Names used to mean something. They carried weight, tradition, and integrity. But not, apparently, for Wildflower Trading Post and Gifts—an establishment as far removed from an actual trading post as a silk cravat is from a fur-lined deerskin cap.
If you choose to include the words “trading post” in your name, you ought to be ready to barter your goods for another’s. For example, exchanging your fine artisanal lavender-rosemary soaps for one of the many beaver pelts I acquired while journeying deep into the Albany River basin in Northern Ontario this past winter.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Well not so to the employees of this dishonest and defamatory purveyor of locally produced gifts and tchotchkes! The moment I stepped into this fraudulent “trading post”—my canoe slung over one shoulder, flintlock rifle in hand—I was met with disdain. A real trading post would welcome a weary trapper, canoe and all, not throw a fit about “store policy” or “safety concerns.”
A trading post that does not allow a trapper to bring in their canoe, rifle, skinning knife, steel traps, hatchet, powder horn, mallet, pemmican, cooking kettle, ammunition, snares, tobacco, stretching board, and bedroll is, in hindsight, one not worth engaging in commerce. However, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, I was so taken with the sights and smells that greeted me there, that I acceded to the demands of the shopkeeper and her cretinous minions.
I thought myself quite accommodating from there on out! I begrudgingly left my belongings outside of the “trading post” and, after multiple entreaties, stopped closely inspecting each piece of merchandise with my beaver-blood-coated hands.
The real trouble started when I approached the cashier, clutching the desired soaps, ready to finalize our trade. At a “cashless” “trading post,” it seemed to me perfectly ordinary to swap one of my smaller pelts for the artisanal goods I had my eye on. Apparently, I was mistaken.
The shock and disdain of the cashier as I placed the tanned and stretched remains of a beaver on the counter has left an indelible mark on my mind. Refusing to accept the pelt as payment for the soaps, he demanded that I pay using a “credit card.” When I politely shouted that this insistence on so-called electronic payment was a violation, and a clear betrayal of the “trading post” name, I was rudely asked to leave.
My experience at Wildflower “Trading Post” and Gifts left me feeling angry and disrespected. It is a feeling unlike any I’ve ever experienced. Mark my words, one day when our world collapses like a flimsy wooden palisade against a determined war party, we won’t be exchanging products via “credit card.” No, we will be doing so with beaver pelts!