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Saving The Spiritual Currency in Small Towns
My hometown — the place where I was born and raised — is thriving. When I was a kid, Bozeman, Montana, had a population of about twelve thousand residents, plus six thousand students attending Montana State University.
Over the past forty years, Bozeman has grown to 40,000 people, largely because high-tech businesses have found a home there. Montana State University is the state’s science and engineering school, so the technology companies have a ready source of well-trained nerdy types to fill the jobs. Many out-of-state techies have relocated to Bozeman, too, not just for the well-paid jobs, but because the surroundings are so breathtakingly beautiful. Bozeman is nestled between the majestic Bridger and Hyalite Mountains. The headwaters of the Missouri River, formed by three of the country’s best trout streams, The Madison, The Jefferson, and The Gallatin rivers, lie just 30 miles to the west. Yellowstone Park is 100 miles away as the highway flies (drivers do fly down Montana highways). In many ways, Bozeman is the perfect place to live, although the winters can be dreadful. The point is, my hometown is in great shape.
When I was fifteen, my family relocated to the supposedly more urbane Great Falls, Montana, which at the time had a population of about 60,000, plus several thousand stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, one of the bases responsible for the nation’s ICBM arsenal. When I say urbane, I am speaking in an arch tone. Urbane and Montana don’t work and play well together. Still, when I moved to Great Falls, I saw it as a step up the sophistication and excitement ladder. It wasn’t much, but at fifteen, I thought, “Cool.”
Today, Great Falls is in an economic funk: The air force base has been trimmed down to next to nothing, and the state’s principle power company, which once had a huge presence in Great Falls, has all but completely pulled out, even though seven very large and powerful hydroelectric dams keep pumping out megawatts. Luckily, I missed the downturn. After high school, I set my sights on the city lights along the West Coast.
About that same time, my parents and three of my siblings moved to little Lewistown, Montana, population roughly 8,000. Pop bought into the local radio station, and mom taught English at Fergus High School (I know, she has earned a high place in Heaven). Thankfully mom is still with us today, so now when I visit home I am talking about Lewistown.
Lewistown is a cowtown. I don’t say that as an insult but as a fact. The primary economic engine is cattle ranching, mostly open range, by which I mean that fences are placed randomly and with little regard for actual property lines. The area terrain is rough, to say the least, and surveys are, at best, 75 percent reliable. The various land-use arrangements have worked out pretty well over the years. Without some give and take, it would have been impossible to figure out who had what rights in what land. There’s a fair amount of farming, too. Lewistown was never an economic titan, but between agriculture and small business, things went along swimmingly.
That was then. Now things in Lewistown are not good. The sad fact is that Lewistown is dying, and there’s little anyone can do to resuscitate the community. Most young people can’t wait to cut out for the glitz and glamor of larger towns or the big city. Staying put is not an option for most high school graduates. There’s precious little work except for service jobs at low, low wages. There are young people who would like to stay or move back after college, but their hopes are largely futile unless they’re willing to work for next to nothing.
When I last visited mom — about two months ago — I saw a downtown with just about every storefront boarded up. There are a thousand tumbling tumbleweeds for every paying customer. Folks now sign in to Amazon, or motor to Great Falls or Billings, to do their shopping. The only businesses that still prosper are the old bars: The Mint, The Glacier, the Montana Tavern. The town’s spirit is in the deep, dark, dumps. The situation will likely never improve.
Which prompts the question: Why do so many of the old guard stay? Maybe they should just let the town die. Or so suggests Kevin Williamson in a recent piece at National Review:
My own experience in Appalachia and the South Bronx suggests that the best thing that people trapped in poverty in these undercapitalized and dysfunctional communities could do is — move. Get the hell out of Dodge, or Eastern Kentucky, or the Bronx.
I don’t want to over-read Mr. Williamson’s argument. I don’t think he’s an economic Darwinist, and he is surely correct to say that one solution to severe rural poverty is the higher wages of larger communities.
But the missing nuance brings me up short. Surely there are other issues to be addressed than mere economic interest. Small towns — even those in the economic doldrums — are vastly more than the jobs available. I don’t want to over-romanticize; Lewistown has had its share of scandals (including the first widely-publicized school shooting), but rural communities offer something I’ve rarely seen in the metropolis: a consistent ethos of charity. Except for inveterate recluses, no one in Lewistown is left completely alone. This is worth preserving, even when economic hard times run amok.
