even noticed this and then grimaced in disgust is symptomatic of my current obsession with these heavyweights of the highway -- commonly known as sport utility vehicles, or, in carspeak, suvs. (I refuse to dignify the acronym by capitalizing it.)This distraction materialized about ten days ago during a pleasant drive in that very same Taurus to a meeting in Greensboro, N.C., when the conversation among my advertising director, my case goods buyer, and me drifted to the current price of gasoline, prompted no doubt by its all-too-frequent, in-your-face roadside display, which, like a boxer's relentless jab, stings a little more with each successive round.
I made the bold statement that the American public is merely paying the price for a luxury it couldn't afford, fifty years of cheap oil, upon which its culture and economy has been precariously constructed like a house of cards and buttressed by governmental myopia. "It amuses me how politicians and pundits patriotically fly the flag of energy independence, yet promote policies which encourage consumption and deter conservation," I said. Of course, my companions asked for specifics.
"First of all," I said, "zoning regulations, by prohibiting mixed residential and business land usage, have created communities and a lifestyle dependent on the automobile. Americans have been shoehorned -- admittedly, by choice -- into footprints which require them to drive from their home to just about every destination: their place of work, the grocery store, their children's school, and their favorite department or discount store.
"Secondly, when gas prices were artificially low -- below the rate of inflation -- which they have been for thirty years, since the oil spike of the seventies, the federal government should have gradually raised gasoline taxes, which not only would have had the effect of suppressing demand, but also would have generated revenues which could have been invested in mass transit systems and alternative energy sources. Higher gas prices would have made both of these options more economically viable and attractive to public and private investors.
"And, finally, bowing to pressure from manufacturers and labor unions, Congress failed to require higher gas mileage for automobiles sold in the United States, which consequently continue to guzzle gasoline at excessive rates. This flawed policy was further exacerbated by allowing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) for vehicles classified as light trucks to be set at a level 20 per cent lower than the CAFE for cars (20.7 mpg compared to 25.7 mpg) -- and by allowing suvs of all shapes and sizes to be so classified -- a revelation which would probably surprise many of their owners, whose luxuriously-appointed tanks -- at least in their minds -- bear faint resemblance to a hog farmer's pick-up. The federal government's insistence on preserving strict (and higher -- but not high enough) gas-mileage standards for cars (as opposed to light trucks) while not raising gasoline taxes paved the way for the surfeit of gas-hungry suvs on America's highways. (Bradsher, p. 42)
"The sport utility vehicle," I humbly concluded, "is, in my opinion, the most egregious, indulgent, and extravagant manifestation of America's addiction to cheap oil, and one of the most obscene frauds ever perpetrated on a gullible public."
This conversation had three sequels. I began noticing suvs everywhere I turned. I checked out a book from the library (Barnes and Noble didn't have a copy, naturally) which I had spotted in an airport bookstore about a year ago: "High and Mighty: SUVs -- The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way," by Keith Bradsher. And I remembered Big Red.
I have never shared the love of so many of my friends and acquaintances for suvs. I have never considered them attractive or comfortable, and, for an object which is supposedly an expression of one's individuality, I find that they exude a soporific similarity -- big, boxy, and boring. I take pride in my ability to identify generations of Camrys, Altimas, Fusions, Tauruses, Accords, Impalas, Malibus, Three Hundreds, CTS's, LS430's, 530's, and C320's, but it is indeed a daunting task to try to distinguish among the variety of suvs that stalk me these days: execrable Explorers, esurient Escalades, chauvinistic Cherokees, domineering Durangos, sinister Suburbans, terrifying Tahoes, ferocious Four Runners, mordant Mountaineers, predatory Pathfinders, noxious Navigators, and -- for lack of any better alliterative adjective -- yucky Yukons -- to name a few.
Like a defenseless quarterback whose pocket has collapsed, I am surrounded by these blitzing behemoths. Every morning the diminutive 4'10" lady who lives across the street climbs aboard her wide-bodied white Trailblazer to drive to work. Two of my neighbors -- neither of whom have any children at home to fill up the rear seats or cargo area -- each own a pair of suvs: one a Mercedes M-Class and an Explorer; the other a Navigator and a Liberty. A week ago I was flabbergasted by the sheer size and menacing appearance of a black Cadillac Escalade ESV taking up two parking spaces on Main Street, only to be similarly mesmerized at seeing its monstrous twin (white this time) lurking in front of the Atlantis Hotel on Paradise Island, where, by the way, the herd of suvs guzzling $6-a-gallon gas and prowling its narrow, pedestrian-lined streets seems ridiculously wasteful and dangerous. And last Wednesday, as we were leaving a meeting at Lynchburg College, I was commiserating with a friend on how the high price of gasoline was affecting our businesses, only to be disillusioned and dumstruck when he hoisted his 250-lb frame into a 2008 Navigator, beside which my 1983 RX-7 looked like a peanut.
Four-dollar-a-gallon gas may finally be putting the brakes on America's incorrigible infatuation with the suv. Chevrolet Trail Blazer sales slumped 73% in April, while Ford's suv sales dropped 36% -- although consumers have been known to re-embrace bigness once their initial shock at the pump dissipates and prices stabilize. Regardless of new suv sales, there will continue to be millions on the highway as their penetration of the new vehicle market approached 20% -- three million a year -- over the past decade.
The introduction of the four-door Jeep Cherokee in 1984 launched the suv boom, which, coincidentally, was the same year automakers were required to raise the average fuel economy of its cars to 27.5 mpg (up from 13 mpg in 1975 and 18 mpg in 1978). To meet these standards, front and back ends were shrunk to reduce weight, and profiles were lowered to improve aerodynamics. Middle-class families craving their traditional, roomy, full-size sedans flocked to the Cherokee and to the Ford and Chevrolet clones -- the Explorer and Blazer -- which followed on its heels in 1990. These vehicles -- along with Chrysler's popular minivans -- could be certified as light trucks as long as they "had a flat floor extending from behind the front seat to the back of the vehicle, with seats that could be removed with simple tools," and, as such, were permitted an average fuel economy of 20.5 (later 20.7) mpg. (Bradsher, pp.38-39)
During the 1990s, the popularity of suvs exploded, abetted by faulty governmental policies. In 1990, automakers, car dealers, and the UAW joined forces to engineer the defeat of a bill sponsored by Nebraska Senator Bill Bryan that would have raised the Corporate Average Fuel Economy for cars to 38.5 mpg and for light trucks to 28.7 mpg; Bryan was concerned about the nation's reliance on imported oil, about global warning, and about the poor fuel economy of cars being driven huge distances by his Nebraska constituents. Two years later the UAW pressured then-candidate Bill Clinton to back away from his campaign pledge "to raise the average goal for automakers to 45 miles per gallon." (Bradsher, pp.62-68)
In 1984 Congress limited the tax deduction on vehicles used by the self-employed and the owners of small businesses to $17,500 and increased their write-off period from three to five years. Light trucks with a gross weight over 6000 lbs., however, were exempt; buyers could still write off their entire purchase price, and as much as half the first year. (In 2004, the write-off for cars was capped at $10,610 and for light trucks at $25,000.) In 1990, Congress exempted those same light trucks from a ten per cent luxury tax imposed on vehicles costing more than $30,000. Tax incentives to increase the size and weight of suvs were now firmly in place. (Bradsher, pp. 73-74)
Congress granted suvs another legislative perquisite in the Clean Air Act of 1990. Beginning in 1994, new cars were restricted to 0.4 grams of nitrogen oxide emissions per mile, while light trucks were allowed 0.7 grams and some full-size suvs and pick-ups 1.1 grams. This special treatment encouraged automakers to build larger, fully-loaded suvs with bigger engines (which could legally spew more pollutants into the atmosphere); the suv share of the extremely profitable luxury market grew exponentially from 5% in 1990 to 56% in 1996. (Bradsher, pp. 75-77)
In his book "High and Mighty," author Bradsher verifies what I have long suspected: that suvs -- which, by definition, have four-wheel drive and are capable of operation off-road, where, incidentally, only ten per cent of their owners ever take them -- are less comfortable than cars and less practical for everyday use. They must have tall wide wheel wells to accomodate severe bouncing during off-road driving and underbodies (and passenger compartment floors) high enough to avoid off-road obstacles -- both of which reduce usable space inside the vehicle. (Bradsher, p.52) Automakers have addressed this problem by making suvs bigger and heavier, an elaboration which is greatly facilitated by their manufacturing process.
