onpoint
Active member
I have pondered this thought because I have drove though the town where my children went to school all their young life but still 13 years a piece. In the last few years, the grocery store has closed, the drug store has closed. the Napa auto parts store has closed. The Ski-doo dealer has closed, the Arctic Cat dealer has closed, the Polaris dealer has closed. the video store has closed. They are contemplating closing the school(which was expanded not so many years ago. The homec Dpt which was all brand new with multiple new stoves/oven's, sewing machines, Etc. never opened and has sat idle since it was finished, as there was no funding to afford a teacher. My neighbors are all in their 70's and 80's. We have lost several just this summer. Scary to say the least. What will happen to our rural communities and their people?
http://www.mn2020.org/issues-that-matter/views/tuesday-talk-why-are-small-towns-dying
This is a quote from a poster on this very subject.
I grew up in rural America 50 years ago and saw the technology and economic changes that unraveled the lifestyle of post WWII rural life. Bigger machinery required fewer workers. Debt became required to afford the machinery as each year the pressure was on to expand, buy out the neighbors, have more land to pay for the machinery.
Small towns lost their purpose with the changing economic reality. Those changes made public education the key to college and a job in the city. This has been a 60 or more year trend which continues.
I remember a definition from sociology I learned long ago. “A town or city is a geographical expression of an economic reality.” Until the economic reality changes to draw people out to rural areas of the state, there will be little opportunity to grow communities.
Meanwhile, I sit nostalgic with memories of life on the farm as a child 60 years ago as I live in a condo, owning 1/4 of a quad housing structure. I live in a formerly small town transformed into an outer ring suburb because my car and the public roads take me to work in Minneapolis where there still is a job. I get a piece of paper every two weeks with numbers on it that says it is money. I never really see the money, only the promise that is exists.
That’s all I have in this world: A small place to live, a car and numbers in an electronic bank account. I own no land on which to grow food like I once helped provide, there is no place to grow a garden. I can drive on public roads to visit other people’s businesses and use the magic card I have from the bank to buy food I eat or clothes to wear. I have another account with numbers in it that says I have some money to use when I quit working. But those numbers are very changeable lately, and much smaller than I need as I imagine life retired. So this is the life I got by getting an education and leaving the farm.
When I return to the place of my youth, change has wiped away the farmstead. The rural neighborhood where I lived is vacant of small farms and people. My memories are all that remain. And those who still live around in the neighboring small town seem sad to me. And I’m sad too.
What have we all become? Are we really leaving the world better than we found it? And what future do our grand children have in this fickle world of economic promises unkept in the land of empty shells of buildings reminding us of once vital rural geographical expressions now in economic and social decline?
Rural kids will keep on leaving unless there is an economic reason to keep them there. I hope there is. Somebody has to grow food, milk cows, raise chicken, turkeys and hogs. And maybe some day a person can do that while getting that piece of paper with a number on it that says there’s enough money in the bank.
It’s amazing how the numbers on electronic bank statements are more important than the corn in the field and the cows in the barn. I wonder who makes those numbers up?
http://www.mn2020.org/issues-that-matter/views/tuesday-talk-why-are-small-towns-dying
This is a quote from a poster on this very subject.
I grew up in rural America 50 years ago and saw the technology and economic changes that unraveled the lifestyle of post WWII rural life. Bigger machinery required fewer workers. Debt became required to afford the machinery as each year the pressure was on to expand, buy out the neighbors, have more land to pay for the machinery.
Small towns lost their purpose with the changing economic reality. Those changes made public education the key to college and a job in the city. This has been a 60 or more year trend which continues.
I remember a definition from sociology I learned long ago. “A town or city is a geographical expression of an economic reality.” Until the economic reality changes to draw people out to rural areas of the state, there will be little opportunity to grow communities.
Meanwhile, I sit nostalgic with memories of life on the farm as a child 60 years ago as I live in a condo, owning 1/4 of a quad housing structure. I live in a formerly small town transformed into an outer ring suburb because my car and the public roads take me to work in Minneapolis where there still is a job. I get a piece of paper every two weeks with numbers on it that says it is money. I never really see the money, only the promise that is exists.
That’s all I have in this world: A small place to live, a car and numbers in an electronic bank account. I own no land on which to grow food like I once helped provide, there is no place to grow a garden. I can drive on public roads to visit other people’s businesses and use the magic card I have from the bank to buy food I eat or clothes to wear. I have another account with numbers in it that says I have some money to use when I quit working. But those numbers are very changeable lately, and much smaller than I need as I imagine life retired. So this is the life I got by getting an education and leaving the farm.
When I return to the place of my youth, change has wiped away the farmstead. The rural neighborhood where I lived is vacant of small farms and people. My memories are all that remain. And those who still live around in the neighboring small town seem sad to me. And I’m sad too.
What have we all become? Are we really leaving the world better than we found it? And what future do our grand children have in this fickle world of economic promises unkept in the land of empty shells of buildings reminding us of once vital rural geographical expressions now in economic and social decline?
Rural kids will keep on leaving unless there is an economic reason to keep them there. I hope there is. Somebody has to grow food, milk cows, raise chicken, turkeys and hogs. And maybe some day a person can do that while getting that piece of paper with a number on it that says there’s enough money in the bank.
It’s amazing how the numbers on electronic bank statements are more important than the corn in the field and the cows in the barn. I wonder who makes those numbers up?
