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Economics 101 When a Town Barely Has a Pulse

It's been a long time since I took an economics course. All I remember about it is that they don't call it the "dismal science" for nuttin'. Let me suggest another approach to the subject. Forget about the hectic noise of the big city, the stop-and-go traffic, and the endless running around to buy crap, most of which is superfluous.

Imagine taking it all away. Simplicity, bliss? Not so fast. Your first couple hours in a really small town pound it into you how difficult it is to get anything done. What if you have something as trivial as a flat tire? Will you have to call your towing service and get towed 200 miles to Phoenix or Albuquerque?

Are any of their stores serious about doing business? Maybe they are just tax write-offs. Except that the place doesn't look high-income-enough to need tax write-offs.

Can you find a business that is open the same hours two days in a row? I actually bring a pen and clipboard to write down the complex schedule of hours when the silly place is actually open.

My cellphone doesn't work, but the internet does. It seems to be impossible to throw away a simple grocery sack of kitchen trash, because there are no trashcans in town! At least it is easy to find water in mountain towns.  

There are times when I feel like giving up. Let them board the place up.  Maybe local yokels wouldn't even care, until they closed their post office.

Clearly the place is impoverished, and yet you see more smokers around than anywhere else. Are 'smokes' covered by EBT cards? Their mental life is pretty much limited to the Bahbll and satellite television.

But it only gets so bad before you hit bottom. Then you start adapting. That is what makes this an 'authentic' experience. You start to appreciate how flexible a human being can be if they have to be. You really can buy a little food at the grocery store if you stop trying to impose city-ish notions on them.

The town even had a hardware/lumber store. Home Depot it isn't. I stopped at the section for tapes and adhesives, and started to imagine what kind of things I could fix with this tape and that adhesive.

Today I was in the grocery store and grinned from ear to ear when I saw a key-making machine at work. 

The closer you look, the less hopeless it seems. You start to see 'necessities' as falling into sub-categories: mere conventionalities; conveniences; occasional versus immediate; toys, status symbols, and entertainments.  

Better yet, life seems less regulated and bureaucratic. Interactions between individuals seem more relaxed. Of course you don't want to ruin that by fostering exaggerated, nostalgic sentimentalisms about small town people.  

Comments

Steve said…
I actually live in a town similar to the one you speak of. Empty business buildings on the town square with their owners out of town or out of state. In the past year we have closed our major IGA grocery store and two band name gas stations. Yet the Italian, Chinese and Mexican restaurants do a very good business. We do have a locally own hardware store where I will donate my cash before giving it to the bigger chain stores 25 miles away.

I do feel a little stressed at times when I am the 5th car from the stop light needing to make a left hand turn. :)
Steve, it does surprise you to see certain stores survive, and not others.

Sometimes people come up with innovations. Here, the owner of a motel/laundromat/restaurant sends a van out to the Continental Divide Trail, 35 miles away, to drag hikers back to town for a night of rest/food/internet.
Steve said…
The complaint has always been for lack of business success on the town square ... not enough parking. Yet the Chinese, Italian restaurants plus the bar that sits next to the police station do not show that parking is a problem. I plan on taking photos of the empty buildings and blog about it sometime in the near future. With the county courthouse located here, there are more law offices on the square than anything else.
Steve said…
Yes, I have been able to see what different businesses have done to either build their business or have it close. In most cases it was the price of their product or service was more expensive than the Super Walmart 12 miles away.
Vanholio! said…
Those small town businesses seem to thrive most when they don't have big chain competition AND there's money in town from tourism or some local industry. This is a rare combo.
Vanholio, I am not too interested in whether the stores are owned locally or not. I leave that to Kunstler. What concerns me the most is the lack of good-paying jobs in these little towns.
Vanholio! said…
Those small town businesses seem to thrive most when they don't have big chain competition AND there's money in town from tourism or some local industry. This is a rare combo.
Sorry, I misread your comment the first time through.
Ed said…
"Can you find a business that is open the same hours two days in a row? I actually bring a pen and clipboard to write down the complex schedule of hours when the silly place is actually open."

My experience has been the same. However, I don't bother writing down the schedule of hours of operation because small town businesses are a lot like businesses in Mexico and Bulgaria - they open when they open and they close when they close.
John V said…
We searched a long time for that "right kind" of small town. Population under 3,000, services comparable to a town of 40,000, no big box retailers, reasonable cost of living, etc. You're right, most of them seem to be suffering these days.
Have you ever driven through some of the small towns in the Palouse of southeastern WA, which is somewhat close to you? You get the creepy feeling that some of them peaked in 1917, when much of Europe was starving, and the American farmer was printing money.
John V said…
We've been all over that area. The most interesting (for many reasons) small town there is a place just outside of Walla Walla called Waitsburg.