PRIDGER'S HOME TOWN -- A HEARTLAND MICROCOSM -- AND AN ECONOMIC MIRACLE

Pridger hasn't done any scientific or statistical studies on his home town of Jailton (the name has been changed to avoid embarrassing the residents or giving away the proximity of Pridger's Retreat), but it's easy to see that there is an economic miracle underway. Of course, Pridger views town from a distance, ensconced as he is, at Pridger's Retreat with his own forty acres and mule in the hills some fifteen miles from the maddening crowds and bustling rush. He goes to town often enough, however, to poke around Wal-Mart for any surviving "Made in America" merchandise, or purchase salt, nails, or shotgun shells -- and to marvel at the continuing growth and obvious prosperity of the place.

The town of Jailton (a "city" of some 9,000 some odd people), has transformed itself from a somewhat charming and sleepy agricultural and coal mining center, with a nice traditional business district around the courthouse square, into a modern wonder-town with all of the trappings of modern suburbia. It's new commercial strip is now out on the highway, complete with all the popular fast food restaurants, several large supermarkets, two shopping centers with the full array of popular corporate chains, including Wal-Mart and Radio Shack and all the others. Even some local merchants have managed to survive by abandoning the square and joining the big boys out on the Strip. The city boasts of half a dozen stop lights, maybe more, and has even sprouted some a stretch of four-lane hard-road.

About the only things Jailton doesn't have is a opera house and casino. But, of course, it's too small a place to expect many of the trappings of high culture. Nonetheless, evidence of wealth and prosperity are to be seen everywhere! The place has a nice hospital, a pretty good sized state prison facility, a nice big new county jail (right on the square where local merchants used to trade), and a large banking community.

All of this prosperity and growth are rather surprising, however. Fifty years ago, before the growth and prosperity started, the city had a population of some 11,000, a still booming coal mining industry and about ten thousand of farmers in the surrounding countryside. Between these two major sources of raw materials production, and the many businesses and smaller industries that supported them and were supported by them, the many merchants around the town square were kept busy, and most of them modestly wealthy. The outlaying city neighborhoods all had their own little mom and pop grocery stores. Like almost all farming towns of similar size throughout the heartland, Jailton was a thriving little community, a hub of commerce thriving with business activity, and it really produced something. It was, in short, a real little city with all the requisites to make it a valuable and productive part of the American landscape. Yet it only had one stop light (as of about 1960), and hadn't known what a real traffic jam was since the days when a thousand horse drawn farm wagons had converged on the town on each Saturday morning.

Now almost all of what originally made Jailton a thriving little city is gone. The mines are gone, and most of the farmers are gone. There are maybe a couple thousand active farmers left in the county, so there are some productive people who bring a little business into town. Most of the businesses that supported them and which they supported, are also gone. The railroad is gone, the bus service is gone, and almost all the mom and pop businesses are gone. The square stands desolate and decimated -- a victim of the wreckers' ball. Where four dozen local merchants once traded, stands two banks, a tavern, plenty of parking space, and a very tastefully designed jail house -- the pride of the city.

Just about all of Hurtburg's business activity has shifted over to the Strip. And urban sprawl has taken the place by storm. All the big boys moved into town, bringing their multi million dollar businesses into the community. Hurtsbug, in spite of an slowly declining population and almost nonexistent industrial base, has experienced astounding commercial growth and urban sprawl. And there seems to be ample money. New banks have opened, the retail businesses are busy, the roads and parking lots are crowded with a great abundance of new cars. There are large automobile dealerships which apparently do well. There are probably more jobs in retail sales or service than ever before, but almost none in any kind of production. There are only very few non-franchised independent businesses, except for lawyers, doctors, dentists, and a few other professions.

The problem Pridger has been having trouble figuring out, is just what is driving all this business activity? Where is all the money is coming from? The two thousand farmers, and maybe six hundred small factory workers, who comprise the county's only "real wealth" producers, try as they may, certainly cannot support it. The businesses cannot be the source of the apparent prosperity of the place. They can only reflect it and exploit it. At least ninety percent of the businesses are merely branches of large corporations based elsewhere. They certainly shovel much more money out of town than they pay into it -- otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place. Of course, many residents have jobs elsewhere, bringing their paychecks home from other distant towns. But these can't account for nearly enough money to explain Jailton's prosperity.

Of course, Jailton boasts of many citizens who are in fact independently wealthy, whose wealth is shared by the community at least to some extent. But this still doesn't account for urban sprawl and continuing commercial expansion, in a shrinking, largely stagnant community.

To be perfectly frank, Pridger has come to the conclusion that the town's prosperity is a totally false and illusory. Only one thing can explain it. Money is shipped into town by the buckets full on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis from elsewhere. Much of the money comes in in the form of the payrolls of public employees, civil servants, teachers, city and county and federal administrators, etc., There is undoubtedly a fairly sizable impoverished population that gets welfare and food stamps and subsidized housing. And there are probably twice as many retired people as there are employed people, receiving pension checks, social security, and supplemental security income payments. Undoubtedly there are a large number receiving unemployment compensation at any given time. There are undoubtedly many other "income streams" for the city and county, from various federal and state subsidies.

Of course, there are undoubtedly a lot of other things in the economic mix that Pridger hasn't considered. But it nonetheless seems fairly certain that the city is an economic basket case, and would never would have even come into being under present circumstances. There is no viable economic rationale for the city to exist as anything except for a pared down version of what it was fifty years ago. It could still be a nice little place. But there is no economic rationale for its present great prosperity. It is the prosperity of a city somehow made rich by de facto welfare. As great as it is, at least half of the wealth is compliments of government largess -- tax money and compounding state and national deficits and debt. Money to be paid by our grandchildren and great grandchildren, at least in some form.

This miracle is the prosperity Pridger's home town enjoys. Ten thousand other towns enjoy the same kind of prosperity. All our large cities do too, to one degree or another. The whole nation does. Pridger wonders if there is a city left in America that really still earns its keep. And we all troop down to Wal-Mart to buy things made in far off places. The things that we used to make for ourselves when our prosperity was not of a false and dangerously deceptive nature.

John Q. Pridger