Trying to find something different from the trinkets mass-produced for tourists can be difficult. But it is worth pursuing — and the road is full of makers who still do things the old way.
The Problem with Tourist Shops
Walk into almost any gift shop in any tourist town in America and you'll find the same things: refrigerator magnets, shot glasses, and t-shirts, almost all of them made overseas. The items have the name of the place on them, but they have nothing to do with the place. They could have been made anywhere and shipped anywhere. This is the paradox of tourist commerce: the places that attract visitors because of their distinctiveness sell souvenirs that are completely generic. You go to Vermont for the maple syrup and the covered bridges and the particular quality of the light in October, and you come home with a shot glass that says 'Vermont' in a font designed in a factory in Guangdong. We've been on the road long enough to have developed a strong preference for the alternative: things made by hand, in the place where you bought them, by someone who can tell you how they were made.
"Things made by hand by people who care about their craft are better than things made by machines for people who don't know or care who buys them."
The Coolidge Cheese Factory
The Coolidge Family Cheese Factory in Plymouth, Vermont is the kind of place that makes you understand what's been lost in most of American retail. The factory has been making cheese on the same property since the 1890s, using the same basic methods, and the cheese is extraordinary — sharp, complex, nothing like the processed product you find in most grocery stores. The factory is still run by descendants of the Coolidge family, and the woman behind the counter can tell you exactly how the cheese is made, how long it's aged, and what makes the milk from local Vermont cows different from milk produced elsewhere. That knowledge — that connection between the maker and the made thing — is what you're buying when you buy artisan goods. We bought three pounds of their sharpest cheddar and ate most of it before we crossed into New Hampshire.
Finding the Real Thing
The trick to finding genuine artisan goods on the road is to look past the main commercial streets of tourist towns and into the neighborhoods where people actually live and work. Farmers markets are reliable — not the ones in city centers that have become lifestyle events, but the ones in small towns where the vendors are actually farmers. Craft fairs can be hit or miss, but the ones organized by local arts councils rather than commercial promoters tend to have a higher proportion of genuine makers. Ask the vendors where they work and how they learned their craft. The ones who have real answers are the ones worth buying from. Harvest Hosts has been a revelation in this regard. Many of the farms and small businesses in the network make or grow things that you can buy directly — cheese, wine, honey, pottery, woodwork. Staying overnight gives you time to actually talk to the people who make these things, which is half the value.
Why It Matters
There's an economic argument for buying artisan goods — the money stays in the local economy, supports skilled work, preserves traditional knowledge. All of that is true and worth saying. But the more personal argument is simpler: things made by hand by people who care about their craft are better than things made by machines for people who don't know or care who buys them. They last longer, they look better, and they carry a story. The shot glass from the factory gift shop will end up in a drawer. The cheese from the Coolidge factory, the pottery from the roadside studio, the honey from the farm where you spent the night — those things become part of the story of the trip. They're not souvenirs of a place. They're evidence of an encounter.