While almost all cars today have a unit body -- that is, the underbody, sides, and roof form a single unit -- suvs and light trucks employ a body-on-frame architecture -- except for the Jeep Cherokee, which has a "uniframe." Two square, hollow, sixteen-foot steel rails placed three feet apart and laced with seven crossbeams constitute the frame or foundation, to which are attached the suspension, wheels, fuel tank, fuel lines, and brakes. The truck's sides, hood, and roof are assembled and welded separately to form the body, in which are installed head- and tail-lights, steering wheel, seats, dashboard, windows, and carpeting. Ultimately, body meets frame, and the two are attached with twelve thick steel screws and bolts. (Bradsher, pp. 85-86)
The result is a vehicle that is heavy, rigid, capable of towing a lot of weight -- and tons of trouble. The steel rails in the underbody are stiffer and less yielding than a car body's side and front panels. While outweighing cars and minivans by as much as four thousand pounds, the suv has scarcely more sheet metal to cushion this weight upon impact. Its larger engine barely crumples in a crash and absorbs little energy. These factors make it more dangerous than other vehicles in front end collisions, although its height does provide more interior protection when it is hit from the side. "Suv occupants have as high a death rate as car occupants or even higher" -- by 11 per cent, according to a 2004 NHTSA report. "The reason lies in the nemesis of high-riding vehicles: rollovers." (Bradsher, pp. 145-148)
The higher a vehicle's center of gravity in relation to its wheel track -- the distance left to right between its wheels -- the more likely it is to flip over in a crash. And all suvs have this design flaw. In the 1990s, suvs rolled over three times more often than cars, five times per 100 crashes compared to 1.7 times per 100 crashes. More recently, this ratio has fallen to two-to-one, an improvement attributable to the increased size of many models and to the installation of a stability control device. This device helps prevent rollovers on flat surfaces, but is not effective when a car is tripped, which is the cause of ninety per cent of rollovers. (Bradsher, pp. 150-151)
"Tripping occurs when a vehicle strikes a curb, guard rail, lower riding car, or other obstacle, and then flips over." It can also take place when one side of the vehicle slips from a low friction surface like pavement onto a high friction surface like a gravel road shoulder. An suv's mediocre handling (and, in older models, inferior brakes) can make it difficult to keep on the road in certain adverse conditions or emergency situations; once "tripped," its high center of gravity increases the odds of a rollover. (Bradsher, pp.151-152)
Needless to say, this type of accident is extremely hazardous. Rollovers total less than one per cent of the crashes in the United States, but are the cause of a quarter of the traffic deaths -- more than from side and rear impacts combined. In the 1990s, the Ford Explorer had a rollover death rate of 39 per million registered vehicles compared to 14 per million registered midsize cars (and 15 per million registered Jeep Cherokees, whose uniframe design makes it the safest of all suvs). In addition, two state studies indicated that rollovers, which put extraordinary strain on necks and spines, may account for three-quarters of those states' traffic-related cases of paralysis. (Bradsher, pp. 161,151)
The weight and design of suvs make them lethal weapons in collisions with lighter, lower vehicles. In such a crash, the heavier vehicle tends to transfer the violence of the impact -- and the injuries and the fatalities -- to the lighter vehicle, and even more forcefully if it has an elevated, rigid front end that does not crumple easily when struck. (Bradsher, pp.169-170)
Cars are required to have bumpers 16 to 20 inches off the ground; suvs and other light trucks are exempt from this rule, and automakers have mounted their bumpers considerably higher. (Bradsher, p.184) If one measures the height of a vehicle's bottom exterior panel below the doors, suvs have the highest average height, 15.4 inches, while subcompact cars the lowest, 6.9 inches. "Suvs sit almost eight inches higher than mid-sized cars -- a geometric incompatibility that permits the suv to override any side structure in a car and directly strike its occupants." (Bradsher, p. 188.)
Indeed, suvs' crash incompatibility with other vehicles, based on their aggressive design, is borne out by statistics. In 2003 and 2004, light trucks (suvs, vans, and pick-ups) were involved in 30% more fatal crashes per 100,000 miles than cars. In 2004, they were involved in fatal two-vehicle crashes with passenger cars at nearly three times the rate of passenger cars. (Wikipedia, Criticism of SUVs) Tests have shown that when an suv hits a car in the side, the driver of the struck car is almost five times more likely to be killed than if he had been struck by another passenger car. (Bradsher, p. 188)
The shape, height, and stiffness of suvs make them more dangerous in pedestrian collisions. Cars typically hit pedestrians low and flip them onto their hoods, which are soft enough to minimize serious injury. The tall, stiff front ends of suvs tend to strike children and short adults in the chest or head, and, in some cases, run over them. Suvs will more often back over people in driveways, especially children, who are not tall enough to be seen out their rear windows. From 1995 to 2000, large suvs killed 10.6% of the pedestrians they hit in the United States, while minivans and cars killed 5% (and mid-sized and small suvs 6.6%). (Bradsher, pp. 231-234)
Drivers who believe themselves invulnerable are the most careless, and the common misconception that an suv's ride height and four-wheel drive make it safer than other vehicles only compounds its structural deficiencies. The former's expanded sight lines and feeling of control are merely corollaries of the vehicle's dangerously high center of gravity. The latter is "a fairly modest technology of little use to the average motorist" -- and treacherous to those who overestimate its capabilities. (Bradsher, p.128)
Four-wheel drive enables a vehicle to "track," that is, to keep moving forward on a slippery surface; it is useful for plowing through deep snow or mud, descending a steep, unpaved path without applying the brakes, and accelerating on icy, snowy roads -- conditions which occur so rarely around here that suv owners have been known to stage rallies at the first sign of frozen precipitation. An unintended consequence of this amenity is that the driver may not realize a road is slippery until he tries to apply the brakes, in which case his four-wheel drive is doing him more harm than good. (Bradsher, pp.130-131)
"Four-wheel drive provides no benefit whatsoever when the driver hits the brakes, because the engine immediately stops supplying power to the wheels. Indeed, suvs tend to have longer stopping distances than cars." They are heavier and higher off the road, which means their weight leans forward more and their front tires have to do most of the work. (Bradsher, p.129) Many are equipped with "macho" tires, whose wide, deep grooves have less traction on a paved road. (Bradsher, p.133)
Four-wheel drive does not help an suv turn when it is traversing a slippery surface. "Once the tires start slipping sideways, it makes little difference whether the engine is driving four wheels or two." (Bradsher, p.129)
Suvs are not as agile or maneuverable as cars. With their high centers of gravity and off-road tires, they lumber around curves awkwardly. What is merely an inconvenience on winding roads "can turn deadly when a motorist must swerve to avoid another vehicle, a pedestrian, or some other hazard." (Bradsher, pp.141-142) "The bottom line is that in every measurement of dynamic ability on pavement, cars outperform trucks," wrote Csaba Csere, editor-in-chief of Car and Driver magazine, in 1998." (Bradsher, p. 143)
Suvs obstruct visibility on city streets and highways. Their height often prevents a trailing car driver from seeing through to traffic ahead. Their higher-mounted headlights cast a bright glare on incoming cars and in rear-view mirrors. They are too big and heavy for some aging roads and bridges. They make traffic congestion worse; in traveling through an intersection, a large suv takes up as much space as 1.41 cars, a mid-size as much as 1.14 cars, and a small suv as much as 1.07 cars. They are magnets for thieves and carjackers. (Bradsher, pp. 224-230)
It is no secret why automakers want to sell suvs; they are their most profitable product. Analysts estimated that in 1998 Ford was making a fat $12,000 on every Expedition it sold at $36,000 and $15,000 on every $45,000 Navigator. (Bradsher, pp. 84-85) That year its Wayne, Michigan, Truck Plant alone cranked out almost 300,000 of these luxury four-wheelers, grossing $11 billion and earning $3.7 billion in pre-tax profits. (Of course, since then, FMC has fallen on harder times.) (Bradsher, pp.88-89)
But why is it that so many people lust for these unattractive, inefficient, impractical, and dangerous vehicles?
