Shopkeeper, Newswoman

I spent Sunday afternoon with B., my 96-year-old cousin who lives in rural Tennessee.

Despite her age, B. is intelligent, articulate, opinionated—as she has always been.

It wouldn’t seem like a visit to an elderly relative would have a place in a blog about women, work, and media, but I think it does.

Engaged to be married when she was young, B. lost her fiancé in World War II. She kept his Purple Heart and his photo, and went on with her life, running a small but well-stocked grocery on the typically Southern town square. There, she provided not only food items (bologna was a specialty) and glass knick-knacks (which she liked) but information. She knew everyone in the surrounding towns, all about most people in the county, and all of their stories.

When people came to the county courthouse for information, they were sometimes told to go across the street to the store before bothering to look up the papers. B. probably had the information they needed. The store was often our first stop when we arrived on our annual August trek from Oklahoma to Tennessee when I was a child. For one thing, I was the world’s pickiest eater and bologna was one of the few things I’d eat. Mostly, I think, it was a way to catch up on news before making the round of relatives.

The tie between news and trade is an old one. In media history class, I always ask students to think about where they’d get news (and how they’d define “news”) if they lacked formal sources. They realize, then, that they’d go to places people congregate—coffee houses, student unions or libraries on campus, and, particularly, marketplaces, where “news” has long been a by-product of the exchange of goods.

B. ran her store until well into her 80s—until age and nearby “big box” stores pushed her out. Every day for 40 years, she wore a suit to work. In her own way, she was a newswoman.