I live in Billings, Montana’s largest town (population about 130,000). Billings is a small town with a big-city chip on its shoulder. If I had a heart attack while out on my afternoon stroll, I might lie there for hours until someone looked out the window and — if they didn’t have anything better to do — called an ambulance. In Lewistown, folks gather ’round when a neighbor has a hangnail.
Okay. I’m overstating my case. The point is that small towns preserve the humane in day-to-day life, something of profound importance in a world of isolated individuals rooting around for more and more stuff while pursuing the modern go-go-go of success, often with complete disregard for the needs and sufferings and joys of their neighbors.
Responding to Williamson, Gracy Olmstead of The American Conservative makes the salient point:
Yet this mobility can often take a long-term toll on family and community life—while staying “close to home” can offer a safety net, support group, and a community. Small-town living is less glamorous, but it does offer a good deal of security, comfort, and community.
Another way of saying this is that small towns, even those falling off the economic radar screen, fill a deep longing of the human heart for a sense of place and a form of extended family, things often lost in a world of constant upward mobility.
Little Lewistown is filled with people who cherish the simple over the complex, and who thus maintain the virtues that come with squelching the constant urge to make hay while the sun is shining. They are ambitious, but in the pursuit of the modest desire to live quiet lives of service and simply decency. Sure, they can be parochial, sometimes backward. But at bottom, they serve as a counterforce to the relentless drive to live life solely in the pursuit of prosperity.
Small town life is the spiritual equivalent of a quiet mind that’s free to live in the permanent things. Lewistown stands athwart the Amazon corporate lifestyle with its ethic of backstabbing and relentless competition. Like most small towns across the country, Lewistown shouts, “Stop,” and so reminds us that we need a respite from the rush of ambition pounding in our ears. Small town life can be a refuge from the interpersonal perpetual warfare of relentless competition, a refuge for a heart that longs for rest.
I have no idea how to restore the economic vibrancy Lewistown needs. All the government dollars on the printing press won’t bring back prosperity. But I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that just doing nothing as small town America perishes will mean an incalculable loss to the social and spiritual capital the nation so desperately needs. We need Lewistown every bit as much as Bozeman or New York. There’s no money in it, but there is spiritual currency, and we need small towns to guard the vault.
Published in General
My standard answer as to how to stop all of the centralization and consolidation of the winner-takes-all economy is to maintain a crazy patchwork of state and local regulations. I don’t know if that would save Lewistown or a lot of places I have known and loved. But it would allow some local communities to flourish that will otherwise be eradicated.
By the way, do you ever read the articles on Front Porch Republic? If not, you should.
I occasionally make my way over to FPR. I enjoy Patrick Deneen especially, although I wouldn’t call him a darling of the right. I should push FPR up the list, but I can only read so much at my tender age(-:
Interesting post, Mike. As someone who is at least the third generation in motion to larger cities, I feel the loss. My father spent his early years in small towns near family. But at about fifteen, like you, his father’s job brought them to a larger city. My mother grew up in a decent-sized city (as in bigger than anything Montana has). But her parents had both come from small towns in Alabama. I grew up in a fair-sized city, and live in a much larger city now. I have never lived within a hundred miles of most non-nuclear family members. The only one I had was one grandfather in the same city until he died when I was six. I have never been part of a small town that my family was in, where I would see cousins every day. I know lots of people who did have that, who stayed in the towns and cities where they grew up. But I never knew it.
The happiest family I know is an aunt’s who lives in Rhode Island. Her six kids live within a 25 mile radius of each other. Each of the kids has an independent streak. One’s a nuclear engineer, another a lobster boat captain. But they see home in close proximity and have always been available in times of crisis and in times of celebration. A rare case.
Wellllll….
I suppose I could write quite a lot on the topic. My wife and I almost moved back, several years ago. I’ve got some personal reasons for never managing to pull the trigger. I’d have been trying to make it in a solo practice with little relevant experience, and that’s where Lewistown shoots itself in the foot. I could tell stories about the small town politics, but it stems from two things, I think. There are not enough people to simply faction off (when I was a kid, for instance, you had Buttrey’s and IGA, but there were at least two options… Now it’s Albertson’s or nothing) and leave well enough alone. Second, technology means that people don’t need each other as much. I’m not sure what that means in the long run, though.
