When our kids were little we lived in an old New England mill town. The textile mill, known as “The Shop” was a huge brick structure in the middle of town, with tall windows and smoke curling from gigantic chimneys.
The mill building was situated on the river and water power ran the huge mill machines. Dotting the hillsides around the mill were the houses that the company built for the employees. The company store, the library, the community center. In good weather through the open windows, you could hear the big textile machines humming as you drove by. The company was the town and the town was the company.
Company towns…it was a great idea back then, back when there were great fortunes to be made in unregulated industry. Back when the company supported you and your family and everyone assumed that you had a job til retirement. And then, a gold watch represented your loyalty to the company and the company’s loyalty to you.
By the time we left the little town the mill operation was gone, the river polluted. The textile industry had morphed into selling synthetic imported clothing from suburban strip malls, the latest fads in disposable fashion. The original stately building that once housed one family’s dream, rented piecemeal to small businesses.
In the 70’s and 80’s, the mill was starting to look dilapidated. Here and there in windows and on outside walls, plastic neon signs flashed the names of high-tech start-ups hoping to cash in on newly accessible technologies. Inside, the huge pulsating machines replaced by small specialty shops, owners with high hopes for their nail salons, movie rental stores, auto parts, pizza joints. But soon the old building was gone, the victim of progress.
In the early 21st Century, every New England mill town looks the same as every other. The ubiquitous fast food businesses and prescription drug stores dot the corners. The establishments that proffer the fake food and addictive drugs that are killing and crippling us at an early age are on every corner in every town. The kids have grown and moved on, and we are all in danger of being sucked into that vacuum that is the American Dream. How did we miss that gorilla?
Cheers,
Gus
