Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

I walked through many small towns and many small, small towns. All these towns were one of the highlights of my walk.

Many small towns are not doing well economically. I would judge their health by the percentage of empty storefronts in their old downtown areas. Far too many were half occupied. Others had something in the storefronts, but they weren’t businesses. They were government offices or government-funded charities. Those serve a purpose, but they aren’t the same as a viable business with jobs.

Jobs move out of downtown areas and to the Golden Mile by the Interstate. I don’t like to see those as much as the downtown jobs, but they are jobs and have their worth.

Then there are the jobs that moved to the nearest Wal-Mart SuperCenter. I have met a lot of people who don’t like Wal-Mart. That company builds these giant stores that sell everything. Those stores employ people and sell products at lower prices. There is much good to be said about that. As a side note, my opinion of Wal-Mart went up quite a bit in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita a few years ago in Louisiana. Wal-Mart helped its employees re-locate to new places and keep their jobs.

Anyways, the Wal-Mart SuperCenter depletes jobs from nearby small towns. Wal-Mart usually sits aside the Interstate. People in the surrounding towns drive half an hour on a Saturday morning, farmers are up at 5AM, do all their shopping, and return home by 7AM. It all works well for these shoppers as the prices are lower and the store is convenient enough to pay for the gas and travel. These people, however, no longer shop at the local grocery and hardware store in the small town. Those stores close, and we have empty store fronts in the little, old downtowns of America.

I don’t like empty store fronts. There are no jobs there. An empty store front, however, has its hope. Some day, some one can open another business in that building. It may take a while, it may take an unforeseen circumstance, but the hope remains.

Hope does not remain on a concrete slab. I visited several small towns where the buildings in the old downtown had disappeared. All that was left was the concrete slab. Those concrete slabs are the Tombstones for a small town. The slabs signal that the town has died, and all that is left are those flat markers looking up to the sky.

Boligee, Alabama comes to mind as a town with such tombstones. I had coffee and later a hamburger at the local diner. It had once burned to the ground. Local farmers and other workers rebuilt the diner on the same slab. They wanted a place to eat lunch. I wandered a hundred yards from the diner to the downtown area next to the railroad tracks. There were a couple of brick buildings abandoned but still standing. What was sad were the half dozen concrete slabs. Fire, wind, or maybe just termites had removed the buildings. No one rebuilt them.

Wal-Mart stands down the Interstate a half hour away. Perhaps some of the people of Boligee work at or around the Wal-Mart. I would hope that part of this and other little towns lives on in the Wal-Marts.