We will be back in Lewistown this Christmas. We’ll head up to a friend’s house up on the divide (near your mom’s place, or former place?) and fire off some guns at clay pidgeons and tannerite. And we’ll probably hit up the Tav or the Yogo and have some drinks with old friends.
Interestingly, my closest friends are from Lewistown. I mean, people I’ve spent my life with…
I will say… The people who do good impact you for life. The people who do bad impact you for life. I’ve noticed that bonds run deep in my little town, but that hurt runs just as deep. For what it’s worth.
Good post.
Family is important. Neighbors are important. A lot can be preserved by ingraining those two values in kids.
My family experience is uncommon for my generation, but I consider it central to who I am and why my life is as together as it is.
Not only do I know and keep in touch with my cousins, but our relationship is more like siblings than like distant relatives. I can rely as much on aunts, uncles, and their cousins as on my own parents for, say, transportation if my car has trouble or advise if I have a problem.
We are devoted to each other. That means we help each other, but also that we want to help each other. We try to like each other… and usually do, because it’s easier to be happy and grateful when everyone’s making an effort. It’s a culture that’s slow to wane and, I imagine, slow to develop.
We regularly adopt neighbors into the family. My family still checks on my deceased grandma’s nextdoor neighbor, an elderly woman. We guarantee a place to rest and eat when countless people travel. We take interest in a lot of people’s lives, helping people avoid loneliness and isolation. When disaster strikes, we can offer prayers and perhaps a lifeline.
It’s possible to carry small town values into big and scattered cities. But holding onto them takes effort, renewal, and resistance of some modern errors.
Right now a Plumas County cruiser is siting right on the street right out side my house. oh they went away. A girl was just in the yard beside my house and the police were in the street and shined a flashlight on me and I had to run. I said “goodnight” This is my hometown. A very small town. I submit that there are decent people in America but they have lost. They were too nice, America is ruled by depraved thugs and the police can’t stop it. They are in the the Obamanation where 1=0=2. We are ruled by malice and oppression. That is another sign that Freedom is lost and it is because the system is corrupt and we are ruled by very careful thugs. A sad but true thing and it is chaos from effort. Chaos is easy, it is the law where is is does not mean is is, the truer meaning of words is racism, it is best called oppression or worse in Quincy CA. I am glad that things are better in Montana.
I love this post. Thank you, Mike.
Setting aside the economic problem, which I don’t know how to solve, I really wish more Republicans would understand that when Americans report to pollsters that the country is on the wrong track, this is the sort of thing many of them mean. And “get out of Dodge!” or “disparities in wealth are good for the economy” will only increase their impression that our party is out of touch with them and their values.
Young people have always wanted the city, more stimulation, more jobs, more same aged people of the opposite sex, in general a richer life. Small towns die, that’s what they do unless they offer some economic/recreational reason to live there. Any skiing nearby, how far from the great trout rivers, elk hunting etc.? if not, then it’s over. In the internet age, it seems that if a place offers high quality outdoor life, modest taxes, an incentive or two, folks will start businesses or retire there. If not then grandma should move near the kids. Even the biggest cities in Montana are small enough to offer community.
Being a Pittsburgher for fifty years ,I know dying towns. The county that Pgh is located in is made up of some 130 towns and municipalities. It is about 750 sq miles . If it was round which it is not. It would have a diameter of about 45 miles and a population of about 1.2 million people. Pittsburgh once had a population of nearly 800 thousand but now it is just over 300 thousand. Some of that 500 thousand have just moved to one of those other 129 municipalities but many have dispersed across America. That is why there are so many Steeler fans at away games with the terrible towels . They now live there. Once a Steeler fan always a Steeler fan. Many of the small towns were steel mill towns that are now closed and the towns are worn out and dying. However some are growing and prosperous. One thing that I have observed is that throwing government money at these towns does not help. Over time things seek there own level. In a lot of ways the area is better off than it was before the collapse of the steel industry.
Oh, and then I noticed the picture in the post. I’ll have to submit a few others. One of the most beautiful places in America.
This Summer, my wife and I went around town and revisited sites of our youth (we dated in High School – Fergus High School, incidentally). We took a few pictures in the same locations of our old senior pictures (about 16 years ago), etc… it was a lot of fun.
I wrote a post right around that time, which included some scenes from Lewistown: Arms Outstretched
I live in what would be considered a small town. Granted, a small town bordering on several other small towns and a 30 minute drive to LA. My experiences have been almost … Almost 100% positive.
