Small-town America

Several of my friends and those who have become friends have made it a point of driving through the sandhills of Nebraska and finding the small town of Arthur, which is close to where I grew up. And the normal comment is they can't believe how remote it is up there. Arthur is a small town of around 150, give or take 25. There are three main roads you can drive from Arthur on. They go north and south and east. It is about 40 miles north to Hyannis which is a town of fewer than 200. It's about 40 miles east to Tryon, which has maybe 120 there. And then it's about 35 miles south to Ogallala, which has maybe 3,500 people living there. One of my friends who went back to visit Arthur this summer grew up in Page, Nebraska, which is a small rural community in eastern Nebraska. He knows exactly what it's like growing up in rural America.

I grew up 7 miles from Arthur. Arthur was small town rural America. It never occurred to me growing up most everyone who lived in Arthur and the country around it were immigrants to America. I knew my grandparents were from Denmark. It never occurred to me most everyone else had immigrated into the U.S.

Transportation back then wasn't very good. Most of the roads were gravel or simply dirt roads, and one didn't drive like idiots back then. It was an all-day journey driving to Ogallala for some groceries or lumber or stuff you couldn't buy in Arthur. Every couple weeks, Dad would load up the cream cans which were full of cream and take them to sell for grocery money. It's been so many years ago I can't remember where, but it seems like Keystone or maybe even North Platte.

Back then Arthur had a number of businesses. There were a couple grocery stores, two gas stations, a restaurant or two, bar, post office, well service that dug water wells, feed store, propane service and butcher shop. I know there were more businesses, but they don't come to mind. For the most part, most everyone who lived in Arthur and the surrounding hills was fairly self-sufficient. Most all the country folk had chickens and raised their own beef and hogs. Many, like Dad, did their own butchering. Most had a milk cow or two or 40-11 like Mom and Dad, so they didn't need milk. Most churned their own butter, so didn't even need margarine or imitation butter. Man, you haven't lived 'til you take fresh churned butter and spread it on a piece of homemade, fresh-from-the-oven baked bread. Once a week, we'd make a delivery run into Arthur to deliver milk and eggs and cream to those who lived there. Most everyone had big gardens, and they canned tomatoes and green beans and froze the corn. Most had huge patches of potatoes, so didn't need to buy those. There was very little one had to buy from a store except for flour and sugar and coffee and such.

But little by little down through the years, the roads got better and cars got better and America's eating and shopping habits changed. Now one needed some breakfast food or hot dogs or TV dinners or pizza and on and on. So little by little, shoppers skipped buying in small town America and drove to towns such as Ogallala or North Platte. This same thing happened all across America. Little communities that at one time were thriving now were dying. Many are gone. Back then, a small town almost had to have a hardware store, a grocery store and a gas station.

Now there are big box stores that sell everything, and I mean everything. Some of the stores carry everything from lumber to appliances to some groceries to clothes to whatever. But most of these big box stores are centered around bigger towns. And even residents at Arthur can jump in their car and drive to Ogallala, and it might take 45 minutes. So now rather than buy in small town America, where the price is probably more, they drive to bigger towns with more businesses and buy there.

In essence, we are killing small town America right before our eyes. Marge and I shopped at three small local hardware stores this past week. We could have gone to big-town America and shopped at a box store and probably spent less, but we chose not to. One reason is, I'm not fond of bigger towns, and another is I like the people in the small town stores. We got what we needed and almost no traffic. We have lost the connections we had back a few generations. Connections to the owners of the stores. Connections to real people who are trying to make ends meet just like we are.

But these connections used to extend way beyond just the small towns and where we shop. They also include the communities we live in. Growing up we could drive about 5 miles northwest and visit Johanna and Bertie. Johanna was Mom's sister. Or we could drive a few miles north and visit Mom's parents. Back then neighbors knew their neighbors and helped each other. We've kind of lost that connection today. Today, it seems like we kind of know a whole lot of individuals and families, but not really well. We are familiar with each other, but we haven't had that personal connection with them.

I call my brother several times a week, and he was telling me how a young couple recently bought the Bunkhouse in Arthur. The Bunkhouse had recently closed. The Bunkhouse is the only restaurant/bar/grill for miles and miles. He also said another young couple recently bought the butcher shop and meat store in Arthur. If we lived up there, we'd do business with both of them. Life just might be coming back to small town U.S.A. Look around the small town close to where you live. Are any new businesses just opening up? Give them business. How about some established businesses in small-town America? Send some business their way.

In many ways, small-town U.S.A. will thrive and grow or die depending on what we choose to do and who we support.