It’s summer in America and something stinks. No, it’s not The Jonas Sisters. (Although, I’m sure they’re somehow part of the problem). It’s the creeping death of small town America, and it’s happening right now on the outskirts of a town near you at every day low prices.

Sonic Burger and Family Dollar. KFC and Wal-Mart. Big Box Chain this and über-strip-mall that… Businesses that don’t care about the unique histories of the communities they profit from are swallowing up cheap land just off the interstate and establishing a flavorless beach-head of mindless consumerism. As far as I’m concerned this is a cultural hate-crime in which the victims exchange their silence for a shot at the guaranteed lowest price on a tub of margarine.  Here’s where some people stop reading and turn into armchair economists and citizens for The Availability of Less Expensive Baby Formula.

“People have the right to shop wherever they want, Mussolini!”
“Hey T-Shirt Man, these chains provide jobs and inexpensive goods to people trying to save money!”

True. The following is also true: Pakistani Madrases provide free meals and education to children in need, and it would be cheaper to manufacture most US goods in China.  Yes, I just invoked terrorism and communism to make the following point: the quality of our future experience is sewn in our near term choices and deserves more consideration than a knee-jerk reaction to economy and convenience. Our dollars are leaving our communities as profits and the jobs these big boxes create are usually at the expense of better paying jobs that were cannibalized in the process.

And as far as the frugality of the average American is concerned, penny pinching predates the shopping mall by more than a few millennia. The caveman managed his pebbles and Marian Cunningham clipped her coupons. Indeed the human compulsion to bargain and economize is nothing new. What is new, however, is the apathy the American populous displays in the face of driving an extra mile to patronize a local book seller or in thinking twice about giving money to businesses that, in the great corporate roll-up, view our small towns as just another column on an endless spreadsheet.

I’ve seen it for a thousand miles: small towns suffering blight because a mere ten miles away, right next to I-Whatever, squats a mega-sprawl of towering plastic signage and black asphalt, funneling local dollars into bottomless beige boxes in exchange for an average thing of average quality. When our local landmarks fall down, when these businesses die, so does a large part of our individual histories and the experience of our unique geography. Towns start to take on the same proportions, dimensions, color and purpose. Small Town America is fast becoming Same Town America and that sad, broken place you have to drive through on the way to somewhere else.

Despite this tide, I have to think that a higher understanding of our unique experiences will prevail in the end. That people will choose Hodad’s over McDonalds, Lou’s Records over Walmart and Pappy & Harriet’s over Applebee’s. Not because they saved a dollar and the parking was ample, but because they’ve found a higher value in the sharing of something unique. Because in the end when all is tolled, it will be our experiences that will matter most, not how much we saved in the process.

From somewhere out there,
Gabe