G. C. Rapaille, a psychological consultant to the auto industry, says Americans -- inundated daily with violent images on television, video games, and the Internet -- are increasingly fearful of crime. "People buy suvs," he tells automakers, "because they want to look as menacing as possible to allay their fears of crime and violence." This instinct for survival is further illustrated by their willingness "to put other drivers at risk in order to diminish the odds that they will be injured in a crash . . . But suvs cannot just look macho and aggressive on the outside, Rapaille believes. Inside they must be as gentle, feminine, and luxurious as possible" -- to reflect their passengers' complementary instinct for reproduction. (Bradsher, pp. 95-100)
Research indicates that suv buyers are more concerned with how others see them than with what is practical. Honda executive Thomas Elliott says, "They are buying the image first, and then the functionality." Ed Golden, a design director for Ford, says, "It's an image vehicle, an suv. It says something about your lifestyle." (Bradsher, p.103)
That image is all about control, preparedness, and eternal adolescence. Suv owners want to make the statement that "I'm in control of the people around me," says GM engineer Fred Schaafsma. "Providing that feeling of control is why automakers mount the seats in sport utilities higher than the seats in minivans," a feature that appeals more to women than men. (Bradsher, p.104)
Four-wheel drive reinforces the image of preparedness. According to Ford strategist Jim Bulin, it says "the weather is not going to get in my way; the curbs are not going to get in my way; other vehicles that ride lower to the road are not going to get in my way." (Bradsher, p.106)
Owning an suv provides baby boomers the reassurance that they haven't really changed that much from the days of their youth. "It says: I'm adventurous . . . I'm still virile." (Bradsher, p. 106)
Perhaps no one expresses this passion better than April, the popular homecoming princess sitting at the wheel of her family's red Suburban in the parking lot of her Los Angeles high school. "I love big trucks because they just look cool and have big tires," she says, speaking for the next generation of suv owners. "I'll go behind bushes and along the railroad tracks . . . I drive to school every day. I feel safe. I feel like I'm the queen of the road because I'm up high and can see everything for miles . . . Up here I'm probably six foot ten . . . I love it. It just makes me feel powerful. If someone disses me, I can tailgate the crap out of them." (Bradsher, pp.342-343)
I'm not sure if that's what my eighteen-year-old son, David, was thinking when he convinced my wife Maggie (and me) to fork out $10,000 for a 1990 (?) Jeep Cherokee Wrangler fourteen years ago. I had tried for months to sell him on the virtues -- fuel efficiency, handling, performance -- of a stodgy low-slung Legacy, Taurus, or Camry, a wheel-spinning exercise in futility, as he had his sights as stubbornly fixated on an suv as I had had on a muscle car thirty years earlier. The quest for the perfect ride took his stepmother and him west, naturally, to Roanoke; the return trip would add the first sixty of many more miles to an odometer already registering a bloated eighty thousand, the bearer of which my cynical wife would immediately christen with the licentious tag "Big Red."
It wasn't all that big, and some panels were as gray-speckled as a middle-aged parent, but it was what number-one son wanted, and he embraced it like (or instead of) a steady girl friend, ignoring some rather obvious blemishes: an unresponsive steering mechanism as loose as a yo-yo; a rough ride that bucked like an angry bronco (no pun intended); a passenger side door that jammed like a pickle jar; and the lingering odor of stale cigarette smoke.
If I had known then what I know now -- the esoteric vocabulary of trippings, rollovers, high centers of gravity, and crash compatibilities -- I would never have permitted my son to overburden this abomination on wheels with all his college paraphernalia (and a few articles of clothing) and motor nine hundred miles to Northwestern University -- not once, but several times during the course of his remaining two or three years there. I am amazed that it managed to survive the snow, sleet, hail, and ice of those brutal Chicago winters with no more dents and bruises than it already flaunted; and I never even thought to inquire of my son if the much-abused four-wheel drive had, after all, demonstrated its utility.
In our economically-minded family, automobiles are passed from sibling to sibling -- and, in some cases, from generation to generation. Therefore, upon David's relocating to New York City, where, according to the decider, me, he did not need a car, at least initially, "Big Red" was bequeathed to his sister Sara for a brief spell, and from her to his stepsister Kali, who was so enamored of it that she later cajoled her mother and me into purchasing a black iteration for her own exclusive use. Meanwhile, "Big Red's" penchant for urban life reasserted itself; David insisted he needed a means of transportation for various extra-city junkets and summarily reclaimed his prize.
The Jeep's reputation as a prime target of grand theft auto was sadly confirmed one night when some youthful but savvy lawbreakers managed to dislodge the foolproof steering wheel lock -- ominously trademarked "The Club" -- hotwired the ignition, and took themselves on a spirited joyride through the streets of the Upper East Side. When the engine quietly expired from fuel exhaustion, they abandoned their booty to a fate unknown -- until New York's finest identified and located the rightful owner.
The cost of recovering the vehicle from impoundment and storage probably exceeded its market value, but sentimentality and nostalgia trumped all rational thinking. It was still in one piece, but for David the sweetness of first love had suddenly turned sour, and, like an experienced bachelor, he set his sights on a more mature running mate. Coincidentally, his younger stepsister, Adrienne, had by now graduated to driving age; he pawned "Big Red" off for the fourth time and replaced it with a nondescript white Taurus, itself a veteran of 100,000 miles, which I purchased for him off a Schewel lease.
Adrienne was always astute beyond her years (she wasn't called "A" for nothing), not one to be lulled into complacency by a fresh coat of paint -- and never reticent. From her first settling in behind the wheel, she volubly disparaged the Jeep's high-riding instability, its tendency to lean into every turn, its loopy steering, and its collapsible brakes. But she bravely soldiered on, driving it to school, softball, tennis, and track -- she was always a three-letter threat -- and occasionally out of town.
Thus it should have come as no surprise when I received a jarring telephone call from my remarkably-composed wife one dreary late-summer afternoon, informing me that Adrienne was in serious condition in a Petersburg hospital, that she was on her way to Petersburg herself, and that I should follow as soon as possible. Adrienne had been returning from a family vacation in Nags Head, and, indeed, the accident waiting to happen had happened.
A light rain had dampened the road, and apparently the Jeep fishtailed. Its left wheels slipped off the low-friction surface of the pavement and encountered the higher-friction surface of the shoulder. When Adrienne tried to regain the pavement, she overcorrected, aided no doubt by the villainous steering; the vehicle tripped, rolled over across the highway, bounced into a ravine, and came to a stop only after its roof struck a tree, scraping off fifteen feet of bark.
The gods of chance, peeking through the dense cloud cover, were merciful that day. Although one religiously and repeatedly praises the merits of seat-belt safety, one never knows if the youngsters are paying attention. Adrienne was tossed about like a rag doll, but, thanks to her obedient nature and the waist and shoulder harness, never left the front seat. Aside from shock, some nasty bruises, and a bang-upped knee, from which she and her college athletic career never fully recovered, she emerged unscathed.
In spite of her drug-induced delirium, Adrienne was lucid enough to lament the loss of her sunglasses and begged me to try to locate them. I finally tracked down "Big Red" in a junkyard tucked away in the remote flatlands of Dinwiddie County. Gazing at the wreckage in uneasy contemplation, I felt perversely saddened at its demise (probably because I didn't have collision insurance), relieved that the frightful consummation of my failure to heed Adrienne's warnings had not been more disastrous, and amazed that she had escaped with such minor injuries. The driver's-side door had been cleanly amputated; the windshield and rear window had burst into smithereens; and the roof on the passenger's side had been crushed like cardboard. The interior was a miniature landfill of broken glass, twisted metal, and ripped cushioning, among which no sunglasses were discernible.
Having no use for the permanently-disabled vehicle at this point, and clueless as to its salvage value, I was at the mercy of the junkyard owner, a lean, grizzled, chain-smoking rustic. When he offered to buy what was left of "Big Red" for $500, I speedily acquiesced, even though that amount hardly approached the inflated $2000 he had charged me to tow the remains from the accident site. At least I could take comfort in the knowledge that one more roguish roadkiller had reached the end of its ignominious career without inflicting permanent damage to life or limb.
Jeep Cherokees and other suvs are much improved in design and safety since "Big Red" and its cousins were birthed in the late 1980's. And, rejecting this lengthy diatribe, millions of proud, lofty suv owners will no doubt defend their favored mode of transportation ad infinitum. But, in my opinion, to echo Keith Bradsher's concluding words, "For most families, suvs are poor substitutes for cars . . . As they have multiplied in the United States and beyond, they have fed an arms race that has made the world's roads less and less hospitable for car drivers, worsening a trend that hurts safety and the environment alike." (Bradsher, p. 426) But, maybe, before long, with gas prices steadily ticking upward, suv junkies will come to their senses, trade in their delusions of grandeur for practicality and economy, and bring this stiff-bodied war to a screeching halt.
Friday, April 18, 2008
Buying Power
Like a fading beauty of the silver screen, well past her prime but still proudly auditioning for the part of leading lady, the High Point Furniture Market has fallen prey to the inexorable march of change.
