The Onset Of Dust—A Lament

By Tom Poland
August 2, 2013    
    

Small Town America Is Dying

DEDICATED TO THOSE OF US FROM SMALL TOWNS

The small town is hailed as a place where values and virtues die with the greatest of reluctance. Mayberry comes to mind. It was a sleepy little town where good people and memorable characters lived. The Lincolnton and Lincoln County I remember from the 1950s and 1960s had the Mayberry touch. Folks who long for the Lincolnton and Lincoln County of the 1950s and 1960s can still have it. Vintage Lincoln County, a Facebook page shows familiar places and people long gone. Its creator, Garnett Wallace, refers to it as a community scrapbook. People post photographs there and all of them resurrect the Lincoln County I knew. You’ll see old home places, old stores, memorable characters, long-ago prom photos, and institutions like the Central Supermarket and Tastee Freeze.

Vintage Lincoln County is an online museum of many things gone. Well, what a surprise. Those who follow my writing adventures know I avoid interstates when I can, so I pass through a lot of small towns and I can tell you small town America is in trouble. Small town America is dying, thanks in large part to interstate highways.

June 23 I drove from Raleigh to Columbia down a road once mighty, US 1 South—the main road from New York City to Miami once upon a time. It strung prosperous towns together like beads on a silver chain. Then I-95 came and tarnished the chain and the beads lost their luster. Today No. 1 runs past many an abandoned mom and pop store.

All along its route the onset of dust covers places that once thrived.
In the glory days to have a business on US 1’s shoulder was to prosper. No more. It’s easy to spot forsaken diners and gas stations from the 1950s and 60s. Dust can cover them but it cannot destroy their classic architecture’s lines.

What happened to the people who built and ran these places? Where did they go?

I tried to summon up what it must have been like to see your livelihood destroyed by a monstrous freeway and the lure of saving time. Below Sanford I drove by a service station/grocery store covered in vines and suddenly it became easy. I imagined a thriving business with green-and-white hand-painted signs out front. Fresh Vegetables. Red, Ripe Tomatoes. Cheap Gas. And then I-95 snaked its way across the land and fewer eyes saw those simple advertisements.

The hum of tires faded and the clanging of cash registers quieted. More than one owner I’m sure made it a habit to stand in front of his store, hand shielding the sun from his eyes, scanning the road.
No traffic. Well not like it used to be.

His wife peers through a window. Her husband inherited this business and it’s all he knows. A stack of bills grows higher and higher on a cast iron spike holder. They have four children, and their savings are spent. Her heart breaks as his spirit crumbles.

I’ll wager a few broken men did themselves in.

IN LEVELING FORESTS AND PLOWING UP FIELDS AND GOD KNOWS WHAT ELSE to build 42,793 miles of limited-access pavement, the Interstates changed America in ways few could have imagined. In 2004 Forbes magazine published The Great Paving, which said, The Interstate system was sold as a savior for both rural America and declining urban cores; instead it speeded the trend toward suburbanization at the expense of both city and country. It was heralded as an antidote to traffic jams; instead it brought ever more congestion. It was seen as a shining example of progress and good government; by the 1970s it had helped sour Americans on the very idea of progress and good government. And who would have thought that better highways would help make us all so fat?

As interstates crisscrossed this great land we became obsessed with getting there faster. That meant eating faster. People love freeways. When it comes to interstates, enough is good, more is better, and too many is just right.

Interstates brought something else bad for small towns: the chain store. Chain restaurants. Chain hotels. Chain gas stations. Chain this, chain that. Chain yourself to the steering wheel and stare straight ahead hour after hour.

Interstates are man’s permanent wasteland, man’s way of sullying the landscape, man’s way of extending No U-Turn median misery. I read a sad story. A farmer with a beautiful cattle farm in a broad valley had no choice- thanks to eminent domain- but to let an interstate cut his farm in half. To go from one pasture to the new one on the other side of the interstate now necessitates a 20-mile roundtrip drive. The farmer in the dale became the farmer in Hell. Communities were cut in half too.

 

The beginning of the end for many towns started in 1956 when Eisenhower’s broad ribbons sprang from the Interstate Act. As new expressways gobbled up land they put a noose around many a town’s neck. Get out a map and see where prosperity lives. You’ll find it near the cities. Businesses seek workforces. Labor. Being small is a huge disadvantage. And so a diaspora has long been underway. As folks move out, the towns they left wither. Vintage Lincoln County reveals a more spirited Lincoln County, one difficult to find today.

It used to be that in most small towns you’d find at least one doctor, several hardware and feed and seed stores, two or three jackleg pharmacists, a lawyer, several restaurants, barbershops, a good many small business owners, and at least one family everybody believes is rich. That’s no longer the case. I drive through a lot of small towns and finding a good place to eat is a challenge. Most of the time I admire a few old homes, note a beautiful cemetery or two, and keep moving. I see no reason to stop and some residents see no reason to stay.

