Thread: A short tale with a question attached

So, I was driving from Washington, DC out to West Virginia last week-end, I need to cross a lot of country-side in order to accomplish this. Some of the towns out there are very small with no grocery and/or convience store in them and even if they do have any manner of stores the shaving implements offered are often non-existent.

This got me wondering if you lived in one of these small towns in rual americana wouldn't shaving with a straight be the best way to get the job done? I mean the people that live there need to go a long ways to to buy anything and therefore probably do it very rarely. Just to go for groceries might take all day.

I would think that if one shaves with anything other than a straight in rual americana stocking up on the blades might get a bit tricky if not expensive. Would need to buy enough blades to get you to the next time that you made your way to a grocery store and/or a larger community. But not so many blades, which would be a bit wasteful. Buying just the right amount of blades would be a bit tricky. I would hate to live on a farm and get up to go out into the field one day and go on over into the bathroom only to find that I had miscalculated the number of razors/blades I need and have to jump in the auto and run into town.

Wouldn't the striaght be a better option, no calculating the number of blades or razors needed. If the blade needs to be sharpened, pull out the trusty hone and problem solved. I would think that the striaght would make things a bit easier to deal with so that my attention could be on running the farm rather than managing the shave den.

I would probably grow a beard if I lived on a farm.

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

I would probably grow a beard....

BLASPHEMER! Burn him! BURN HIM!

Edit: to the OP, shaving with a straight is ALWAYS the most rational, reasonable solution! But in very very rural areas, I could see the added benefit, of course. One could shave with a DE, where keeping 200 blades around is no big deal. Of course, even with a straight, one would need to keep up stock of cream/soap, aftershave, etc. With the internet available just about everywhere, though, I think the VAST majority of Americans are within a few day's delivery of whatever supplies they need.

true, internet access has made this a lot easier.

It makes perfect sense to me. Even if you lived in an urban area it seems like a good idea. Why depend on a company or a third party, beyond reason, if you don't have to?

Owning and utilizing a straight razor is part of being self sufficient ( I know you cant make them or the accesories yourself but it reduces the dependence). Is that not part of what living on a farm is about ?

I am rural. A grocery trip is 46 miles. If I didn't have internet anymore I can buy VDH and DE blades at Wally World, KMF SC at the healthfood store, William's and DE blades at the grocery store. I could always mail a letter and place an order with one of the many vendors and I am sure they would be happy to sell me whatever it is I wanted. I fail to see any problem here. Even us rural folks go to town once in a while.

It's not so much of an issue now, due to the influx of technology and travel improvements. Back in the day, it may have been harder to find such equipment, though saying that. Back in the day they didn't use cartridge razors.

Yes I agree its no issue now. I live in a city of half a million and there are no quality wet shaving supplies. Its the internet all the way now. I would suspect many years ago many of these small towns that have dried up now had a general store which carried all kinds of interesting stuff.

Several years ago I was driving through this little hamlet in Northern New Mexico and stopped by this gas station which was in reality a true old fashioned general store not some tourist joint but the real thing. A post office, gas station, hardware store, gun shop, feed and grain, groceries, drugs. They had it all. There even was a bunch of old couts stting around a pot bellied stove chewing the fat. I felt like I went through a time warp or something. Did they have any shaving supplies? I don't know I wasn't in to wet shaving then!

My brother-in-law is still running the family farm, about 20 minute drive from town. He shaves when he wants to, which isn't all that often, and cartridge blades don't go bad. I got his father's DE, though, since no one else wanted it.
J.

Actually, with all these comments about internet making it a non-issue, I feel the need to point out that many of us are pretty spoiled when it comes to internet access.

My parents live 5 minutes outside a town of 8,000 and only 35 minutes from the State Capitol. However, because they live on a farm, there is no high speed internet access available to them except for using a satellite uplink or wireless internet, both of which are prohibitively expensive to your average American farmer.

Until they got blackberry's a few months ago and started using them to connect their desktop to the internet, they were stuck with dial-up, which was only about 28k on a good day because of the poor quality of the phone lines. Many of us remember when dial-up was the standard, and it was workable. Unfortunately, the web is filled with graphic and multimedia intensive sites that are murder to browse at those speeds.

So, they rarely if ever shopped online. If they couldn't get it in town, they'd drive to Salem (the capitol) and get it there. If it couldn't be gotten there, they might try to find it online, but it was rarely worth the trouble.