The way people shop has certainly changed over the years. The big-box stores and the malls have taken the personal touch out of buying things.

I’ve always liked the little mom-and-pop stores where you can tell the owner or an employee what you want, and they go get it for you. If the employees are all busy, the other customers will help you out. There’s none of this wandering around staring at shelves like we do at the mega-stores.

I have fond memories of a little sporting goods store I visited on the island of Kauai many years ago. I knew nothing about saltwater fishing, or Hawaii for that matter, so I went to the store with a list of questions.

The only clerk there was a woman who didn’t fish and was quick to admit she wouldn’t know a bucktail jig from a Tennessee Waltz. “Jimmy will be back this afternoon,” she said. “If you want to come back then, he can tell you everything you need to know.”

That was fine with me. I had no idea what else to do on one of those islands, anyway, so I went back in the afternoon. I found the same clerk and asked, “Is Jimmy back yet?”

She yelled at a fellow who was putting a roll of line on the shelf, and said, “Tell this man what he needs to know about fishing around here.”

“Sure,” he said. “What do you have in mind?”

I explained that I brought a spinning reel with me, and planned to buy an inexpensive (read “cheap”) rod after I learned what might fit the circumstances. That way, I would get a rod of about the right type and wouldn’t be terribly upset if the airlines lost it or broke it on the way home.

I told the man my wife and I were staying at a condo a couple hundred yards from the Bull Shed restaurant. He said that was as good a place as any to cast into the surf. “What am I likely to catch there?” I asked.

He smiled and said, “Ornamentals.” I took that to mean “little fish of some kind.”

After picking out some hooks and weights and recommending calamari for bait, he took me over to the rod rack. “Here’s a pretty good one,” he said. “This would work fine for what you want to do.”
That rod was over $100 and exceeded my definition of “cheap” by quite a bit. “I might only use the rod for a week,” I said. “I won’t need a really good one.”

“But you don’t want to buy a piece of junk,” the man said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ve got some rods in my truck. You can use one of those.”

“I would be happy to rent one from you,” I suggested.

“I don’t rent,” he said. That’s when I learned this man didn’t work at the store, either. He was a customer – a banana farmer!

He went out to his truck, got me a rod and took my wife and me up to see his banana plantation. After a pleasant visit and numerous stories about peacock bass fishing, my wife and I headed back to the condo with a borrowed fishing rod and several bunches of bananas.

Best darned bananas I’ve ever eaten.