Now that we’re citified

The year the first Frenchy’s opened in Meteghan, students from Université Ste-Anne came to Acadia to take their education year towards BEds. The rest of us got to hear all about this new clothing store while going back and forth to practice teaching.

What started as a rag-cutting operation flourished into a second-hand clothing retail business. So successful has this recycled clothing been, here in Nova Scotia, a second-hand clothing operation is called a “Frenchy’s,” regardless of what the real business name actually is. It wasn’t long before copycats and franchises opened all over the province.

For a while, we thought it was because we could pick up such good deals and find those awesome treasures the concept grew to be so popular. Then our closets filled, and overspilled. Some people I know are such successful shoppers, they have established new clothes racks in basements and attics to accommodate their treasures. One friend takes last

month’s surplus back to the store, and then pays again to take home a whole new trunkful - paying, it seems to me, for the pleasure of rooting through a few bins.

There has to be something more going on here than simply clothing ourselves.

Going to Frenchy’s has become a pastime of choice. While I only go a few times a year, half the crowd is made up of familiar faces, so, unless we all pick the same day to go, some folks must just about live there. Songs have been written to celebrate our pleasure in burrowing through the heaps in the tables. Sooner or later, everyone you know passes through.

I note it’s only those who show some relish in the way they hunt through a bin (and who proudly show off every item gathered in their baskets) who return time and again. I say we are satisfying that old, ingrained, in-the-genes need to hunt and gather, a need that finds expression after many settled generations here in Nova Scotia... in “Frenchy-shopping.”

What about those who never darken the door after the first experience? Well, they are the herders and farmers, I figure. It’s probably just as well we don’t see a lot of these two groups in close quarters. Almost always, when you hear “farmers” and “herders” in the same sentence, it’s because they are doing something dangerous and deadly to one another.

My theory is, these two types are the folks making all the fuss about cats these days.

The born farmers are those who garden compulsively and insist on controlling the type of manure fertilizing their gardens. The genetic herders are the ones who claim cat herding* to this degree is such impossible and unnatural work! *Search for “cat herding video,” available on many websites - hilarious!