What happened to small towns?

[HudsonHawk]

I'm definitely not buying shrimp now (wouldn't anyway). That's worse than slavery.

You can get wild caught fresh shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico around here. I'm surprised you can't get it in your neighborhood, though it may be previously frozen.

 

[Fading Fast]

"understand what you're saying but two questions come to mind: where does lumber come from now and where does fish come from now?"

Logging continues but the smaller companies and independents that were main employers in small towns are gone. The giants (think Weyerhaeuser) are in the log business, not the lumber business. Feller-buncher machines with which one man can do the work of large cutting and yarding crews are now the norm so what logging is left generates few jobs. The logs are loaded on ships and sent to Asia where the lumber is cut and veneer is made...then shipped back to the USA. Canadian mills and the pine forests of the South also provide plywood and lumber to the domestic market.

There are still fishermen in WA State...just not very many and their seasons are highly restricted. Salmon, which used to be harvested offshore and in the Columbia river now mostly come from Canada and Alaska. Of course in international waters the huge factory ships scoop nearly every thing that swims in the Pacific. You probably wouldn't really like to see the creatures that Mrs. Paul or Gorton's put in your fish sticks.

I wish it all weren't so.

I just read an article that the basic news updates form the Olympics will be written by robots with no human editorial review. It will be real simple stuff like "X just beat Y in fencing in the quarter finals," but while the company says it will "free up time for reporters to do more real reporting, " we all know that it will, if not now, eventually mean less reporters. Your logging story is one we are familiar with - but it is interesting to see it coming to fields that had until recently felt less threatened by automation.

 

[BobHufford]

Both of the small towns near "the farm" in southern Missouri still have older "super markets" on or just off of the downtown section. They still survive along with the Wal-Mart Supercenter on the highway. Both towns also have a "farmers market" that thrives.

Not sure what the "Save With Safety" tag line implies about Richards Brothers original competition from, what I'm guessing, was the late 1950s, but maybe it still applies.

 

[BlueTrain]

You realize that automation has been an issue for laborers (people who actually work and not in an office) for over two hundred years now. Do you also realize that lumber was actually imported during the colonial period in America? At the same time people were using walnut for fences!

My father's brother owned a sawmill and my father first came to town to work for him, which he did up until he got drafted. So there used to be logging where I'm from, too. I believe a large part of the output was used in mines. I wonder what percentage of wood is used for paper and paper products as opposed to lumber and other wood products?

 

[BlueTrain]

Concerning restaurants, diners used to be a feature of towns large and small. I'm not sure if they qualify as a restaurant, but if McDonald's does, then so does a restaurant. A food truck probably doesn't. There's probably a thread on diners here already.

The heyday of diners seems to be in the past but there are not only holdouts, there are revivals. In the D.C. area there is the Silver Diner, a small local chain. Even it has evolved a little since it began not all that long ago. It tries to be somewhat trendy which mostly means it fiddles with menu just like the chain restaurants like Applebee's. There aren't many holdouts, though.

There is one I fondly remember in Front Royal, Virginia. It was definitely a holdout. The place was tiny but authentic, if not exactly spic and span. It was clean enough where it counted. There were posters on the wall of Patsy Cline, a local girl (Winchester, actually) who made good. It's still there but it's a used car lot now.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ NYC has both, real diners and the new ones. The difference to me isn't that the old ones have a time-warped decor ranging from '30s wood benches through '60s linoleum counters, water-stained ceiling tiles, swinging kitchen doors built like bulkheads and cake carousels that way more than Volkswagens, while the new ones have, in general, an ersatz, sanitized version of an idealized diner decor - the difference is the menu.

The old ones have what appear to be a list of all the foods anyone could ever think to eat - ever - back in the '30 - '60s (with a few items having fallen off and a few added). The variety is what it's all about - waffles to meatloaf, souvlaki to turkey dinners (with the works - cranberry, mash potatoes, stuffing, et al.), shrimp, spanakopita, corn beef, kebob - all available at anytime of day or night - and deserts in steroid-sized pieces. That variety is the heart and soul of a true diner. The new "diners" fake it with, at best, a tenth of the offering, a few sops to the true diner fans - an omelette, moussaka, lemon meringue pie - but also, "new" riffs on the old that play to the foodie culture.

Nothing wrong with new riffs, nothing wrong with some of the foodie culture (although, some of it is just silly), but a diner is, IMHO, not about that. A diner is about an insanely large menu of everything - most of it good, some almost great, some not so great - always available, never pretentious and, if you're lucky, served to you by someone who really enjoys serving food, but in a no-nonsnense way. She'll make you feel welcome, even anticipate a need or two ("an extra napkin Hon"), but with a bit of weariness as life is not easy - and she isn't your friend unless you've been a regular for years.

Those diners are gems and, thankfully, NYC and the region still have a pretty healthy, albeit shrinking a bit, diner culture.

