Editorial: Take time to visit our merchants

In what has become a tradition, our family has again set the goal of getting as much of our Christmas shopping done right here at home this Friday and Saturday.

Now certainly, there may be an item or two that we just can’t get here or we order online, but our intention is to make 90 percent or more of our purchases from local merchants – the men and women who support our community and our newspaper.

The Enterprise has always supported the “shop at home” theme and encourages people to “be loyal and buy local” whenever it is possible. And likewise, our local merchants have always gone out of their way to try to make shopping Clarendon attractive and fun.

In the past, we’ve seen Late Night Shopping and Christmas Cash as vehicles to promote our local businesses, but this year, the merchants are playing off the national trend of promoting Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and have prepared some really nice sales and promotions for this weekend.

Why spend the money on gas, the time on the road, and the Tylenol on the big city headaches when you can come to downtown Clarendon this weekend and park right in front of your favorite store, be greeted by the business man or woman who knows your first name, and find great gifts for great prices? Stay home and be pleasantly surprised by the selections, the savings, and the service that you can get right here in Clarendon.

This year, an ad from Courtney Newhouse Monroe at Country Bloomers Flowers & Gifts encourages everyone to shop not necessarily at her store but at all local stores. “Buy Local, or ‘Bye, Bye’ Local” is the theme of her ad, which lays out statistics and logical reasons why shopping close to home is better for our quality of life and our economy. And it also sums up the reality of the situation – if we don’t support our local business, we won’t have any local businesses.

Your local merchants are the ones who pay taxes here to support your city, county, college, school, and ambulance service. They are the ones who pony up every time a kid comes in raising money for the third or fourth “worthy cause” this week, and then when they go to the grocery store, they will dig into their pocket and find money for the cookies or pies at the bake sale of the week.

The money we spend in Amarillo pretty much stays in Amarillo. It doesn’t come home, it doesn’t keep the lights on in our school, and it doesn’t keep our senior citizens centers running.

This is not to say it’s bad to shop in Amarillo, but rather it is to say that we need to think about our purchases. It makes a difference when you shop at home. It is simple economics, and it is common sense. The more you spend in Donley County, the more our local businesses can put right back into the local economy.

We all win when we shop at home.

With our heartfelt thanks…

We would like to take this time to thank those of you who make this newspaper possible and therefore keep food on our table and shoes on my kids. (The kids are eating more and going through clothes faster, so we’re perhaps more thankful for you all as time goes by.)

My wife, Ashlee, deserves a huge thanks for all she does to keep me going and for all the behind the scenes things she does for this newspaper. She’s a part-time writer, part-time editor, part-time photographer, part-time ad salesman and designer, and full-time thinker and sounding board. Then in her free time she works full time at the college and does a great job as the mother of two wonderful kids.

Our staff deserves special recognition also. Tara Hogan and Morgan Wheatly keep things humming while juggling their busy college schedules, and our honorary staff member – Fred Gray – fills in wherever needed, keeps us laughing, and does a great job of keeping the Enterprise the talk of the town… and sometimes other towns. Every

Our contributors – Sandy Anderberg, Kari Lindsey, Matt Martinez, Peggy Cockerham, Kathy Spier, and Bob Watson – are our extra hands and help us cover a whole range of subjects that we couldn’t get done without them. We thank each of them for their parts in making this a paper that does its best to cover all of Donley County.

And of course we have a host of volunteers who provide us occasional photos and articles. We can’t mention them all here because we would surely leave one out, but Suzanne Taylor, Alice Cobb, and Melody Hysinger are examples of friends and readers who help us cover the news when we can’t be there. It is these folks who truly put the “community” in our community newspaper.

And last but certainly not least, we salute our readers and advertisers. Without them, there is no Enterprise, and from the bottom of our hearts we thank them for their continued to trust, faith, and support. We will continue to do everything we can to be deserving of all of you who have made it possible for this paper to deliver the news as it has for more than 134 years.

Thank you all very much. We are proud to serve Donley County, and we hope that you continue to enjoy our weekly endeavors.