With the mid-century migration of furniture manufacturing to western North Carolina and Virginia, it was inevitable that the old-boy network of family-owned -- and cross-pollinated -- companies so engaged would seek to establish the equivalent of a neighborhood lemonade stand to hawk their extensive but derivative product lines. Thus, they transformed the sleepy backwater of High Point, North Carolina, into the twelve-million-square-foot mecca of the home furnishings industry, to which thousands of acolytes were compelled to make a semi-annual pilgrimmage and there pay homage to the high priests of the furniture industry.
Only a stone's throw from their factories, High Point was a convenient drop-ship for the myriad market samples with which they flooded their showrooms -- and a comfortable two-and-a-half hour drive from my home in Lynchburg, Virginia. But for those beyond the Pale -- say, a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius -- imagine the trials and tribulations of navigating the arcane flight schedules into and out of the Greensboro or Charlotte, N.C., airports, negotiating for rental cars while being held hostage to a limited supply in the face of a hyper-inflated demand, and having to pay similarly exorbitant rates for mediocre accomodations, usually months in advance and often for nights guaranteed even after one had gleefully headed home.
For fifty years High Point successfully vanquished all pretenders to its throne -- Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, and Tupelo -- which generally were too limited in design and too regional in scope to offer serious competition. Ambitious investors continued to build more square footage, operating under the misguided assumption that this fortress of concentrated buying power was impregnable.
Two developments undermined High Point's staunch defenses. First, most of those formerly vibrant manufacturing facilities shuttered their doors, and were either sold, abandoned, or relegated to the status of mere repositories or assembly points for home furnishings produced in China, Vietnam, or Malaysia. Globalization shattered the logical locus of High Point.
Once this fact of economic life became apparent, it didn't take long for a voracious predator -- one with deep pockets -- to surface and pounce. In the space of three short years, a Las Vegas mirage of six million square feet of furniture showroom solidified into concrete, steel, and glass. Disneyland in the desert -- with its accessibility, its five-star hotel and dining facilities, and its irresistible ancillary attractions -- became High Point's worst nightmare, luring furniture high-rollers from all over the world, most notably those west of the Mississippi River and beyond the continental borders.
I'm not sure High Point's market moguls realize that many of these folks just aren't coming back. In an egregious display of panic, desperation, or schizophrenia, they rolled their market's Spring and Fall dates back several weeks to coincide more closely with Las Vegas's dates, a ridiculous and impractical experiment which served principally to tarnish High Point's only treasure, its glorious April and October weather, and was wisely abandoned after a one-year interlude.
I have yet to attend the Las Vegas market; High Point's proximity coupled with my own habitual behavior has firmly grounded it in my consciousness as the almighty Furniture Market (and thou shalt have no other markets before it), although the blessings of a little competition are not to be denied. For the past fifteen or so years of our sojourn at the Park Lane Four Seasons Hotel on High Point Road in Greensboro, Schewel Furniture Company's room rate had risen steadily and geometrically, until by 2005 we paying upwards of $250 per night, this for a room which during the fifty non-market weeks of the year easily went for half that -- and, if one were available, would be rented for that price during market week to a drop-in truck driver. I know because I heard it happen one night while I was checking in. In 2006, apparently in response to declining attendance and the bully pulpit of the mysterious, influential, but ultimately powerless Market Authority, the hotel manager generously reduced our rate to $149, and, succumbing to the effusive charm of my two female buyers, even threw in spacious two-room suites for each of us.
The mini-refrigerater therein supplied is greatly appreciated. I use it to preserve my delectable (or detestable, depending on one's point of view) dinner ingredients -- carrots, cottage cheese, whole wheat bread, and blackberry jam, the latter two, of course, when plastered with extra-crunchy peanut butter (which even this stranger to the kitchen knows does not have to be kept in a chilled state), compose my main course. While the nightly adventures of other out-of-towners may confirm the public's perception that these markets continue from dusk to dawn at a variety of interesting venues, my cerebral, solitary, and compulsive personality dictates that evenings out be few and far between. The truth is, I have work to do. Because a ninety-minute perusal of the notes I have made in each of the showrooms I have visited that day is critical to the process I am about to describe.
We merchandise our fifty stores according to a line-up, the selection of items we display in our showrooms and stock in our distribution center at any given point in time; sixty sofas, loveseats, and chairs with occasional tables; thirty recliners; thirty glider rockers, swivel rockers, and accent chairs; fifteen desks; fifteen curios; twenty television stands and entertainment centers; thirty master and youth bedrooms; eight formal dining rooms; and twenty-five casual dining sets. Our goal, after six days of furniture shopping, usually from 9 AM to 7 PM, during which we visit sixty showrooms, is to leave the market with all these line-up slots filled. Of course, not every item is changed; many are too new or selling too well to replace. About one-third of our line-up turns over every six months, at the April and October markets.
My market regimen wasn't always so disciplined. In my younger days, I remember dining out with friends, manufacturer representatives (hereafter designated as "reps"), and colleagues; taking in numerous parties and special events; and frequenting bars, night clubs (featuring scantily-clad entertainment), a pool hall, and even a female mud-wrestling contest. Oh, I would diligently take notes during the day (sometimes overcoming a splitting headache), but leave the decision-making to the months or six weeks after the market, when legions of reps would traipse through my office, shuffle their pictures, refresh my memory, renew their pitches, and plead for placements -- and sooner or later a line-up would emerge.
I graduated from that time-consuming ordeal to studying my notes the last night (sometimes the last morning) of the market and frantically trying to organize them and my thoughts and produce a line-up. Finally, about ten years ago, when I was no longer interested in trolling night spots, I realized that a regular review of the notes I had made each day and a progressive construction of the line-up was almost as easy to digest as the peanut-butter sandwich I was holding in hand. And it gave me the opportunity to revisit showrooms for a second (or third) look at items under consideration.
I have found that, emotionally and intellectually, each market follows a familiar pattern. One approaches the first day or two with a heightened level of enthusiasm and excitement. As a dealer was once quoted in a trade journal, "If you don't look forward to the furniture market, you shouldn't be in the furniture business." After all, not only is one gratefully abandoning, at least temporarily, the barrage of phone calls (I don't carry a cell phone), problems, meetings, and day-to-day minutiae of the retail wars, he is invigorated by the thought of discovering fresh new merchandise with which to refurbish his stores and stimulate his sales.
After the second day, however, one's energy is sapped by ten-hour days spent pounding the pavement; by the incessant banter and the profuse flattery of hungry pitchmen; by an overabundant and bewildering array of sofas, bedrooms, dining sets, and television stands (a veritable sea of La-Z-Boys, as my wife felicitously declared on her first and last trip to the furniture market) which have run together like water colors in a thunderstorm; and by a queasy feeling in one's stomach which comes with the realization that time -- which two days ago seemed too plentiful -- is slipping away.
Then, on the next-to-last day, when all major vendors have been seen, when a few have even been reshopped, when the decision-making process is in full bloom, when the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fit snugly and comfortably in place, one's step lightens; his pace quickens; his spirits rise almost to the point of euphoria. And on the last day, when final commitments are made, he thinks to oneself, with a smug, and ultimately false, confidence -- because the consumer is a cruel taskmaster -- another market attacked, and conquered.
Though much compressed, that pattern is replicated to some degree in each individual showroom: the anticipatory thrill of new product; the salesman's promise of outstanding value and retail success with almost every offering; the fog that descends over one's brain after he has completed his initial tour and must, at least out of courtesy, put pen to paper.
Generally speaking, I admit that my shopping method is hardly scientific. The price at this point -- other than the fact that we obviously have to know what it is, which sometimes involves an excruciating interchange with the salesperson, who clings to it like a child to his favorite toy -- is immaterial; now we're merely eyeballing the item, internally making a calculated wild guess as to its saleability, evaluating the salesman's unabashed admiration, and assessing its correlation, in price and design, with other merchandise in the same category.
The eternal conundrum of buying for a retail furniture store is that, at least with regard to a new item -- one shown to the retailer for the first time -- no one really knows what is going to strike the consumer's fancy. My perception is that domestic home furnishings suppliers (the preferred terminology these days, as their manufacturing is contracted to overseas entities) conduct little, if any, research. Most of their designs -- whether upholstery or case goods -- are thinly-disguised imitations of someone else's (and where those designs originate is a mystery to me), which may have some history of sales success, but not necessarily. More often than one would like to think, the universal popularity of a design is solely attributable to the talents of a silver-tongued salesperson who passed it off on several suppliers at the same time. And just because an item happens to sell well in another store or market area doesn't guarantee similar results in my store -- regardless of what so many reps are eager for one to believe. Consequently, buying becomes a balancing act between enthusiasm and skepticism.