 

[LizzieMaine]

People in the Era would differentiate between "diners," which were usually free-standing buildings of some kind, and "lunch rooms" or "cafes." A lunch room was usually found in a long, narrow storefront with a counter running all the way from the back wall down to near the front windows. Opposite the counter along the wall there would be a row of either small wooden booths or the sort of one-arm chairs you'd find in a schoolroom. The booth places were more upscale than the one-arm places, but the food was the same -- sandwiches, soups, stews, breaded cutlets, stuff like that. If they served more substantial dishes they'd be things like chops or t-bone steaks, served with boiled vegetables or mashed potatoes, and there was usually a "two eggs any style" type of breakfast menu. These places usually opened very early in the morning, and while some closed at 3pm, others stayed open far into the night.

A cafe usually featured a shorter counter and more booths or even tables. The food offered a bit more variety, and might emphasize things like roasts or chicken dinners. These places were usually in storefronts about twice the width of a typical lunch room.

The one restaurant we had downtown when I was growing up, a place called "Mary's," was basically a lunch room. Although it was open nights, I don't remember ever eating there after about 2 in the afternoon. It was a convenient place to grab a toasted cheese sandwich or something when you were out roaming the streets during summer vacation and you had some loose change in your pocket. It wasn't uncommon to see six and seven year olds bellying up to the counter next to the cigarette-and-donut crowd, because their parents -- or parent -- worked and wouldn't be home to prepare any lunch for their kids. They'd be given half a dollar and sent up to Mary's, and she'd feed them.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

You realize that automation has been an issue for laborers (people who actually work and not in an office) for over two hundred years now. Do you also realize that lumber was actually imported during the colonial period in America? At the same time people were using walnut for fences!

My father's brother owned a sawmill and my father first came to town to work for him, which he did up until he got drafted. So there used to be logging where I'm from, too. I believe a large part of the output was used in mines. I wonder what percentage of wood is used for paper and paper products as opposed to lumber and other wood products?

Up until the late days of the 19th century vast amounts of timber were used in the shipbuilding industry. Prior to the switch to coal for power, charcoal was used. It was said that you had to burn half a forest to turn the other half into charcoal. As settlement moved west, the charcoal burners forged ahead of civilization to provide the charcoal needed by the new settlements.

 

[Fading Fast]

My mother hated cooking and if my Dad wasn't going to be home for dinner, we either had TV dinners, grilled cheese, (in later years) Stouffer's French Bread frozen pizza or we went to a diner. The thing that amazed me then and even now is the variety - how they could have so many different things on the menu. Since just getting a cooked meal was an event at home, a diner seemed like heaven.

From the lunch room perspective, we had a couple in town and there was also one - that I loved - in Woolworths (really, just a long counter in the corner of the store). As a kid, you could tell all these places - the diners and the lunchrooms - were from another era, but the diners still had energy to them; whereas, the lunchrooms - even when full - felt tired. Which, in the end seems to have been reflected in their fate as most of the lunchrooms are gone and most of the dinners are still there.

And, in our town like yours, I could go into a lunch room - or, come to think of it, "coffee shop," but it was exactly as you described a lunch room, and get a soda and sandwich next to a businessman, a construction worker or a grandma - a very democratic clientele.

 

[LizzieMaine]

What killed lunch rooms was increasing rents and the de-downtowning of many of the communities where they were located. They usually drew from the noonday work/shopping crowd, and when the workers moved to industrial parks/office parks and the shoppers left for the plazas, there wasn't much point left for them.

A hundred years ago, though, lunch rooms were the fastest-growing element of the restaurant business. There were many national and regional chains -- Child's, Thompson's, Weeghman's, Baltimore Dairy Lunch, Waldorf Lunch, and so on and on. None of them lasted beyond the early 1960s because of the de-downtowning trend after the war.

I worked one shift behind the counter of a lunch room near the docks in my home town, and couldn't handle the rush when the dinner whistle blew. My only food-service job ever.

 

[Fading Fast]

What killed lunch rooms was increasing rents and the de-downtowning of many of the communities where they were located. They usually drew from the noonday work/shopping crowd, and when the workers moved to industrial parks/office parks and the shoppers left for the plazas, there wasn't much point left for them.

A hundred years ago, though, lunch rooms were the fastest-growing element of the restaurant business. There were many national and regional chains -- Child's, Thompson's, Weeghman's, Baltimore Dairy Lunch, Waldorf Lunch, and so on and on. None of them lasted beyond the early 1960s because of the de-downtowning trend after the war.

I worked one shift behind the counter of a lunch room near the docks in my home town, and couldn't handle the rush when the dinner whistle blew. My only food-service job ever.

Two quick ones:

1) I knew intuitively I would hate working with food and despite having had many not-at-all-glamorous jobs from 14 until 21 when I started my real "career," I never, ever worked a single food-service job and even today, if the S hits the fan and I have to take any job available, I'm still going to do everything I can to avoid food services.

