Eddie, Where Will I Shop Without You?

I’ve been despondent all week, and not over anything trivial, either.

The Eddie Bauer Outlet Store is closing today. This is where I do all of my shopping.

No, you don’t understand. This is where I do all of my shopping.

I have not purchased a significant article of clothing anywhere else since 1989, although I was forced to go to an outside provider to purchase my pickup truck last year.

Let me do a quick survey of what I am wearing at this exact moment. Sweater: Eddie Bauer. Shirt: Eddie Bauer. Belt: Eddie Bauer. Pants, socks, shoes: all Eddie Bauer. Over there in the coat rack, we have coat, gloves and hat: all Eddie Bauer.

The only thing that isn’t Eddie Bauer is my underwear, only because the outlet store doesn’t sell underwear. (Thank God the Burlington Coat Factory isn’t going out of business.)

So you can understand the depth of my despair. Imagine how Michael Jordan would feel if Nike went out of business. Imagine how Kate Moss would feel if Calvin Klein went out of business. Imagine how my Aunt Eula and Uncle Gibby would feel if Wal-Mart went out of business.

However, I have been trying to channel my angst into constructive activity, so I have been madly buying whatever I can before the store closes. I figure I need to purchase enough articles of clothing to see me through, I don’t know, the next 40 years.

Consequently, I have been profligate with my Eddie Bauer card lately, or at least as profligate as a person can be at a store where the marked price is 40 percent off retail, and the sale price is 30 percent off the marked price.

I was in the store last week, buying three more sweaters to put away until about the year 2006, when the clerk apparently saw the pain in my eyes. She said, “You can still go to our store in NorthTown.”

“You don’t understand,” I said, refusing to be cheered up.

I don’t do NorthTown. In fact, I make it a point never to set foot in NorthTown except to get one of those Cinnabon rolls with a Mochalatta Chill to wash it down.

Then she said, “And we’ll be reopening a new store downtown soon.”

“Yes,” I said, wary of false hope. “But will it be an outlet store?”

“No,” she said.

“And the NorthTown store isn’t an outlet either, is it?” I said.

“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”

“You just don’t understand,” I said.

A full-price Eddie Bauer store is of no use to me whatsoever. There are only two reasons I have purchased my entire wardrobe at the Eddie Bauer Outlet Store. One, I like the outdoorsy-preppy Eddie Bauer look. Two, and far more important, I am incredibly cheap.

And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the only cheap person in Spokane. That’s why this little outlet store is - was - always crammed with people. Eddie Bauer carries a fine product line and I am proud to feature their products on every single part of my body except for… never mind. But if I was the sort of person who could stomach full price, I might as well be shopping at Nordstrom or the Bon Marche or The Gap.

Actually, I might as well be ordering from LL Bean.

Take that, Eddie Bauer.

Yes, that’s right, if you’re going to take away my outlet store I just might get my next chamois shirt from a certain competitor in Maine. I just might order my ragg-wool socks from Land’s End. I might order my next flannel shirt, the kind decorated with leaping trout, from the Orvis catalog. Maybe I’ll even thumb through the Tiffany’s catalog in search of, I don’t know, a watch or a pocket-knife or a pair of hunting boots or something.

I would never have done this under normal circumstances. I used to feel a sense of loyalty to Eddie Bauer. But these are not normal circumstances. These are times that require drastic action. Outlet shoppers, unite! To the catalogs, we march!

On the other hand, I hear that the full-price Eddie Bauer store occasionally has some sales. These sales will be a shadow of the sales I once knew, but I’m not ruling out making a trip to NorthTown someday. My sweater cache should be getting thin by about 2008.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jim Kershner The Spokesman-Review