The nice little town I grew up in looks like total crap now...

[skooooo]

I can't believe how much things have gone downhill. It's sad. Anyone else from small town America experience this?

This used to be a nice middle-class town with clothing stores and a few factories...


http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=boonville+indiana&sll=38.000762,-87.335107&sspn=0.011971,0.019312&ie=UTF8&ll=38.049037,-87.275391&spn=0.095708,0.154495&t=h&z=13&iwloc=addr&layer=c&cbll=38.049053,-87.275539&panoid=zrDwCT7Myg14hXW34mcSTw&cbp=12,181.26905742853097,,0,5.000000000000001

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=boonville+indiana&sll=38.000762,-87.335107&sspn=0.011971,0.019312&ie=UTF8&t=h&layer=c&cbll=38.051795,-87.270259&panoid=S7NppIv4VTOdnI1z7aaj9A&cbp=11,28.141274349628585,,0,5.000000000000001&ll=38.051796,-87.27026&spn=0.000672,0.002414&z=19

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=boonville+indiana&sll=38.000762,-87.335107&sspn=0.011971,0.019312&ie=UTF8&t=h&layer=c&cbll=38.048992,-87.271623&panoid=veEf7ZFczmCRQ2OKy6i3jw&cbp=12,46.26905742853097,,0,5.000000000000002&ll=38.049037,-87.271786&spn=0.095708,0.154495&z=13&iwloc=addr

[Avalux]

1. Yes. I know the feeling.

I grew up in a railroad town in central PA; when I was a kid even the not-so-desirable sections of town (according to my mother) were nice.

Now though - I was shocked last time I visited - it looked as if the houses in the section around my high school hadn't been painted or repaired for 30 years. Made me feel very sad.

[skooooo]

3. Do people...

..have to keep broken down cars in the front lawn? Is it so hard to paint the house every 6 or 7 years?

I don't get it. Guess there's no money, or people just don't care anymore..or both.

[Avalux]

4. I think it's the not caring -

the jobs have gone, there's nowhere else for them to go. They lose hope and a sense of pride.

[MadMaddie]

5. When mired in despair painting the house isn't on top of the list.

there's no money, and people just don't care anymore they have lost hope.

[Maru Kitteh]

15. yup. and paint is EXPENSIVE.

really, really, expensive.

[skooooo]

24. I don't know..

I understand things are tough, but we weren't rich back when I was growing up either and we kept the weeds out of the yard and made things look half-way decent.

[Le Taz Hot]

28. Painting a house is VERY expensive.

And that's if you do all the work yourself. The cost in prep material, paint supplies, primer, paint, even when on sale, is probably close to a thousand dollars or more. That's money many people don't have at the moment for a COSMETIC fix to their home.

[Mari333]

2. yep. happening in my small town now.

2000 locals have left, the pop went from 7000 to 5000 (no jobs). factories turned into cheap condos, which are sitting empty now because the developers have gone bankrupt. tourists bought up homes on the cheap, but dont live here except for in the summer. stores that catered to tourists are closing all over the place. lots of empty storefronts.

[QC]

6. A forty-year war on the working class will do that to a place.

It's the same in my old neighborhood. My mom and dad are stuck there in what is quickly becoming a suburban slum, too old and too poor to move.

[readmoreoften]

23. Great answer.

[QC]

26. Thanks! n/t

[Warpy]

7. I lived in a few nice little towns growing up

that were usually exurbs of bigger towns. Most have gone to malls and big apartment buildings. All the friendly little stores have long since vanished, replaced by chains. Few people live there all day, most go to the city to work.

I honestly don't know what is worse.

[Peregrine Took]

8. I went to school in Clinton, Iowa and its a shadow of its former self, imo.

They used to have so many more stores and businesses downtown - now not so many.

Also, there were several Catholic churches in the town - I"m thinking "5" and now there's only "1" with the others just sitting there like lonely old maids.

Eagle Point Park on the Mississippi still looks good, though, at least they are keeping up with that plus the Riverfront with the minor league stadium is a big asset.

[defendandprotect]

9. We lost a lot of population -- and lots of stores changed hands . . . however,

we've also had a lot of monied people come in --- tear downs/MacMansions --

and the shops that follow them ... COACH, for one.

