I’ve been feeling guilty for not spending more money in the hood. It’s not because there aren’t ample ways to buy local. We live within walking distance to book stores and restaurants, a movie theater, playhouse, coffee hangouts, boutiques, bakeries, an ice cream parlor. The same temptations exist as before. But in November of 2009 we buy groceries, dog food and new tires.

Things have changed. Everyone’s on a budget. But this mess can’t last forever and while we can’t do much about Wall Street we want Main Street to be there when we bravely open our wallets again. But now I often walk past a store or restaurant and wave… and wince. I hope someone’s in there spending money because I haven’t been. I feel bad looking in the window with the artsy jewelry and not popping for some new earrings. My local indie book store can’t count on me like it used to.

I feel like I’m dodging a jilted boyfriend and I don’t want the storekeepers to take my absence personal, but how else can a merchant take it when customers walk on by? I want to say to the owners of the seafood restaurant, “Hang on to those crab cakes and when things get better we’ll be back.”

I told this to the guy who has the music store downtown. I used to be a fairly good customer because without music the world would be a drab, soulless place but buying a new CD isn’t at the top of my current budget. I confessed my guilt and he kind of absolved me and said everyone is cautious. He, too, is not buying as many books or eating out as much. Then he sold me the new Sting album.

It was sad when the shoe store closed. It was pricey but the staff knew their merchandise and the shoes were both comfortable and hip. I should have told them that if they lasted a little longer I would have rationalized that pair of Canada-made boots.

You don’t want to live in a town with empty storefronts, where the windows are covered with faded newspapers and no one’s around to sweep up cigarette butts. A lively Main Street is part of a town’s personality. I enjoy the white lights twinkling from the beer garden even though we haven’t been there for months. I don’t surf but I’m happy the surfboard store manages to thrive.

You don’t have to be a member of the Chamber of Commerce to applaud every gutsy merchant who keeps the doors open. And those people who open new businesses – like the kitchen and garden store and the art gallery – deserve some kind of chutzpah award.

Experts say that the American consumer society has been forever changed. In many ways that’s good. People are saving more than spending. We’re staying home more, growing our own veggies, buying clothes at consignment shops, thinking before we charge. The dismal economy has been a harsh teacher and spending money is risky business.

The mayor of my town started a Dine Local program, inviting townspeople to join her at a different restaurant every week. It’s a good idea. It not only helps out small business owners but gives us stay-at-homes permission to spring for an evening out.

We all do what we can. Sharing a burger at the bar. That’s do-able.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, California You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com

Photo: Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

Shopping was such an automatic habit, a near lifetime one, but as it turns out, not that difficult to break. Like cutting French fries from your diet.

I’m talking about recreational shopping, something you did at lunch or when you had a few open hours on a weekend. Time to cruise the stores, just looking. But there’d usually be something to take home, that you didn’t really need but could rationalize. It looked good on you. You deserved it. It was such a deal. And you hadn’t had anything new in…a while.

But then the economy and consumer confidence dissolved. Frivolous shopping seemed not only unwise, but almost obscene. The least a person could do was draw a line at her own closet and the easiest way was to avoid temptation.

It helped that so many others in my endangered middle income group became practical at the same time. I’d ask a friend what she had bought lately and it was nothing much but the essentials. Food, of course, maybe some new tires, some necessity from the hardware store. Those who could still afford extras chose to keep their gym membership or their hair cutter rather than binge at the mall.

Who needed it, I said, but began looking forward to my friend’s semi-annual clothes swap in her backyard.

It was starting to feel like a long drought.

When I saw all the “buy local” signs pop up in store windows around town I realized that if Main Street started becoming vacant it was going to be bad for all of us. And there was my new rationalization.

I bought a wide faux leather belt. “Going for the Michele Obama look?” asked my daughter, which I took as a compliment and which would have been enough, in old times, to send me back to the store to buy one or two more in different colors. But I honored my new thrifty self and stuck with one. It cost $12, but it seemed to cheer the woman who sold it to me.

I thought of my mother who used to scour the church rummage sales for clothes with status labels and then get out her sewing machine and remodel them for herself. She was of that generation that also owned darning needles. No one threw out a pair of socks or a sweater just because it had a mere hole in it. Same with shoes. When a heel wore down you went to the cobblers, not to the shoe store.

I also bought a new pair of yoga pants. On sale, although more than I’d pay at one of the discount stores. But these came from a shop in walking distance from my house. The owners live in the community. The pants are of organic cotton, made in California. All good reasons to purchase.

I heard that in tough times women tend to buy black purses and not splurge on color. My daughter although, bought a green glittery wallet, but that was for luck, she said, to bring money into her life. That makes it more of a spiritual reason, I guess.

I wonder if our consumer society has been permanently altered by our economic terror? Or, if one day were Timothy Geithner to announce that consumer confidence had returned, the economy was rallying and we could all open our wallets again, would we rush the stores like an after-Christmas mob.

I hope not. Gluttony is so passe. So Hummer.

As Holly Golightly pointed out, there are rats and there are super rats. And these days there are so many rats it’s hard to tell who’s the rattier. The financial sleazebags with their empty promises and empty bank accounts? The toxic mortgage hustlers? The arrogant, bloated CEOs who continue to frolic?

If you’re looking for someone to blame this mess on, there are plenty of rats to go around. Maybe even those politicians who had to be excused from high office for not paying their taxes.

But don’t get mad at your neighbor. Don’t blame the luckless homeowner who bought at too high a price with too little money down. A lot of us did that, but got away with it…at least, so far. This is no time to be throwing rocks at glass houses, considering so many of us are living in them.

And don’t get mad at unions for providing workers a decent enough wage so that teachers and police officers and nurses can live in the same town where they work. And don’t bully the business owners not as savvy as you, who didn’t have the financial cushion to get through hard times.

The worst thing that could happen to this country – worse than a Depression and double digit unemployment – is that we turn on each other. And America the once Strong and Proud becomes America the Stingy and Spiteful.

The rats are happy to see us mice picking on each other.

What good comes from being mean and reckless, calling people “losers,”  like those high profile windbags who stir up an anxious populace. The ones who claim that mortgage reform plans only encourage bad behavior. And who, worse, become part of that still tiny but screeching minority that seem to want President Obama’s ideas to fail so they can do… what? Say goodbye to “hope?”

It’s easier to understand why common people buy houses they can’t afford than it is to understand how the biggest money brains in the world made such colossal blunders to cause a global financial collapse. We all wanted our piece of paradise even though everyone said the housing bubble would burst. But the realtor said it was a deal, the appraiser said it was worth it and the lender said you qualified. So tell me where to sign those loan papers, which would be sold to another lender the next day.

Americans may get annoyed with the excesses of the rich but they take personal affront at the bad luck of the poor. And don’t think that the rats aren’t happy to see us mice picking on each other.

I think this is a test. We can grumble and point fingers or we can tighten our collective belts and get through this crisis without hurting each other. We can believe that, “We will rebuild and we will recover,” as President Obama said in his speech to Congress. And we can do it in a neighborly fashion. Trade our backyard tomatoes for eggs from the guy with chickens down the street.

Getting mad, even at rats, gets us nowhere.