Small Wonders:

As the season to shop comes to an end, sadly, the season to close up shop is upon us.

Over the last few years, we’ve been told that one of our patriotic duties is to buy newer TVs and more advanced cellphones and nicer clothes and better kitchenware in order to make sure our economy remains strong and vibrant. Well, we now have fewer places at which we can get ourselves deeper into debt for our country.

Drive down Magnolia or Burbank boulevards and you will see far too many vacancy signs on our local shops. Over at the Empire Center, that thriving megalopolis of consumerism and cranky holiday shoppers, we’ll have to find out how to survive without Linens ’N Things and Shoe Pavilion. Mervyn’s, Circuit City and Steve & Barry’s will be leaving some pretty gaping holes over at the Town Center as well.

Unfortunately for these retailers, their decline must have begun before Uncle Sam opened up his checkbook. Or perhaps their executive boards did not contribute enough to their representatives on Capitol Hill. Heck, once the Big Three automakers heard that their crazy, rich uncle was giving out cash, they came a-calling like long-lost cousins.

With shoulders shrugged, the automakers warned that millions of jobs would be lost unless (throat clearing) we gave them $34 billion. We’re sorry, they seemed to say, but unless you help us now, Joe the tire inflater, Joe the deli shop owner and Josephina the coffee barista will swim with the fishes . . . ahem . . . will not be able to make their next overinflated, predatory mortgage payment, the entire country will collapse into financial chaos, and we’ll all be eating government cheese for Christmas dinner.

I am sure there are economists and even ordinary folks out there who are far more educated than I in these matters, and I will probably receive some pretty harsh e-mails correcting my naiveté. But it won’t be any worse than the regular drubbings I get from my poker buddies for this same reason. They delight in reminding me of my faults, so I am used to it.