The money unbalances things like influence on local government ---

many stupid decisions made -- like we still don't have trolley service to the RR station

and the costs of parking there are enormous and many willing to pay still can't get a space.

Long waitng list. Also, the GOP Town Council came close to getting a huge new parking deck

built!! Took two years, but they were finally defeated and the Mayor left town suddenly!!

We always had wealthy here but not conspicuously wealthy.

The new stores aren't holding --- Bombay came and went in a few years.

The Limited came and went in a few years. Victoria's Secret is still here but

many hate that store -- some because of its sexy windows! It's reallty tacky.

We used to have a great appliance/electronics situation -- air conditioning ...

most of the stuff you need, but the owner retired and now we have none of that stuff!

One of the big sneaker places came in and everyone hated them and they also left in

less than two years. Blue Mercury/? just left after a short while.

Penera's has been around maybe close to 10 years now? Popular with young mothers

with kids. Two old drug stores are still with us -- plus Drug Fair.

Many of the buildings were redone according to "Downtown or Mainstreet" planning ---

I guess other towns have this? I think we're paying them close to half a million a year???

Well, holes are opening up again with vacant space. The apartments were redone to become

"luxury" and many new condominiums built -- all empty!!!

[librechik]

10. we rode the City of New Orleans train through Illinois last year

so many of the cute little towns are shabby and deserted looking--sad

[skooooo]

13. Seen Chattanooga?

Went through there last year. There was a section of it, maybe that had a little money. Malls. But the rest of it - downtown, and the rest of the city was REALLLY ugly and sad.

[devilgrrl]

11. Wal-Mart destroyed small town America.

Fucking destroyed it! :mad:

[Maru Kitteh]

17. It would be nice if that were the only factor. It is not. It's just not that simple.

Wally is only one part of the problem, and as much a symptom as it is a disease.

[Lorien]

21. Yep. My mother just told me that her small hometown of Wadsworth, Ohio

has nosedived since WalMart moved in. It used to be the quintessential Norman Rockwell small American town; small well kept storefronts along the downtown area, a five and dime, the Giant Eagle, and a few bakeries and Amish pantry shops. Now the Giant Eagle barely survives and the rest are gone. Even the gazebo in the park at the center of town is in disrepair because no one goes there anymore. It's unreal. :-(

[Minimus]

12. I live in a dying town - according to Forbes:

I live in Asheboro, NC:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/08/towns-ten-economy-forbeslife-cx_mw_1209dying_slide_8.html?thisSpeed=3000



America's Fastest-Dying Towns
Ten spots where jobs are vanishing, incomes are dropping and poverty levels are rising.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/08/towns-ten-economy-forbeslife-cx_mw_1209dying.html

> While major cities' tales of woe are well known, there are plenty of small towns across America where the economy has been in sharp decline since 2000. To find them, Forbes.com used data released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau

> Incomes have dropped in all the places on the list since 2000. Even before adjusting for inflation, workers in places like Asheboro, N.C., or Spanish Lake, Mo., saw median incomes decline over the last seven years. In the former, this is a result of job losses in the manufacturing and heavy industry sectors; in the latter, an inability to attract highly skilled workers has hampered annual salaries.




Depressing Stuff!!

[Maru Kitteh]

14. Lexington, Nebraska. Meat-packing hell on earth, featured in Fast Food Nation.

I didn't grow up there, but I'm old enough to remember what it was like before the IBP animal-slaughtering plant came to town, promising loudly and repeatedly that the jobs would go to the local residents and surrounding community. Traditionally, these were good paying jobs but IBP came to Lexington Nebraska with an agenda - to subjugate a town that had the natural (and unnatural) resources it needed, but not the financial means or will to stand up to it's every demand.

IBP wasted no time at all lowering the wages so far below what any reasonable person might expect in way of compensation for spending 8 hours standing in several inches of blood and entrails, that the only people that could be found to do the work were the desperate immigrants, legal and not, that they advertised to in Central and Southern Mexico and the Central American countries.

Now these poor souls live stacked up like cord-wood in rotted out trailers not fit to humanely house animals. Increased crime and drug addiction, a natural outcome of such deplorable and depressing conditions are now woven into the fabric of the town.