In spite of what those musings may suggest, I respect and appreciate those road warriors who bear the oft-abused title of manufacturer's representative. Any one who can close the deal with a brooding, introspective, tight-lipped buyer like me deserves a celestial reward, although I am making a conscientious effort in my middle age (there's a euphemism) to greet pleasantly these putative partners, look them squarely in the bridge of the nose, smile like I am genuinely elated to see them, display some evidence of a sense of humor, and at least pretend to listen to their perfect pitches. But linger for small talk? No; never.
In truth, however, buying decisions are hardly ever objective, and rarely based on price alone. We are loyal to selected vendors and individuals. We would much prefer to buy from someone we know and trust. Some reps are indeed able to establish a rapport with me (or my associate buyers) that others can not. Some make a sale purely through persistence. In the final analysis, who can identify and isolate that intangible element that makes a customer say "yes"?
It might even be that one of the spate of tired platitudes tossed out like well-aimed darts by a loquacious salesperson finds the bull's-eye, in spite of its narcotic familiarity and ludicrous banality. As much as the listener tries to turn a "tin" (that is, deaf) ear in defense, is it not conceivable that one of these stingers should lodge itself in the subconscious and prick one's memory at the decisive moment?
As luck would have it, the first showroom we visit upon our arrival Saturday morning is manned by none other than John R., whom readers of this blog will remember as the brash prankster who sent me for Christmas a roll of toilet paper each panel of which was imprinted with a likeness of George Bush spouting some infamous malapropism. John's perverse approach to ingratiating himself with his customers is to insult (at least this one) rather than pander to them -- perhaps the residual effect of a concussion he suffered many years ago while centering punts for the N.C. State football team. True to form, he greets me with, "Hey, ugly. You just spoiled my weekend. You weren't supposed to be here until tomorrow." My upholstery buyer warns me that John will invariably declare at least once during our conversation, "For what it's worth," which he regurgitates as if on cue, followed by a time-worn pledge -- "If this doesn't sell, we'll pick it up" -- that is totally gratuitous, since Schewels has never sent any merchandise back to a supplier for that reason.
Later, we shop a new case goods resource where I encounter an old friend, Bob O., a round-faced jovial fellow with a perpetual cock-eyed grin and contagious chuckle, with whom I journeyed to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China (for one day) twenty years ago. Bob cracks himself up with the long-since-forgotten tale of my amazement at the height of a youthful Chinese basketball player glimpsed from afar and subsequent rude awakening when, upon closer inspection, it was determined that he was only towering over some very short comrades.
From there, we transition to H . . . e, where we are escorted through the showroom by a bona fide Oriental gentleman (of average height) with the Anglicized name of Charles H., who, bravely speaking a brand of English more perfectly understood by him than by us, is "vewy pwoud" of his new youth bedroom with its different-colored interchangeable drawer panels, "twee," to be exact, a word, I am embarassed to record, I ask him to repeat "twee" times. Actually, we adore Charles, who took our buyer under his wing during her Far East trip a few years ago.
In L . . . y we enjoy the company of John H., master of the soft sell and an ad nauseum repetition of his customer's proper name, who surprises me with the forceful, out-of-character, and provocative pronouncement, "This suite's got Lynchburg written all over it," eliciting a whisper from my bedroom buyer: "But what about Winchester, Harrisonburg, and our other forty-seven stores?"
It's a short drive across town to our next destination, T. . . r, where we are welcomed by two contemporaries whose careers seem to have paralled our own over the past thirty years, as they have jumped -- with us usually in their wake -- from one furniture line to another, like bullfrogs on lily pads, always landing on their feet and never sinking below the water line -- David M., casual as always in a bulky blue sweater, forever relying on his perpetual boyishness to subdue the most hardened buyer; and the gentle, graying giant, Frank S., intense and polished, dressed both up and down, his twenty-something striped polo shirt beaming like his toothy grin through his tweed sport jacket.
Frank's composure is shaken by the sudden disclosure that we have reverted to our former bedroom pricing formula -- dresser, mirror, bed, and chest -- thereby foiling his memorized dresser, mirror, bed, and night stand combinations. Once past this inconvenience, price sheet in hand, he treats us to a virtuoso performance in pithy word-smithing: "This is a great-selling suite. This one's all-world, hard to beat. I love this suite. This one's red-hot. We can't keep it." And the piece de resistance: "Hot as a banshee" -- which leaves us mystified, until he explains just what a banshee is: a small rooster. Well, not exactly. According to my dictionary, that's a "bantam," while a "banshee" is a "female spirit whose wailing warns of a death in the family" -- a sobering revelation which considerably dampens Frank's fiery analogy.
The next morning, shopping an upholstery line, K . . . r, we are irritated but amused by Richie H.'s not-so-subtle ploy of running interference between us and a sofa which has already been "placed in our market," that is, sold to a competitor. He skirts by it as if it were a poisonous snake, lest its colorful and attractive camouflage catch our attention, which only piques our interest more, until he summarily dismisses it as already spoken for.
In L . . . e, Mike M. greets us with his Cheshire Cat grin and a mouthful of sugar. "I call that happiness," he says, whether in reference to a dresser, a leather sofa, or the buxom receptionist, I do not recall. "Our drawer construction stands tall," he exults, in admiration of an expensive bedroom suite copied (no surprise there) from a Bernhardt one selling for twice the price. A furniture legend in his own time, James R. -- whose frightening resume lists him as million-dollar producer for the defunct Pilliod Co., merchandiser extraordinaire for the dearly-departed Heilig-Meyers chain, and sales manager for the recently-entombed Natale Co. -- wanders by to model his scintillating tangerine sweater and beige docksiders.
Later that day I avoid serious injury in N . . . s when the small accent chair I am comfort-testing falls off the elevated platform on which it is perched (like a bantam!) -- not the best way to impress a buyer. Actually, I thought one of the rear legs had broken off -- and wouldn't have been surprised.
At H . . . l, million-dollar Million D., unctuous and mannerly, tries to corral us in the vicinity of one of his sofas with the innocent query, "Have you felt this fabric before?" "I believe we have, Million," I respond with uncontrolled glee and too much condescension. "It's a padded microfiber and it's been around about four years. Have I felt it? Only about ten times last week when I walked through one of my stores."
At E . . . e, we have to drag seventy-five-year-old Clyde O. into the showroom from out in the hall where's he falling all over himself talking to his new bride on his cell phone; he promptly disappears for ten minutes looking for a price.
In B . . . l, Rob A., brisk, crisp, concise, and taciturn, expertly guides us through the intimidating showroom, stopping only to highlight a few bedroom suites he thinks might be of interest to us, at one of which he proves his mettle, taking a back seat to no one when it comes to mind-numbing verbal dexterity. "This dog will hunt," he promises. (And, on the other hand, it may turn out to be one of those dogs we wish we had never seen.) "It has all the bells and whistles" -- like a mirror, drawers that work, and a brown finish, I mutter to myself.
In C . . . r, when I ask the windy Don B. which of two sofas he would rather sell me, I am immediately struck by buyer's remorse, because I know what's coming before it's out of his mouth: "Marc, these are two different animals" -- neither of which, rest assured, is a dog -- "It's like comparing apples and oranges" -- answers which imply, of course, that I should purchase both, and leave me dangling like a spun-out yo-yo.
In L . . . e, we are entertained by Scott K., Mitt Romney-esque in his chiseled handsomeness and mousse-perfect grooming. The consummate professional, he dances through his showroom, unencumbered by pricebook or notepad, his prices and stock numbers lodged in the steel trap of his memory, to be disgorged at the slightest pause over an item by his duly-impressed and quickly-exhausted customer. Scott never met a superlative he didn't like, as he sustains a running commentary: "Look at the size of that chair" -- pointing out just about every recliner we pass by. "This one has butt appeal." "There's a premium for leather like that" -- like a higher price. When he realizes I'm taking notes not just on merchandise but on his comments as well, he ramps up the hyperbole. "Every frame we come out with is our own design." (Show me one.) "This sofa has more wood than any other out there." (Well, the wood does wrap around the base, but that's not unique.) And, finally, "What does it take to push you over the edge?" (Probably looking at one more recliner will do it.)
The M . . . n showroom is a beehive of activity. This season the buzz is all about Flex-a-Boy, a contortionist performing in the lobby. Stretching like a rubber band, he effortlessly rotates both legs behind his head, slides his entire body through the stringless head of a tennis racket, and squeezes himself into a 20x16x16 clear plastic box, and then latches the top -- hardly taking a breath as he touts the benefits of purchasing from M . . . n: "We bend over backwards for customer service. We have the most flexible shipping program in the industry. We provide the lowest cost in the smallest package."
Our M . . . n rep, Jack B., rolls along behind us like Humpty-Dumpty as we skate through the showroom, a little off balance because of a bad hip, dictating notes into a recorder in his nasally Bawl-li-more accent, selling with a jocular sarcasm. He exclaims, "I couldn't sleep at all last night waiting to show you this suite," which we dismiss with hardly a glance. When we glide past another one, he pops out with, "Any reason you passed this one up?" "It's nothing personal," I reply as we exit the showroom and start down the stairs to the next floor, only to look back and see Jack in desperate pursuit.
In A . . . y, we are welcomed by the merry Marvin S., still spry at seventy plus, his rotund frame, shiny pate, sparkling eyes, and ear-to-ear grin exuding buckets of charm. He's always glad to see you and usually has a nasty little joke to tell, this one about Eliot Spitzer, whose rabbi said he was deeply disappointed in him. "Why?" asked Eliot. "Don't you know, " said the rabbi, "nobody pays retail." Marvin boasts that A . . . y has the best motion furniture in the industry (but not in the country, as it's manufactured overseas) and commands me, using the affectionate sobriquet "Honey," to sit my little butt down on a piece -- not as much of a test, of course, as his own sprawling butt would be.
We pass by the tiny S . . . g showroom, tucked in a hallway, where the rep, Frank S., a courtly, white-haired gentleman, who has finally sold us a bedroom suite after five long years of persistent phone calls and road trips from New Jersey, waves us in to show another one. Our lengthy visit reminds me of Frank's tar-baby-like ability to keep a person engaged in a telephone or face-to-face conversation despite his most determined efforts to escape. When I half-seriously remark that, in the midst of deleterious business conditions, I'm still paying cash, Frank quickly retorts, "You buy this suite, and you'll be able to pay cash."
And so it goes, one mindless pitch after another, served up for our edification, indocrination, and intoxication, fastballs, curveballs, sliders, changeups: that's screaming; this one's a superstar; we sell the fire out of it; this has been well-received; can I suggest a home run; this is the bomb.
Finally, after five weary days of wall-to-wall furniture, sifting the wheat from the chaff, barely legible note-taking, and hard choices, the sixth dawns with a welcome serenity and an almost completed line-up. But our bedrooms seem stale, not quite right. While reshopping that last day, we actually decide on three suites, two of which we scope out for the first time: a white urban lifestyle and a bombay-influenced merlot contemporary. To employ the only cliche we haven't heard in a week replete with them: it's time to think outside the box.
Three days later, at home, when the final pristine sheets are produced, our re-engineered line-up of merchandise looks so perfect in conception and execution. The slow sellers have been quietly expurgated. We anxiously anticipate the arrival of our new selections, which, in price point, design, function, and color, are sure to enhance and complement our showrooms, appeal to our customers' tastes and pocketbooks, and confirm that the time, money, and energy expended at the High Point Furniture Market were productive and profitable.
Alas, there are two abiding fallacies inherent in this semi-annual ritual. The first is that, in the final analysis, the most exquisitely-merchandised store will fail without the operation to back it up: a diversified advertising program that generates credibility, urgency, and traffic; a professional sales staff that creates loyal customers by meeting their needs and satisfying their desires; and a service system that delivers customer purchases in a timely and efficient manner. In fact, of all these factors, the particular items of merchandise displayed in one's store may be the least critical for retail success.
Secondly, buying is an imperfect art, and, no matter one's experience or expertise, never error-free. A stunningly attractive chair or bed quickly loses its luster when it sits too long; a muddy brown sofa looks mighty nice on the back of a delivery truck. One would think that a buyer of thirty-five years would be able to tell the difference. But the cold, hard truth is that thirty per cent of new market selections are never re-ordered -- and one begins to reflect that he might be better off staying home, and abdicating the test-marketing to other eager beavers. But no, six months later, he packs up his suits and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and stubbornly heads south, to assert his buying power all over again.
With the mid-century migration of furniture manufacturing to western North Carolina and Virginia, it was inevitable that the old-boy network of family-owned -- and cross-pollinated -- companies so engaged would seek to establish the equivalent of a neighborhood lemonade stand to hawk their extensive but derivative product lines. Thus, they transformed the sleepy backwater of High Point, North Carolina, into the twelve-million-square-foot mecca of the home furnishings industry, to which thousands of acolytes were compelled to make a semi-annual pilgrimmage and there pay homage to the high priests of the furniture industry.
Only a stone's throw from their factories, High Point was a convenient drop-ship for the myriad market samples with which they flooded their showrooms -- and a comfortable two-and-a-half hour drive from my home in Lynchburg, Virginia. But for those beyond the Pale -- say, a two-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius -- imagine the trials and tribulations of navigating the arcane flight schedules into and out of the Greensboro or Charlotte, N.C., airports, negotiating for rental cars while being held hostage to a limited supply in the face of a hyper-inflated demand, and having to pay similarly exorbitant rates for mediocre accomodations, usually months in advance and often for nights guaranteed even after one had gleefully headed home.
For fifty years High Point successfully vanquished all pretenders to its throne -- Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco, and Tupelo -- which generally were too limited in design and too regional in scope to offer serious competition. Ambitious investors continued to build more square footage, operating under the misguided assumption that this fortress of concentrated buying power was impregnable.
Two developments undermined High Point's staunch defenses. First, most of those formerly vibrant manufacturing facilities shuttered their doors, and were either sold, abandoned, or relegated to the status of mere repositories or assembly points for home furnishings produced in China, Vietnam, or Malaysia. Globalization shattered the logical locus of High Point.
Once this fact of economic life became apparent, it didn't take long for a voracious predator -- one with deep pockets -- to surface and pounce. In the space of three short years, a Las Vegas mirage of six million square feet of furniture showroom solidified into concrete, steel, and glass. Disneyland in the desert -- with its accessibility, its five-star hotel and dining facilities, and its irresistible ancillary attractions -- became High Point's worst nightmare, luring furniture high-rollers from all over the world, most notably those west of the Mississippi River and beyond the continental borders.
I'm not sure High Point's market moguls realize that many of these folks just aren't coming back. In an egregious display of panic, desperation, or schizophrenia, they rolled their market's Spring and Fall dates back several weeks to coincide more closely with Las Vegas's dates, a ridiculous and impractical experiment which served principally to tarnish High Point's only treasure, its glorious April and October weather, and was wisely abandoned after a one-year interlude.
I have yet to attend the Las Vegas market; High Point's proximity coupled with my own habitual behavior has firmly grounded it in my consciousness as the almighty Furniture Market (and thou shalt have no other markets before it), although the blessings of a little competition are not to be denied. For the past fifteen or so years of our sojourn at the Park Lane Four Seasons Hotel on High Point Road in Greensboro, Schewel Furniture Company's room rate had risen steadily and geometrically, until by 2005 we paying upwards of $250 per night, this for a room which during the fifty non-market weeks of the year easily went for half that -- and, if one were available, would be rented for that price during market week to a drop-in truck driver. I know because I heard it happen one night while I was checking in. In 2006, apparently in response to declining attendance and the bully pulpit of the mysterious, influential, but ultimately powerless Market Authority, the hotel manager generously reduced our rate to $149, and, succumbing to the effusive charm of my two female buyers, even threw in spacious two-room suites for each of us.
The mini-refrigerater therein supplied is greatly appreciated. I use it to preserve my delectable (or detestable, depending on one's point of view) dinner ingredients -- carrots, cottage cheese, whole wheat bread, and blackberry jam, the latter two, of course, when plastered with extra-crunchy peanut butter (which even this stranger to the kitchen knows does not have to be kept in a chilled state), compose my main course. While the nightly adventures of other out-of-towners may confirm the public's perception that these markets continue from dusk to dawn at a variety of interesting venues, my cerebral, solitary, and compulsive personality dictates that evenings out be few and far between. The truth is, I have work to do. Because a ninety-minute perusal of the notes I have made in each of the showrooms I have visited that day is critical to the process I am about to describe.
