Three times, disaster came for Brenda Franz’s little store on this quaint, twinkling shopping street.
And three times, she swept up the debris, tightened her belt and kept the business going.
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“It’s been 30 years,” said Franz, who owns one of the oldest antique shops in Old Ellicott City. “And I’m still here. I can’t imagine what I would do if I didn’t do this.”
Her shop was not one of at least 800,000 small businesses that closed permanently in the pandemic’s first year, one of the roughest for America’s small businesses in recent history. That toll is 30 percent higher than the usual churn in our nation’s vital and mercurial economic backbone — the American small business, according to a study by the Federal Reserve.
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This holiday season can help end that decline.
Big companies whose size helped them swell and prosper during the global pandemic will continue to grow with online sales and Black Friday madness. But by changing their spending habits just a little bit this week, Americans can channel some of that prosperity toward the small businesses that beat the odds and are still here, struggling.
A requiem for all the mom-and-pops shut down by the pandemic
“Why give more money to Walmart when you can keep it here, in the community?” said Franz, as she adjusted the display around one of the vintage ceramic Christmas trees in her window.
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There’s no better place to see the grit and resilience of the American entrepreneur than in the daredevils like Franz who run their businesses in this colonial-era Maryland town.
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The shops along Main Street are on a steep, curving road in a valley between the Tiber and Patapsco rivers, which powered the mills that made this a thriving place in the 1700s. Now? The rivers make business owners who hang a shingle there risk-takers.
Because as if owning a small business isn’t terrifying enough — scores of them in this part of Maryland closed during the mortgage crisis of the early 2000s — the cafes, salons and shops that weathered economic turmoil were then wiped out by epic, biblical flooding. Twice.
In 2016 and 2018, a three-foot wall of water slammed the streets usually filled with cafe chairs and shoppers. Two people died in the 2016 flood, another died in 2018. People literally ducked into cute restaurants as it began to rain, then died in raging waters on the way back to their cars.
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Many of the businesses didn’t return after the flooding. Who would? These were supposed to be 1,000-year floods, and they happened back-to-back (thank you, development and climate change). But Franz owned the little three-story, 1890 building that housed Attic Antiques N Things and the Doll Hospital. She wasn’t just a tenant and she wasn’t going to leave.
Do you return? Another 1,000-year flood hit this city and now there are questions.
The first time disaster came for Franz, her survival instinct told her to flee.
“I went to parking lot D, got into my car and left,” said Franz, who asks that I don’t reveal her age but offers up her mother’s 99-years-and-still-going status as a marker. She got a call at midnight about the epic flood that surged into the shop.
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The second time, she stayed and battled the rising waters.
“I put bins out, thinking I was going to stop the water from coming in. What was I thinking?” she said. The black water kept coming, rising, sweeping away the 1890 porcelain demitasses, the 1930 lead soldiers, those coveted ceramic Christmas trees.
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“I had to go up because the water was coming in. I went up to the third floor and looked out,” she said. “Cars and dumpsters were floating down the street like bathtub toys. They rescued me with a 70-foot-ladder truck and took me away in an ambulance.”
But she rebuilt, adding parging and waterproofing to the storefront. The next year, 2019, was good. Franz and the other business owners who returned to the cursed street thought they might make it after all.
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“And then everyone was gone again,” she said, remembering the sudden quiet of March 2020, when the pandemic shut them down. It was less violent, but nevertheless sudden. And devastating.
She refocused her business on the Doll Hospital, putting more time into restringing beloved, old dolls for grandmothers to give to their granddaughters, restoring the candy-striped dresses of Madame Alexander dolls loved by collectors and restuffing teddy bears.
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“We’d meet in a parking lot for the handoff,” she said of the odd ways she conducted business during the pandemic. “It was so strange.”
She survived.
Now, it’s time to thrive. Franz and her fellow merchants strung the lights on their windows and opened up the chalkboard sidewalk signs. They’re ready to rebuild.
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“Vintage Art Deco bar glasses are in with the young people,” she said. “Cocktail shakers. The costume jewelry is always a hit. Vintage evening bags.”
(My trick is gifting a vintage cake plate to all new parents. A doughnut with a candle, a gift, a stack of pancakes served on a footed cake plate is an easy way to mark any occasion as a celebration throughout a childhood. It worked for me!)
Those of us who have been lucky to survive this pandemic often wonder what we can do to help. Here’s an easy and impactful way:
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Once the turkey leftovers are boxed and bagged, go outside and find those small, independent places in your neighborhood, or take a trip to find some you don’t know.
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The Americans who have the courage to keep their small businesses open, who stare down floods and fires, weather our trends and whims, endure shoplifters, economic disasters and a global pandemic, are gutsy.
Let’s show up for the people who endured.
Twitter: @petulad
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