In the days before the IBP parasites burrowed under the skin of Lexington, then a town of only 7000, the lead story in the newspaper was likely to be about a high-school student who won a scholarship, new flower-boxes on Main Street or some similar innocuous detail of very quiet small-town life. One year later, the totally unprepared Lexington police force witnessed the highest per-capita crime rate in the entire state of Nebraska. Mom and Pop stores that once left their goods on the sidewalk all night now sport bars on the windows, or they've left altogether, replaced by the nastiest Wal*Mart on earth, directly across from the gates of the meat plant. I remember in "Fast Food Nation" one gentleman remarking that the town of Lexington now had exactly three odors thanks to the 24-hour-a-day smokestacks rendering waste and the urine/fecal/god-knows-what waste lagoons. He described them thusly: "burning hair and blood, that greasy smell, and the odor of rotten eggs."

In 2001, Tyson "Foods" bought out IBP.

IBP preyed on the town and rotted it from the inside out and when the town has dared to make threats against it's only real provider IBP has done what most abusers do, laughed in their face and continued doing whatever they want. IBP/Tyson preys upon the immigrant workers it ships in to the town, forcing them to work off the clock, working their bodies until they are broken, all the while dangling the threat of deportation. IBP/Tyson uses the financial resources of the state of Nebraska and the federal government to provide social services to it's employees and whole scads of translators and tutors in the public and educational systems. Think of it as a benefit package that IBP lays on the taxpayers, instead of their own bottom line, because I can assure you, knowing people on the inside of management as I do, that's exactly how IBP/Tyson thinks of it.

[exboyfil]

18. We had a similar experience with IPB to your town

but we are fortunate, at least for now, to have a University and the large presence of a S&P 500 manufacturer so the damage was not as deep or as great.

Your story is why I am against open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens (undocumented workers). My contention is that, as long as cheap labor is available, we will continue to see the wages/benefits/treatment of U.S. workers deteriorate. Low skilled immigration is just one aspect of the downward force on wages. Others are the H1-B and L-1 Visas, the explosion of technology (phone service/internet service), and a total surrender in any sort of reciprocity in trade agreements.

We need much tougher laws/enforcement of laws on organizations and individuals that employ undocumented workers. I think sponsored Visas should come with a large price tag (even more than Bernie Sanders recommendation of $5,000 - lets make it $50,000). As a society we need to get real crappy when dealing with foreign call centers. I would like to force companies to actually start marketing that their call centers have stayed in the U.S. - would you be willing to pay 10% more etc. Finally, on trade agreements we have a perfect opportunity with the recession to remake the trade landscape when the economy comes back. I think we need to address it country by country in a quiet way behind closed doors.

As a society we are going to have to be willing to pay more for our "stuff".

[skooooo]

25. I am so glad ..

..to live in a college town. Life is more stable. The highs aren't that high, and the lows aren't as low.

[Hannah Bell]

16. Same with my once highly unionized, well-paid mill town.

It used to be a good place to raise kids.

Now it's dope central.

[Two Americas]

19. I am from Detroit

You have no idea.

Grief - that is the feeling.

[tkmorris]

20. Yep

I never really understood the phrase "you can't go home again" until I actually TRIED it. You can't. The places I grew up in don't exist anymore. The trees I climbed have been cut down. The baseball field upon which I learned to play, home of so many fond memories, including that 3-2 bases loaded pitch that I smacked over the center fielders head is now a parking lot. The woods we used to go hang out in at night, building a campfire and just enjoying our friends, are now apartments. The stump next to which I buried that Half Eagle gold coin is long gone according to Google maps. Seems to be an exit ramp there now. The house I lived in from age 6-10, the one with the acres of fields we farmed for a share of the crop, the one with the outhouse and wood stove for heat, still exists but is rotting away now. Apparently the big oak tree in the front yard fell on it some time ago and no one cared enough to remove it.

I feel old. It sucks Skooooo but you aren't alone.

:hug:

[Art_from_Ark]

22. Sounds like my home town

It's gone from a cozy community ('60s and earlier) to a trashed-out transient magnet today.

[lame54]

27. Is there a Walmart there?