My brothers and sisters are 35 miles away which forced me to form connections with neighbors. It’s been a wonderful place to raise our kids.
BUT I was recently at the grocery store (very unusual for me ) and ran into an almost neighbor. And I was reminded that small town gossip can be vicious. It’s nice that everyone knows everyone but they seem to know everything about everyone and some can’t wait to share.
I understand why some young people move away – if you’re trying to reinvent yourself it might be a requirement.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Lewistown the largest town for nearly a hundred miles in any direction, the county seat of Fergus County, and intersected by two major highways, U.S. 191 and 87? There are scenic mountains both North and South. Lots of good motorcycle roads nearby? Sounds like paradise to me.
Well, except if you need to work, but in Obama’s America you might be no better off anywhere else.
This is a great topic, and one which highlights the fact that we can’t have it all. Despite the inevitable attempts to pin the deterioration of small towns on the Obama economy, we shouldn’t delude ourselves: continuous resettling is an inevitable by-product of the dynamic economy we all desire.
My small hometown in southern NH used to have real character. It was a strange character, and one I wasn’t always thrilled about as a kid, but one could trace its idiosyncracies back 150 years or more. Then Boston started becoming fabulously wealthy, lots of families decided to move to southern NH with its lower taxes, and suddenly my hometown turned into Northern Massachussetts. Most of its original charm has been lost and I have no desire to return.
But this loss was a by-product of something much more positive: incredible wealth creation driven by innovation. Indeed, Boston itself – now a sanitized but nearly crime-free shopping mall – demonstrates this phenomenon best. If we say we support creative destruction, we have to accept that some of that destruction will inevitably include some of the places we love most.
It’s also possible to over-romanticize the benefits of continuity in small towns.
There are countless small villages in Europe where the same few families have been resident for 400 years or more, and they are some of the most dreadful places on Earth – even if their economies aren’t doing so badly. There are no secrets, grudges get carried down over multiple generations, and people remain in a strange state of suspended animation.
There seems to be an emergent American tradition of leaving one’s hometown at the onset of adulthood, moving around, but trying to find a more or less permanent “new” community in which to raise one’s family. I find that model to be much healthier. The communities are chosen, not imposed, children receive the benefits of continuity, but there is enough regeneration to keep things from becoming too stagnant.
I don’t know what big cities you have been to but many have small and tight communities. Hyde Park in Chicago is basically a small town surrounded by a large world class city, and so in many ways it gets the benefit of both. In fact Chicago is known for its divisions along neighborhoods, which in part result from it fast ethnic diversity, and various racist policies at the beginning of the 20th century. We are after all a very diverse and yet segregated city. So within the mega structure that is Chicago are numerous little interlinked communities. People have to find them and merge into them as new comers.
Simply put the rat race is a state of mind not a function of location. One can live an easy and simple life even in the big city, surrounded by friends and family. Much of the issues of community are exasperated by peoples conceptions of what they think is necessary for success. I think much could be regained in modern society by choosing to prioritize things like family and community over career and earning potential. Economics is ultimately about trade offs. We can’t have everything we want, we can’t be workaholics and devoted to family and friends. We can’t have rural space and big city convenience, something can’t be hand crafted and mass produced.
One question to the author, would not a Democratic redistributionist economic policy serve to bolster and preserve these rural communities?
I don’t think this is “emerging.” I think it is a uniquely American thing.
You’re right. I meant “emergent”, which has a different meaning.
Isn’t that love though just nostalgia, and isn’t nostalgia just a form of delusion, an incomplete view of the past blurred by separation and the haziness of memory.
I think your point about being able to let go of the past and forget it is an important point and in many ways a defining characteristic of American history. We are a nation that is reinventing itself, were people can reinvent themselves, where they go out west, or to the big city to become new people. A dynamic society can not be bound by its past it. I think though as conservatives this irks us greatly since respect for tradition is one of our defining characteristics. Yet, the American tradition is to change, thus to be true Americans places conservatives in a Catch-22. To respect tradition we must be open to altering our way of life.
And yet the search for roots, and belonging, and community I think are deeply ingrained into the human psyche. We are communal animals and we need and desire the praise and attention of other humans like we need air and water. Isolated, people go mad.
I think though that modernity for all the isolation it creates also gives us new opportunities to interact. After all, here we are, an internet community.
I wouldn’t be that pessimistic. There are certainly tangible benefits to being surrounded by people you have known your whole life: enhanced trust, closer mutual understanding, and in the case of having family all in one spot, an efficiency at helping each other out (i.e. babysitting, looking after the old grandmother, etc.).