Once-oasis, Mayberry-like towns are being covered in dust. Interstates aren’t totally to blame. As men in white shirts and ties developed agribusiness farms got big and small farms died out. The stores that overall-wearing farmers supported died. A domino effect set in.

The cities’ box stores (Walmart too easily comes to mind) lured small town shoppers away and retail businesses that once thrived shut their doors. Even more dominoes fell. Urban sprawl eats some small towns.

Brain drain set in too. Some kids who leave for college never come back. If you earn a degree in chemical engineering what will you do if you go back home? Mix cement?

Housing values declined in some towns. As people grew poorer, they couldn’t take care of their buildings. It was easier to abandon them. Along Highway 1 I saw many forsaken homes, orphaned by that callous Goddess, Change.

J.M. House writes a blog, City of Dust, THE LOST AND WONDROUS WRECKAGE OF AMERICA, THE CEASELESS ROAD TO NOWHERE. House looks at places that don’t exist anymore. Some are small towns. He quotes his Uncle Monty on the home page: There can be no beauty without decay.

 

Small towns can be exceedingly beautiful. Manicured lawns and picket fences are clichés but beautiful clichés. Small towns can and do decay. These days they’re lucky to have a good café. In a typical small town today here’s what you are likely to find. A grocery store. A drug store. A fast food joint. Churches. Funeral homes. The obligatory gas stations. And empty buildings.

Give small towns credit for trying to reverse a bad trend though. Driving down old US 1 I saw several industrial parks on the outskirts of small towns. These parks started out with grand intentions. Brick entrances, accent lighting, wrought iron, and landscaping. Today these defunct business parks are weed-infested entrances to nowheresville. Parks of broken dreams and disillusion, that’s what they became more often than not because the interstate was too far off.

THE PLACE WHERE I COME FROM … Lincoln County has a business park on Petersburg Road but I never travel that road. I hope the park is prospering. It takes jobs to sustain a population. According to the U.S. Census Lincoln County’s 2010 population estimate was 7,994. The 2012 population estimate was 7,737, a 3.2 percent drop. Look at it this way, 257 people left, 128.5 a year. Let’s look at the 2000 census when the county’s population was 8,348. In twelve years 611 people left. Well that’s only 51 people a year you say but it adds up, especially if some of those people operated much-needed businesses. Suppose this decline holds up for the next ten years. That will leave the county’s population at 7,228.

Were Lincoln County in South Carolina it’d be the smallest county in size and population. I find that unsettling. But Lincoln County isn’t alone. McCormick County dropped from 10,233 in 2010 to 9,943 in 2012, a 2.8 percent decrease. And McCormick itself isn’t alone. Small town America is dying.

I like to ask people in Columbia where they’re from. Many come from places like Lake City, Kershaw, Prosperity, Blackville, Tignall, Ty Ty, Blue Ridge, Ridgeway, Waynesboro, Thunderbolt, Elberton, and other small towns. They left for the land of Starbucks, bookstores, cinemas, franchise restaurants, and something called jobs and careers. It’s hard to blame them. Congestion, crime, wailing sirens, and dispassionate strangers come with the city but that doesn’t stem the tide of small town folk.

How does a small town reinvent itself? How does it reverse a losing trend? I wish I knew.

People in small towns are prideful. They love their hometowns. They proclaim them the best place to live and the best place to raise a family and I don’t disagree. The problem is more and more of their time raising that family will take place in a car. They have no choice but to go to the city for much of what they need and all too often a way to put food on the table. After a while logic dictates that they move. And so small towns continue to lose people. The onset of dust hastens and it’s not so easily blown away.

I’d hate to be a talented, ambitious youngster in a dying town like Jalapa, South Carolina, a village really, this odd-named hamlet on US 76. It’s so small it’s not included in census counts. Let’s pretend you live there and you just graduated from high school. You can’t wait to make your mark on the world. The tug of war between your future and loyalty to the only home you’ve known must rip a hole in your soul. I’m reminded of when Clark Hill Lake backed up and one family refused to leave their home. Only until the rising water surrounded them and covered their porch did they step into a boat and say goodbye. We’re hardwired to love home.

Well most folks are.

Others jettison their roots in an infamous way. Peter Gabriel, the founder of Genesis, scored a hit in 1986, Big Time. His lyrics, if taken literally, insult small town people. Not sure he meant to do that. Nonetheless he did. You 80’s lovers, remember this little ditty? Sing along then.

The place where I come from is a small town. They think so small, they use small words. But not me, I’m smarter than that. I worked it out. I’ll be stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out. I’ve had enough, I’m getting out to the city, the big, big city.

A lot of Peter Gabriels yearn to go to the city, the big, big city.

Somehow small towns need to lure city folks jaded of traffic, crime, and wailing sirens back their way. Somehow they need to keep young people at home. What’s it going to take? I wish I knew. Meanwhile I have the Vintage Lincoln County site to visit … photos of the old Linco Theater and more prove my hometown had a lot going on long before I came along. And that’s saying something.

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

Tom Poland is the author of six books and more than 700 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press just released his book on how the blues became the shag, Save The Last Dance For Me. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture.