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The Second Tier
The area where I live was once rural ranch land, rapidly turning into small residential properties. Most are six or so acres and larger, and the property prices have skyrocketed in recent years. So instead of land-rich, cash-poor ranching families, most area residents are people with money fleeing the suburbs.
Since it’s unincorporated land, businesses are starting to build on properties adjacent to nearby the I-10. (That’s the 10 to all the California transplants). The most recent arrival is a Dollar General and some area residents are furious. I don’t really get it – the store is nice and clean and the staff friendly and polite. It’s a three-mile drive instead of the previous 10-mile drive to town.
When we moved here (27 years ago), we knew growth would come our way. Now that we are in our 60s, we are happy that there are now ERs in town with a full hospital on the way. But that Dollar General sure makes people crazy.
There is a whole set of “second tier” stores like Big Lots and Dollar General that provide goods to people that seem to trigger anger in some folks. I’ll do my part to keep them profitable.
Published in General
I’m afraid they missed that by 30 – 40 years. I live in Comal County TX., between San Antonio and Austin, and in the last 10 years we have became the new Metroplex. It’s anything buy small town now.
The hatred of these stores is distinctly classist.
I don’t shop dollar stores often, but when I do I always wonder why I don’t shop there more often. Especially for cards and gift wrap.
Of the Purveyors of Single Bill Merchandise, my preferred is Dollar Tree.
Kendall County joined the population explosion right around the time we got here. When we moved here you could park on Main Street in Boerne and walk to the auto parts store, the hardware store, and the Greyhound station. All those buildings are various boutique shops now.
The most bitter complainers on social media seem to be the people who just got here.
I remember driving down I-35 in 1969 to attend OTC at Lackland’s Medina Base. (One of the cool things about going to officer training school was that I could drive there and have my car on base. I could spend the weekends in motels.)
Anyway, I-35 between Austin and San Antonio was San Marcos, New Braunfels and otherwise mostly open pastureland until you got almost to Loop 410.
Looks slightly different now.
Ms. Ronin and I use to go to Beorne a lot when we first moved to SA, we almost bought property there in 1991, but it was just too much of a drive back to San Antonio for us then. We would make it a point to eat breakfast at Mague’s Café. We have the same problem on this side of 281 as well with the complainers.
Sounds like the expression “an evil developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods; a noble environmentalist is someone who already has a house in the woods.”
Medina Annex turned into a weed patch after OTS moved to Maxwell. When I was stationed at Kelly I use to really like eating at the OTS Mess hall, one of the better chow halls.
I haven’t been on the western part of Loop 410 in many years, but next time I’m there, I’ll go there to see for myself. The food was pretty good.
When I graduated I was assigned to USAFSS on Kelly AFB, so my PCS check for moving costs to my permanent station was a couple of dollars.
Boerne has a good public library. I don’t know if it has anything to do with recent population growth. The reference librarians who help with local history and genealogy questions were very helpful to me, anyway, in tracking down a character from Michigan history.
Just don’t ask them about feminism, or climate, or…