2) One of my dad's older friends (my dad was 40 when I was born), whenever he wanted to get something to eat would say - "let's see what the lunch wagon has today." Intuitively got it as a kid, understand it fully today. This was a guy who started life selling rags from a pushcart and ended up owning a successful carpet store - he had one full and crazy life.

 

[BlueTrain]

I'm never quite sure what to think when I hear the word "foodie." I'm pretty sure it has something to do with food, though.

I've mentioned before how I grew up in southern West Virginia but I inconveniently went to school in the northern part of the state. Believe me, the northern part of West Virginia is definitely northern. If you went across the state line to Pennsylvania, it was even more so. Well, I sometimes had reason to spend a day in Uniontown, which is south of Pittsburgh. While I was in Uniontown, I had lunch at one of those lunchrooms previously mentioned. It was a broadening experience. They had all these things on the menu that I'd never heard of, all mostly of eastern European origin. But it was a real lunchroom. One such lunchroom in my hometown was operated by a Middle Eastern family, surprisingly, given where that was. Either Syrian or Lebanese. Members of the family are buried in the cemetery close to where my parents and grandparents are buried. The gravestone is inscribed in Arabic. The lunchroom was downtown in a storefront but was called a diner.

I paid my way through college partly by working in a fast food place the whole time. It did have its drawbacks but I made some good friends and I always had something to eat. The man who ran the place when I worked there ended up owning a chain of steakhouses in Ohio and died a few years ago. Another fellow employee now owns a restaurant (or bar or whatever it is) somewhere there now.

In the beginning of the 1942 film "Saboteur," an Alfred Hitchcock film with Robert Cummings, there is a scene of the plant (aircraft factory) cafeteria as they are getting ready for the whistle to blow. And that reminds me, in downtown Washington, DC, there used to be one or two "cafeterias," which is another kind of eating establishment that is mostly history now. But the local Ikea store has a real cafeteria, conveniently located about half-way through the rat maze they lead you through on your visit. The menu is limited (their specialty is Swedish meatballs) but it still qualifies as a cafeteria to me. I don't suppose there are any automats left now, either, but the rest stops on the interstates come pretty close.

I still like best the sort of drive-in where a girl comes out and takes your order and returns with it on a tray that hooks onto your partly rolled down car window.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had drive-ins here, but never had carhops. You walked up to the window and placed the order, and then went back to your car to wait. They'd call your order number thru a PA horn and then you'd go to the pick-up window to get your fried clams or your chicken-in-a-basket.

They were also not anything like the stereotypical architectural fantasia of a drive-in found on the West Coast. Ours were low, flat or slant-roofed clapboard shacks with maybe a short wooden canopy over the ordering windows. The menu was usually severely limited to soft ice cream, fried seafood and chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs. Drinks were either milk shakes or a choice between Coke and Root Beer.

 

[BlueTrain]

What you describe sound like a lot of Dairy Queens, some of which have something besides what passes for ice cream. Older ones that I have seen just have soft serve ice cream items. My hometown didn't have one but we did have something similar that was named the "Suzy-Q.'

 

[DJH]

Not much better than a NYC or NJ diner.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

True diners were among the first prefab, purpose-built buildings. They were manufactured (the first in Worcester, MA) and trucked or towed to their destination. In the '30s they began to be styled like railroad cars, usually sheathed in stainless steel. Many people assumed that they were repurposed railroad cars, but that was rarely the case. At least one diner in L.A. was made from an airplane fuselage.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The drive-in of my childhood. Still operating today, with new siding and a new canopy, but not all that different.

 

[Bushman]

I want to say that development and urban sprawl, which begun in the post-War 1950s had an effect on a lot of it. Everybody likes to live in the quaint idea of the small town suburb away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but not exactly in the isolation of the countryside. I have no proof of that other than the experiences with my own hometown growing up. 20 years ago, my hometown was home to about 17 or so family farmers. It was also small enough to be considered a suburb of Joliet. Not much of the town went further south of U.S. Route 30, and what of it did was a small nieghborhood built in the 1950s. Today there is one family farm left, and both my hometown and Joliet are considered the Southwest Suburbs of Chicago. The town is roughly twice the size that it was 20 years ago. I've seen that happen to a lot of small towns southwest of Chicago. The same thing happened to the township just south and one just east of the one I grew up in. As people left the city, and entered the suburbs, the small town I grew up in became a suburb to a major U.S. city.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Not in my "home town" but in an adjoining suburb. My grandfather used to pile my mom into his Model A to eat there when she was a kid- and my son became a third generation customer. Dine in, or to- go.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The drive-in of my childhood. Still operating today, with new siding and a new canopy, but not all that different.

This is exactly what we called a "drive in". You parked, walked up to the window to get your steak finger basket or cheeseburger. And while we were in high school, you went back to your car to sit on the hood while you ate and watched the girls go by. You didn't have car hop service. Sonic has car hop service, some on roller skates.