We merchandise our fifty stores according to a line-up, the selection of items we display in our showrooms and stock in our distribution center at any given point in time; sixty sofas, loveseats, and chairs with occasional tables; thirty recliners; thirty glider rockers, swivel rockers, and accent chairs; fifteen desks; fifteen curios; twenty television stands and entertainment centers; thirty master and youth bedrooms; eight formal dining rooms; and twenty-five casual dining sets. Our goal, after six days of furniture shopping, usually from 9 AM to 7 PM, during which we visit sixty showrooms, is to leave the market with all these line-up slots filled. Of course, not every item is changed; many are too new or selling too well to replace. About one-third of our line-up turns over every six months, at the April and October markets.
My market regimen wasn't always so disciplined. In my younger days, I remember dining out with friends, manufacturer representatives (hereafter designated as "reps"), and colleagues; taking in numerous parties and special events; and frequenting bars, night clubs (featuring scantily-clad entertainment), a pool hall, and even a female mud-wrestling contest. Oh, I would diligently take notes during the day (sometimes overcoming a splitting headache), but leave the decision-making to the months or six weeks after the market, when legions of reps would traipse through my office, shuffle their pictures, refresh my memory, renew their pitches, and plead for placements -- and sooner or later a line-up would emerge.
I graduated from that time-consuming ordeal to studying my notes the last night (sometimes the last morning) of the market and frantically trying to organize them and my thoughts and produce a line-up. Finally, about ten years ago, when I was no longer interested in trolling night spots, I realized that a regular review of the notes I had made each day and a progressive construction of the line-up was almost as easy to digest as the peanut-butter sandwich I was holding in hand. And it gave me the opportunity to revisit showrooms for a second (or third) look at items under consideration.
I have found that, emotionally and intellectually, each market follows a familiar pattern. One approaches the first day or two with a heightened level of enthusiasm and excitement. As a dealer was once quoted in a trade journal, "If you don't look forward to the furniture market, you shouldn't be in the furniture business." After all, not only is one gratefully abandoning, at least temporarily, the barrage of phone calls (I don't carry a cell phone), problems, meetings, and day-to-day minutiae of the retail wars, he is invigorated by the thought of discovering fresh new merchandise with which to refurbish his stores and stimulate his sales.
After the second day, however, one's energy is sapped by ten-hour days spent pounding the pavement; by the incessant banter and the profuse flattery of hungry pitchmen; by an overabundant and bewildering array of sofas, bedrooms, dining sets, and television stands (a veritable sea of La-Z-Boys, as my wife felicitously declared on her first and last trip to the furniture market) which have run together like water colors in a thunderstorm; and by a queasy feeling in one's stomach which comes with the realization that time -- which two days ago seemed too plentiful -- is slipping away.
Then, on the next-to-last day, when all major vendors have been seen, when a few have even been reshopped, when the decision-making process is in full bloom, when the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fit snugly and comfortably in place, one's step lightens; his pace quickens; his spirits rise almost to the point of euphoria. And on the last day, when final commitments are made, he thinks to oneself, with a smug, and ultimately false, confidence -- because the consumer is a cruel taskmaster -- another market attacked, and conquered.
Though much compressed, that pattern is replicated to some degree in each individual showroom: the anticipatory thrill of new product; the salesman's promise of outstanding value and retail success with almost every offering; the fog that descends over one's brain after he has completed his initial tour and must, at least out of courtesy, put pen to paper.
Generally speaking, I admit that my shopping method is hardly scientific. The price at this point -- other than the fact that we obviously have to know what it is, which sometimes involves an excruciating interchange with the salesperson, who clings to it like a child to his favorite toy -- is immaterial; now we're merely eyeballing the item, internally making a calculated wild guess as to its saleability, evaluating the salesman's unabashed admiration, and assessing its correlation, in price and design, with other merchandise in the same category.
The eternal conundrum of buying for a retail furniture store is that, at least with regard to a new item -- one shown to the retailer for the first time -- no one really knows what is going to strike the consumer's fancy. My perception is that domestic home furnishings suppliers (the preferred terminology these days, as their manufacturing is contracted to overseas entities) conduct little, if any, research. Most of their designs -- whether upholstery or case goods -- are thinly-disguised imitations of someone else's (and where those designs originate is a mystery to me), which may have some history of sales success, but not necessarily. More often than one would like to think, the universal popularity of a design is solely attributable to the talents of a silver-tongued salesperson who passed it off on several suppliers at the same time. And just because an item happens to sell well in another store or market area doesn't guarantee similar results in my store -- regardless of what so many reps are eager for one to believe. Consequently, buying becomes a balancing act between enthusiasm and skepticism.
In spite of what those musings may suggest, I respect and appreciate those road warriors who bear the oft-abused title of manufacturer's representative. Any one who can close the deal with a brooding, introspective, tight-lipped buyer like me deserves a celestial reward, although I am making a conscientious effort in my middle age (there's a euphemism) to greet pleasantly these putative partners, look them squarely in the bridge of the nose, smile like I am genuinely elated to see them, display some evidence of a sense of humor, and at least pretend to listen to their perfect pitches. But linger for small talk? No; never.
In truth, however, buying decisions are hardly ever objective, and rarely based on price alone. We are loyal to selected vendors and individuals. We would much prefer to buy from someone we know and trust. Some reps are indeed able to establish a rapport with me (or my associate buyers) that others can not. Some make a sale purely through persistence. In the final analysis, who can identify and isolate that intangible element that makes a customer say "yes"?
It might even be that one of the spate of tired platitudes tossed out like well-aimed darts by a loquacious salesperson finds the bull's-eye, in spite of its narcotic familiarity and ludicrous banality. As much as the listener tries to turn a "tin" (that is, deaf) ear in defense, is it not conceivable that one of these stingers should lodge itself in the subconscious and prick one's memory at the decisive moment?
As luck would have it, the first showroom we visit upon our arrival Saturday morning is manned by none other than John R., whom readers of this blog will remember as the brash prankster who sent me for Christmas a roll of toilet paper each panel of which was imprinted with a likeness of George Bush spouting some infamous malapropism. John's perverse approach to ingratiating himself with his customers is to insult (at least this one) rather than pander to them -- perhaps the residual effect of a concussion he suffered many years ago while centering punts for the N.C. State football team. True to form, he greets me with, "Hey, ugly. You just spoiled my weekend. You weren't supposed to be here until tomorrow." My upholstery buyer warns me that John will invariably declare at least once during our conversation, "For what it's worth," which he regurgitates as if on cue, followed by a time-worn pledge -- "If this doesn't sell, we'll pick it up" -- that is totally gratuitous, since Schewels has never sent any merchandise back to a supplier for that reason.
Later, we shop a new case goods resource where I encounter an old friend, Bob O., a round-faced jovial fellow with a perpetual cock-eyed grin and contagious chuckle, with whom I journeyed to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China (for one day) twenty years ago. Bob cracks himself up with the long-since-forgotten tale of my amazement at the height of a youthful Chinese basketball player glimpsed from afar and subsequent rude awakening when, upon closer inspection, it was determined that he was only towering over some very short comrades.
From there, we transition to H . . . e, where we are escorted through the showroom by a bona fide Oriental gentleman (of average height) with the Anglicized name of Charles H., who, bravely speaking a brand of English more perfectly understood by him than by us, is "vewy pwoud" of his new youth bedroom with its different-colored interchangeable drawer panels, "twee," to be exact, a word, I am embarassed to record, I ask him to repeat "twee" times. Actually, we adore Charles, who took our buyer under his wing during her Far East trip a few years ago.
In L . . . y we enjoy the company of John H., master of the soft sell and an ad nauseum repetition of his customer's proper name, who surprises me with the forceful, out-of-character, and provocative pronouncement, "This suite's got Lynchburg written all over it," eliciting a whisper from my bedroom buyer: "But what about Winchester, Harrisonburg, and our other forty-seven stores?"
It's a short drive across town to our next destination, T. . . r, where we are welcomed by two contemporaries whose careers seem to have paralled our own over the past thirty years, as they have jumped -- with us usually in their wake -- from one furniture line to another, like bullfrogs on lily pads, always landing on their feet and never sinking below the water line -- David M., casual as always in a bulky blue sweater, forever relying on his perpetual boyishness to subdue the most hardened buyer; and the gentle, graying giant, Frank S., intense and polished, dressed both up and down, his twenty-something striped polo shirt beaming like his toothy grin through his tweed sport jacket.
