The Town That Political Time Forgot
"Wheatfield and sky" by muffinn is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Throughout the Heartland, especially in rural areas, there are towns which seem forgotten, perpetually caught in limbo.
For over 20 years, I have walked through the town I have come to call home. I have walked all through its downtown area, its streets and alleyways, and on its outskirts for all those years.
Very little has changed. It used to have a small food store, but that went out of business with the beginning of the Great Recession. Everything else is still there. There is the bar/restaurant, the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles facility gifted by the state, our neighborhood bank, our local library, town hall, post office, three churches, and a railroad club house.
As I walk along Main Street, I see its cracking sidewalks, its crumbling buildings, and nothing but an eerie quiet with only the wind blowing; no other townspeople walking around, some cars passing by now and then, and the background of the valley with its cornfields and individual farms looking like a picturesque postcard.
As there are few jobs in and around town, most of the young adults have left for better opportunities. Now it seems we only have the very young (children). Those young adults we have left (between the ages of 18 and 40) are on food stamps and might be lucky and work for either part-time or seasonal jobs.
The people who work in town hall do their best to maintain the infrastructure. This town still has a working pay phone, and the police station is a small former store that used to be a barber shop. Everything around me is a reminder of when this town was once a thriving place 40 to 60 years ago.
In all those 20 years I have never really seen any major changes come to town. My town seems to be more of a tribute to the distant past than anything recent most people can remember.
When I came to this town in 2002, the only thing in the news was the War on Terror, and some of our area's young people going off to war. Since returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, these young people have tried to resume their lives and find work even though jobs are still scarce.
Then came the Obama era after President Barack Obama was elected. The town got official forms on whether we wanted funding for state bus service to connect us with the rest of the state. The answer from the townspeople was an emphatic "yes." Nothing came of it.
Then came the election of Donald Trump as our 46th President of the United States. He promised an "era of new prosperity," and people in town were excited. There was no change. The town remains as poor as it ever was.
Then came the pandemic and people in the major metropolitan areas were afraid to go out. We were unaffected, and the county sheriff did not bother to enforce any of the state's extreme quarantine measures against businesses or people gathering. Few people got ill, let alone died from Covid here.
Most people in town more often than not fear what the politicians on the state and federal levels might do. They fear the politicians might dramatically change the town by wrecking it. This is why the local people do not welcome any major projects even if they might benefit the town.
The only major project the town people accepted was improving the highway route leading into town. Then there was a new water tower put in, but that was more due to the efforts of local officials.
Beyond that, nothing else of note has happened here. Since the beginning of the 21st Century, this town and its people have seen no major changes, no real improvement in their lives, and no opportunities for those young people who would like to stay near their parents and grandparents.
My town is barely hanging on to life, and this town is far, far from being the only one. There are tens of thousands of such towns like mine throughout this great and vast land which are barely existing now. Since the beginning of this century, it seems that the people in the great halls of power know only how to cause division, crisis and mismanagement. I cannot even begin to contemplate all of the tens of billions of dollars of our taxpayer money spent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars which could have been spent here.
Meanwhile, I just listen to my empty footsteps and the rustling of the wind from the valley.
Daniel Nardini spent 22 years as a newspaper correspondent for Lawndale News and The Fulton Journal. He has published six books, including his eyewitness account of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, The Day China Cried. He is listed as an Illinois author in the Illinois Center for the Book.
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Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or its members.
