O Little Towns of America
Farming is a dying profession in the United States / Photo in Alamosa, Colorado, by Deborah Lynch, June 2011
I can't keep up the pace. Seven essays a week was too ambitious. The plan started as a news poem a day, but morphed into essays and a blog. As I leave for a weekend trip to my nephew's wedding near Seven Springs Ski Resort in Western Pennsylvania, I've decided to take my weekends mostly off from blogging. I'll be back.When my daughter moved to Vermont for a job in the southeastern town of Springfield, her future employer warned her that Vermont rents and living expenses were pretty high to make sure she still wanted the job. The employer was right, but figuring out why it costs so much to live in that area remains a bit of a mystery. Springfield, once the tech hub for Vermont, was home to several machine-tool manufacturers and the white collar executives and engineers that went with them. The small city had the highest per capita income in the state. That was in 1980. Most of the industry was gone by 2002. Thirty-six years later, Springfield’s household income is $10,000 below the Vermont median. Yet, it still isn’t cheap to live there.My daughter drove around Springfield and decided she was afraid to live there because of the number of indigent people she saw on the streets. The population in the 2010 census was 9,078 and 9.8 percent of the population was below the poverty line. Springfield is now known for drug dealers and heroin. My daughter chose to live about 15 miles west in the ski town of Ludlow. Outside of ski season, the population there is just 795. It is more expensive than Springfield, but my daughter found a roommate on Craigslist to help make up the difference. While industry isn’t evident in Ludlow either, the ski resort brings travelers and business year-round to the many restaurants and shops. The median resident age in Ludlow is 48.3 years. No wonder my daughter finds it difficult to meet friends.Her experience in rural Vermont is not an anomaly. Rural America is becoming even more rural in terms of population. Young people flee for the new tech centers where they can find jobs. In Vermont, young people and outsiders are attracted north to Burlington’s growing tech sector and proximity to the best of the outdoors and everything the region offers.Every state has destinations, tourist attractions, industry, and opportunity that bring jobs and newcomers to the area. Every state also has regions that industry deserted or geological or geographic issues destroyed. The tiny towns near the dying hubs are losing their young people and failing to attract new residents, but the aging people can’t afford to leave – selling their homes wouldn’t bring enough cash to move elsewhere.Rural America is getting gray. According to a June 2 article in The Atlantic, the problem is even more prevalent in the small towns of the rural west. In Wheeler County, Oregon, which has a population of just 1,300 people in the entire county, the median age rose from 48 to 56 between 2000-2013. Outside of being self-employed, the county offers very few jobs; hence, young people leave to find jobs elsewhere. The latest Census reported that fewer than 19 percent of Americans live in rural communities. Farming, which employed 40 percent of the population in 1900, now employs less than 2 percent. Automation and dying of the family farms have depleted jobs in rural America.
This is rural life! / Outside of Middleburg, PA, 2013
I grew up in Mifflinburg, a tiny town in central Pennsylvania with a reported population of 3,531 in 2014. It is farmland, most of which is still farmed today by Old Order Mennonite families. The average age there is 40, but still many young people leave for opportunities in other communities. Like Ludlow, Mifflinburg is a quiet hamlet with one main road through town (a state highway). It’s quiet, safe, and clean.Growing up in rural America means freedom – freedom to ride bicycle all over town, to go a short distance and be in the forests, and to stay out all night running around town with friends and sleeping on the porch or in a tent in the backyard. It represents innocence. It’s a great place to be a kid.
You can't pick these in the city! / Outside of Middleburg, PA 2013
It’s not, however, a great place to be a young working professional. Outside of a bar or two, not many places exist to meet the few other young people in town. Rural America can be isolating for outsiders.We’re living in the 21st Century when bigger towns and cities like Burlington and Pittsburgh are drawing people back home with high-tech jobs and gentrified neighborhoods that were once homes to factories and mills. Why can’t rural America steal the ideas. They need to pull people back with lower rents, promote their outdoors, and invite new era industry to town. Some of these dying small towns show remnants of past glory – leaded glass windows in big, older homes, ornate street lamps, high-spired churches that once had congregations to support the upkeep of the formerly grand buildings. These forgotten little towns are our history. We need to find ways to bring them back, to save that part of our idyllic past where fireflies light up the streets and innocence blooms. Works Consulted Kardasian, Kirk. “The Rise and Fall of Springfield, Vermont’s First ‘Tech Hub.’ ” Seven Days. Da Capo Publishing Inc. 21 Oct. 2015. Web. 3 June 2016.“Ludlow, Vt.” City-Data.com. Onboard Informatics. 2016. Web. 3 June 2016.“Mifflinburg, Pa.” City-Data.com. Onboard Informatics. 2016. Web. 3 June 2016.Semuels, Alana. “The Graying of Rural America: As Young People Increasingly Move to Cities, What Happens to the People and Places They Leave Behind?” The Atlantic. The Atlantic Monthly Group. 2 June 2016. Web. 3 June 2016.“Springfield, VT.” City-Data.com. Onboard Informatics. 2016. Web. 3 June 2016.