Brick and Mortar, Wood and Mud
I go into Stanwood and Gomorrah occasionally for supplies I’m not willing to pay the island surcharge on. Hardware, groceries, gas. Necessities. I must not have been paying attention, I guess, cause a lot of biznesses down on the flood plain closed down awhile back. Looked about as prosperous as an Oklahoma dust bowl implement dealer specializing in irrigation systems. Half the storefronts looked dark or boarded up.
The other day I drove through the East Side and on through the DMZ and over to the West End. Only to discover my old Stanwood is gone. In its place was an Antique Mall. Store after store of vintage stuff I got too much of at home. It looked like Snohomish on the Skids. I’m not on the Economic Development Council, but nevertheless, I found this alarming. Better than a ghost town, I suppose, but there’s something parasitic about antique stores in decaying villages — they suck the nutrients out of their host without giving much back.
Now, honestly, I like antique stores okay. I just don’t want the whole damn town to be one. Somehow it doesn’t make for a vibrant city, all this old junk for sale everywhere you look. If there’s a symptom for the Final Days, one that portends the death throes of Small Town America, it’s a street cluttered curb to railroad track, gutter to dike with goofy little businesses shoe-horned into old houses and soon to be replaced by another second hand shop or Junque Parlor. A healthy town needs a good mix of merchants. Stanwoodopolis seems to have a penchant for failed taverns, ruined restaurants, rotating beauty salons, closing barbershops and shuttered clothing stores. The void is being filled by hypno-aromacists, paint ball franchises, toenail painters, Chinese chiropracters, storefront religions, struggling cookie mills, gift boutiques, satellite real estate offices and smoke shops. And now we got this tsunami of antique stores….
Maybe this is the death rattle of all backwash towns, no longer viable, just quaint little burgs tourists pass by on their way to the La Conners or the Anacorteses, nothing there but gas and groceries, let’s move along folks, nothing to see here …. Just another casualty on the American Interstate System when the road bypasses your cute village, no need to exit. 7 miles too far.
When I need another vintage piece to bring the livingroom roaring to life, well, I don’t have far to go. If I need anything else, besides gas and grocery, I’ll have to drive a lot further. Nothing much new there near as I can tell
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