Plus, moving to a different community always costs effort, effort which is by definition saved by not moving.
I just think the benefits of disruption outweigh those of consistency – not by a mile, but at least by several yards.
I am somewhat harsh on nostalgia. I think that in many cases the cost of moving out weighs the benefit, as seen by all the people who don’t move. I always thought that making moving from destitute regions to be a worthwhile substitute to welfare that subsidizes crumbling communities, but can never repair them.
For over 100 years the demographic trend in America has been people moving out of small towns to bigger towns, and out of small cities into bigger cities. Large areas of rural America have seen constant population decline for a century or more. There are lots of places that used to be small towns but are now just derelicts.
The rise of agri-business and the rise and fall of big manufacturing are a large part of the story, but other contributing factors are open trade policies and the information age.
I am familiar with Chamber of Commerce efforts of a couple of small towns to try to attract employers. A few have had success, others have failed. Many sad stories result.
The general economy has much to do with the overall picture, but whether times are good or bad there is one element that seems constant. When a town is growing, it is easier to continue to grow, and when a town is dying, it is harder to reverse the trend.
My take on the overall situation is that the GOP should ditch tax reductions for families as a platform plank, and focus on tax reductions for small businesses. It would do more for this sort of issue, and would make a better appeal, one that would resonate better with more voters, I think.
Soon all the small towns will be gone as the business that they thrived on are outsourced to other countries that can do it better since they do not have to deal with the US regulations and business environment. Over in India, China, etc. there are probably small towns thriving as the life blood that kept the US towns alive has been transferred to them in the name of progress or free market or globalization but mainly in the name of greed.
Our federal and state governments would prefer that all small towns close so they can be made into parks and nature reserves and the people moved to bigger cities where the populations must lean on government and thus allows the government more control. Thus the death of small towns are assured since it is in the governments best interest to kill them off.
I was under the impression that most of the jobs lost to abroad are manufacturing jobs. Were there really that many rural towns in America with factories 40 years ago? I can think of a few, but I can’t imagine most clothing or auto parts factories in the US were in towns with 5,000 residents or less.
And I have never seen such abject poverty in my life as in the 20 or so small villages I visited in Southern India.
There are certainly many policies which are killing small towns: the EPA, illegal immigration, and regulations which favor large farms over family farms. But I’m not convinced free trade is a major factor.
And above all, organic developments in technology and markets have been killing small towns since time immemorial, and are still probably the major driver of urbanization in the US.
A lot of back office processing stuff went to India as well. All those call centre gags are based on some reality…
I was surprised to discover that Australia, despite being a major agricultural producer, imports a lot of agricultural commodities (garlic from China, oranges from Brazil…) because labour costs mean that they’re cheaper (though not better) than home grown. Tough on the Australian farmers who own orange groves and on the small towns in these areas, unless they find and develop a niche market. (Most towns don’t, a few do.)
Australia is a major agricultural producer, and agriculture forms a significant part of Australia’s exports. It does not form a significant part of its imports. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t imported foods; healthy economies do a fair amount of importing and exporting of the same commodity, transport costs being very low. It does mean that it’s likely not generally purely a matter of Australian labor costs being high.
There’s a widespread belief that business always goes where the labor is cheapest, but other than China and Russia, the top ten exporting economies are all high wage economies. Last year, tiny Australia exported more than Brazil, despite an order of magnitude’s difference in size and Brazil’s superior access to low wage labor.
That’s why people have been fleeing small villages since the Middle Ages, and moving to the big city where they can be more anonymous and are free to form an industrial society, which in return requires a welfare state, which in return requires a police state to control society. So take your pick: Aunt Mabel’s gossip or Big Brother’s surveillance. Either way you’re going to have social controls.
I agree.
Incidentally, the most charming, albeit disingenuous, homoromantic pass I’ve ever received was an invitation from Charlie Cooke to live with him in Montana, picking up sticks and abandoning our respective big cities (DC and NYC at the time). Charlie was arguing, at some length and with some passion, that Montana is as good as America gets. His revealed preference appears to suggest that he isn’t as certain of this as he claims (he still doesn’t live in Montana), but I think that there is a degree to which it’s genuinely his view.
I recognize that this is sort of ugly name dropping, but I’ve not seen him write about it and I thought that it was relevant.