Frank's composure is shaken by the sudden disclosure that we have reverted to our former bedroom pricing formula -- dresser, mirror, bed, and chest -- thereby foiling his memorized dresser, mirror, bed, and night stand combinations. Once past this inconvenience, price sheet in hand, he treats us to a virtuoso performance in pithy word-smithing: "This is a great-selling suite. This one's all-world, hard to beat. I love this suite. This one's red-hot. We can't keep it." And the piece de resistance: "Hot as a banshee" -- which leaves us mystified, until he explains just what a banshee is: a small rooster. Well, not exactly. According to my dictionary, that's a "bantam," while a "banshee" is a "female spirit whose wailing warns of a death in the family" -- a sobering revelation which considerably dampens Frank's fiery analogy.
The next morning, shopping an upholstery line, K . . . r, we are irritated but amused by Richie H.'s not-so-subtle ploy of running interference between us and a sofa which has already been "placed in our market," that is, sold to a competitor. He skirts by it as if it were a poisonous snake, lest its colorful and attractive camouflage catch our attention, which only piques our interest more, until he summarily dismisses it as already spoken for.
In L . . . e, Mike M. greets us with his Cheshire Cat grin and a mouthful of sugar. "I call that happiness," he says, whether in reference to a dresser, a leather sofa, or the buxom receptionist, I do not recall. "Our drawer construction stands tall," he exults, in admiration of an expensive bedroom suite copied (no surprise there) from a Bernhardt one selling for twice the price. A furniture legend in his own time, James R. -- whose frightening resume lists him as million-dollar producer for the defunct Pilliod Co., merchandiser extraordinaire for the dearly-departed Heilig-Meyers chain, and sales manager for the recently-entombed Natale Co. -- wanders by to model his scintillating tangerine sweater and beige docksiders.
Later that day I avoid serious injury in N . . . s when the small accent chair I am comfort-testing falls off the elevated platform on which it is perched (like a bantam!) -- not the best way to impress a buyer. Actually, I thought one of the rear legs had broken off -- and wouldn't have been surprised.
At H . . . l, million-dollar Million D., unctuous and mannerly, tries to corral us in the vicinity of one of his sofas with the innocent query, "Have you felt this fabric before?" "I believe we have, Million," I respond with uncontrolled glee and too much condescension. "It's a padded microfiber and it's been around about four years. Have I felt it? Only about ten times last week when I walked through one of my stores."
At E . . . e, we have to drag seventy-five-year-old Clyde O. into the showroom from out in the hall where's he falling all over himself talking to his new bride on his cell phone; he promptly disappears for ten minutes looking for a price.
In B . . . l, Rob A., brisk, crisp, concise, and taciturn, expertly guides us through the intimidating showroom, stopping only to highlight a few bedroom suites he thinks might be of interest to us, at one of which he proves his mettle, taking a back seat to no one when it comes to mind-numbing verbal dexterity. "This dog will hunt," he promises. (And, on the other hand, it may turn out to be one of those dogs we wish we had never seen.) "It has all the bells and whistles" -- like a mirror, drawers that work, and a brown finish, I mutter to myself.
In C . . . r, when I ask the windy Don B. which of two sofas he would rather sell me, I am immediately struck by buyer's remorse, because I know what's coming before it's out of his mouth: "Marc, these are two different animals" -- neither of which, rest assured, is a dog -- "It's like comparing apples and oranges" -- answers which imply, of course, that I should purchase both, and leave me dangling like a spun-out yo-yo.
In L . . . e, we are entertained by Scott K., Mitt Romney-esque in his chiseled handsomeness and mousse-perfect grooming. The consummate professional, he dances through his showroom, unencumbered by pricebook or notepad, his prices and stock numbers lodged in the steel trap of his memory, to be disgorged at the slightest pause over an item by his duly-impressed and quickly-exhausted customer. Scott never met a superlative he didn't like, as he sustains a running commentary: "Look at the size of that chair" -- pointing out just about every recliner we pass by. "This one has butt appeal." "There's a premium for leather like that" -- like a higher price. When he realizes I'm taking notes not just on merchandise but on his comments as well, he ramps up the hyperbole. "Every frame we come out with is our own design." (Show me one.) "This sofa has more wood than any other out there." (Well, the wood does wrap around the base, but that's not unique.) And, finally, "What does it take to push you over the edge?" (Probably looking at one more recliner will do it.)
The M . . . n showroom is a beehive of activity. This season the buzz is all about Flex-a-Boy, a contortionist performing in the lobby. Stretching like a rubber band, he effortlessly rotates both legs behind his head, slides his entire body through the stringless head of a tennis racket, and squeezes himself into a 20x16x16 clear plastic box, and then latches the top -- hardly taking a breath as he touts the benefits of purchasing from M . . . n: "We bend over backwards for customer service. We have the most flexible shipping program in the industry. We provide the lowest cost in the smallest package."
Our M . . . n rep, Jack B., rolls along behind us like Humpty-Dumpty as we skate through the showroom, a little off balance because of a bad hip, dictating notes into a recorder in his nasally Bawl-li-more accent, selling with a jocular sarcasm. He exclaims, "I couldn't sleep at all last night waiting to show you this suite," which we dismiss with hardly a glance. When we glide past another one, he pops out with, "Any reason you passed this one up?" "It's nothing personal," I reply as we exit the showroom and start down the stairs to the next floor, only to look back and see Jack in desperate pursuit.
In A . . . y, we are welcomed by the merry Marvin S., still spry at seventy plus, his rotund frame, shiny pate, sparkling eyes, and ear-to-ear grin exuding buckets of charm. He's always glad to see you and usually has a nasty little joke to tell, this one about Eliot Spitzer, whose rabbi said he was deeply disappointed in him. "Why?" asked Eliot. "Don't you know, " said the rabbi, "nobody pays retail." Marvin boasts that A . . . y has the best motion furniture in the industry (but not in the country, as it's manufactured overseas) and commands me, using the affectionate sobriquet "Honey," to sit my little butt down on a piece -- not as much of a test, of course, as his own sprawling butt would be.
We pass by the tiny S . . . g showroom, tucked in a hallway, where the rep, Frank S., a courtly, white-haired gentleman, who has finally sold us a bedroom suite after five long years of persistent phone calls and road trips from New Jersey, waves us in to show another one. Our lengthy visit reminds me of Frank's tar-baby-like ability to keep a person engaged in a telephone or face-to-face conversation despite his most determined efforts to escape. When I half-seriously remark that, in the midst of deleterious business conditions, I'm still paying cash, Frank quickly retorts, "You buy this suite, and you'll be able to pay cash."
And so it goes, one mindless pitch after another, served up for our edification, indocrination, and intoxication, fastballs, curveballs, sliders, changeups: that's screaming; this one's a superstar; we sell the fire out of it; this has been well-received; can I suggest a home run; this is the bomb.
Finally, after five weary days of wall-to-wall furniture, sifting the wheat from the chaff, barely legible note-taking, and hard choices, the sixth dawns with a welcome serenity and an almost completed line-up. But our bedrooms seem stale, not quite right. While reshopping that last day, we actually decide on three suites, two of which we scope out for the first time: a white urban lifestyle and a bombay-influenced merlot contemporary. To employ the only cliche we haven't heard in a week replete with them: it's time to think outside the box.
Three days later, at home, when the final pristine sheets are produced, our re-engineered line-up of merchandise looks so perfect in conception and execution. The slow sellers have been quietly expurgated. We anxiously anticipate the arrival of our new selections, which, in price point, design, function, and color, are sure to enhance and complement our showrooms, appeal to our customers' tastes and pocketbooks, and confirm that the time, money, and energy expended at the High Point Furniture Market were productive and profitable.
Alas, there are two abiding fallacies inherent in this semi-annual ritual. The first is that, in the final analysis, the most exquisitely-merchandised store will fail without the operation to back it up: a diversified advertising program that generates credibility, urgency, and traffic; a professional sales staff that creates loyal customers by meeting their needs and satisfying their desires; and a service system that delivers customer purchases in a timely and efficient manner. In fact, of all these factors, the particular items of merchandise displayed in one's store may be the least critical for retail success.
Secondly, buying is an imperfect art, and, no matter one's experience or expertise, never error-free. A stunningly attractive chair or bed quickly loses its luster when it sits too long; a muddy brown sofa looks mighty nice on the back of a delivery truck. One would think that a buyer of thirty-five years would be able to tell the difference. But the cold, hard truth is that thirty per cent of new market selections are never re-ordered -- and one begins to reflect that he might be better off staying home, and abdicating the test-marketing to other eager beavers. But no, six months later, he packs up his suits and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and stubbornly heads south, to assert his buying power all over again.
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