Mood: nostalgic

Fog toys with vision, blurring boundaries, imposing a chilly sense on Ashlandia, where the autumn foliage is above average. Rain dashes down off and on, on and off, against a totally pale overhead that lacks sunshine and blue sky. Temperature of 55 F caps the moment. Will go up into the upper fifties, but that’s little inducement for many, so traffic is light, especially the foot traffic. The wet sidewalks are empty.

Coffee shop has light traffic, too. Me, and two college students across the room, are the only customers at the tables. I’m assuming they’re college students, based on looks of age, style, the paperwork spead on the table between them, and the earnestness with which they engage the paperwork and one another while scribbling. They could be activists, entrepreneurs, partners planning a party or going over the household budget. Maybe they’re inventors pursuing some world shaking new device. Perhaps I’m being too blase about who those two are and their potential.

For the record, today is Thursday, November 2, 2023. Many coffee shop employees are wearing holiday-themed clothing, and it’s not turkey and Pilgrims.

Another local business has shut down this week. Happens several times a year but it still causes some pensiveness. This business has been functioning for a few years, a restaurant which I never tried because their menu didn’t appeal to me. Several business locations have been empty for years, and now we wonder, what use to be there? I know that some were built after I moved here in 2005 and have never been occupied. Success and failure has a thin edge in a small town, and we, at about 20K, are a small town.

Wind, leaves, and rain are a perfect storm for my thoughts. Feeling it, The Neurons dump “My Hometown” by Bruce Springsteen into the morning mental music stream (Trademark in limbo). It’s from his Born in the USA album, circa 1984. “My Hometown” isn’t a happy song, but reflective and introspective about a particular era of existence which we’re still experiencing in many places.

In ’65 tension was running high
At my high school
There was a lot of fights
Between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night
In the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come
To my hometown
To my hometown
To my hometown
To my hometown

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows
And vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody
Wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill
Across the railroad tracks
Foreman says, “These jobs are going, boys
And they ain’t coming back
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown”

h/t to SongMeanings.com

In those verses, we’re hearing about at the struggles and coping of racism and integration during the 1960s, and the shifting economy that began as regional factories shut down, with corporations growing by buying smaller businesses. Consolidation took place and those small companies and stores which wouldn’t or didn’t sell out, were often crushed by the mega corporations like Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and Starbucks moving in, praised now for bringing employment opportunites into areas. Meanwhile, manufacturing shifted to overseas locations in quests to lower costs and improve profits.

I was part of some of that movement at IBM, a tiny player as we shifted activites out of the US. Lower costs might mean greater sales and higher profits, which might trickle down to better wages and bonuses for us in the gooey working middle. We employees were caught in the equation, trying to improve our own lives and help our friends, families, and communities while despising what was being done. Sickening. I was so happy when I finally reached a point where I could leave that existence.

Yet, paradoxically, I miss some co-workers and the chats we had. I also miss the challenges presented by the shifts and finding solutions. Though morally apalling in many ways, it was mentally and intellectually challenging, and so satisfying when resolutions were found and projects were completed.

But in my view of my hometown, it was just a neighbood in Pittsburgh’s suburbs. This was where I grew up. Wilkingsbugh, East Hills, Plum, Penn Hills, Monroeville. Many small cities downtown were already dark and deserted, buildings stumbling into naked supports, and piles of thick glass and red brick. I was part of a generation taking our business to shopping centers and malls. Now many of those malls and shopping centers are also shutting down, dark, or gone, as our business turns to the net.

Sometimes in the past, across all that was happening, slivers of hope that something better would emerge would rise and encourage me and those like me that someday all of this could change. Rights were spreading, along with ideas about buying locally and sustainability. Now the MAGA cancer spreads across the states, and is gaining strength around the world. These are not the type of people or governments which will result in Star Trek and exploring strange new worlds. They seem likely to build and use Death Stars.

You know, the irony of this, I suppose, is that someday those other two customers might come by and remember, that’s where that coffee shop. Remember it, and that rainy day that we sat in there, brainstorming and working together? Then they’ll go on from the spot where the coffee shop used to stand, where I type now, remembering the past. So it is and will be, changing to the regret of some, the delight of others, and the indifference of more.

Here’s the video. Stay positive — hah, like I am, right? — be strong, and keep leaning forward. Change will come; we just don’t know what it’ll look like. Despite my pessimism now, we have made many advances, and probably will again.

Cheers