The Echo of a Memory
Fiction by Jim Sullivan
| If you've read "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, then you might feel
the cold wind of the Ghost of Fiction Past blowing across your back as
you read this article.
— editor
|
|
 I
just got back from driving our town drunk to the big city, where he'll
live from now on. There isn't anything left in Greenbush for him
to drink. The little town of Greenbush is about to close forever.
In
it's heyday, Greenbush had a bustling freight yard. Trains used to
stop here every day but they ceased doing that in the early 1950s.
Then, in the mid 1960s, the railroad closed altogether. The die was
cast irrevocably, shortly after that, when the new interstate highway bypassed
the town. Some folks, trying to sound optimistic, said that they
were glad that all of that traffic wouldn't be clogging the streets of
Greenbush. The retail store people were less hopeful. They
knew that our town had originally been founded upon commerce. We
were on a navigable waterway, the Silver River. However, our water
highway hadn't been used for many years. The railroad was gone.
The highway had bypassed us. The retail people knew in their hearts
that the writing was on the wall.
At
one time, Greenbush had employed three policemen and six town workers.
Those workers picked up the garbage, cut the town lawns, maintained the
park in the town square, removed snow from the roads in the winter, and
generally kept the town clean and its services functioning. During
the last three years, as the financial situation got tougher and tougher,
the town laid off most of those employees, retaining only one policeman
and two workers. There simply wasn't enough revenue to pay for more
than that.
Greenbush
had been gasping for years. That it lasted as long as it did was
a miracle. Most of the stores and small factories that had struggled
for decades to serve Greenbush had closed their doors during the years
after the interstate highway had bypassed us. The two remaining holdouts
recently began the process of relocating to Mexico. None of their
former employees will be going along. Some of the younger ones found
minimum wage jobs in the big city. For a while, they commuted to
Greenbush but the cost of commuting encouraged them to move to the big
city, where their jobs are.
Historically,
the town had also been a farm service center. Farmers within a ten-mile
radius had come to Greenbush to store their grain in the town silo and
to purchase their feed, seed, fertilizer, and equipment. They'd also
come to town to buy groceries, to get shoes fixed, to get haircuts, to
see a doctor, to get advice from a lawyer, to have their teeth cleaned,
and to do all of the other things that lend virtue and relevance to a small
town like Greenbush.
During
those years of decline, when small factories and businesses were leaving,
many of the farmers went bankrupt, one by one. They weren't able
to pass their farms on to their children. The children didn't become
farmers. Instead, they moved away. The bankrupt farmers had
to sell their farms, mostly to agrobiz corporations. When the bankrupt
farmers went to the big city looking for jobs, they couldn't find any.
They were too old, too unskilled, or too uneducated in the ways of the
modern world. The lucky ones found homes with relatives in the big
city. The professional people, such as the doctors, the dentists,
and the lawyers, had vacated Greenbush years earlier. The big city
had offered them a steadier clientele, people who weren't on the verge
of moving somewhere else.
Not
surprisingly, our school had to merge with the school in the little town
down the road. However, with all of the people moving out,
Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution.
I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire.
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| September 2009 |
Frontiersman, c/o
4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507 |
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