The "Big Town" In Small Town Life

My eldercare yesterday was for my mother-in-law, who’s 88 and former German farmer. She, like my dad, is a force of nature and seemingly unstoppable. She had a curable cancer around 4 years ago, was cured, and has occasional follow-ups with her oncologist. She loves going to these appointments, because the nurses and her doctor spend time telling her how healthy and strong she is for her age. She beat cancer, she’s not scared of it coming back, and you’re damn right she’s looking good, is her attitude.

This trip was a two-hour drive, which is the time it takes to drive to one of the nearest “big towns”. This is a town with an airport and specialty medical care. It also has big-box retail and a few good places to eat. When I was a kid, our small town was coming to the end of its area role as the “big town” where people would go to shop and get medical care. Now, people come here for primary medical care and to shop for groceries and farm/ranch supplies. Anything more complex is a long drive.

One of the small town tropes is that WalMart arrived and killed all the small businesses. In my travels, I see that in a lot of towns, especially in Texas. What’s happened here on the plains is different: it’s a slow death spiral where the gradual loss of services in the town push residents to make the trip to the “big town” to stock up. Our small town was never big enough to support a WalMart. We had a number of different “mid box” (term I made up) retailers who occupied a relatively large building on the edge of town. The last one was Shopko. The smarter retailers in town didn’t mind that store, because it brought customers to town. It’s closed now, and we have a couple of dollar stores, which are a symptom of decline, as far as I’m concerned.

I don’t know if there’s a political angle here, other than the overall decline of rural America that makes it open to Fox News pinning blame on immigrants or brown people or whomever is the villain du jour. My aunt has a 1940’s era road map of North Dakota hanging on her wall. It looks like an intricate spiderweb, with roads connecting hundreds of little towns. Those towns are mostly dead now, and if the roads still exist, they’re not important enough to take up space on a map. A modern road map has vast empty areas where there were once thriving little communities. Modern agricultural equipment, and more reliable cars, brought us to our current state: far fewer people are needed to farm or ranch, and we can drive hundreds of miles in comfort, fast.

As far as I’m concerned, this movie is a documentary: