"Miss Scarlett, Honey, They Burned It!"
by E. Noel Preston, MD

   I just got back from a trip to North Carolina to help bury an old friend, and on the way back the rain came down in buckets. Susan and I weren't in any hurry, so we got off I-85 to see the once-charming town of Anderson, South Carolina. A decade or two ago I went to Anderson because an antique dealer I knew had a shop there, and the town was just beautiful: old turn-of-the-century buildings, a grand courthouse with a statue honoring Our Confederate Dead out front, beautiful trees lining brick-paved streets, and wonderful old stores that sold weather-vanes, antique furniture, bird baths, sundials, cut crystal butter-dishes,
and china and silver. Thanks to the rain, that part of Anderson was hard to find.

   Getting to the old historic section we had to traverse sections of town so crass, common, boring and ugly it looked like Buford Highway on steroids. One after another we passed K-Marts, Wendy's, grocery stores, movie theaters, bowling alleys, dry cleaners, body repair shops, video rental stores, pharmacies, pizzerias, mattress outlets and used car lots. When we finally found the old downtown, things looked better. There was a sign forbidding trucks over a certain size from entering the district, and someone had put large brightly colored metal fish on posts up and down the sidewalk. Several banners announced these were "Fish Out of Water - Hooked on Art." But other than the fish, no art was to be seen. I stopped at a gas station for directions and asked about stores that might have folk art, crafts, or antiques.

   "All those places are gone," the owner said. "After the mall opened up outside of town, all the stores around here closed. That area up the street is dead -- there's nothing going on and nobody's putting any new shops in. All the stores are out of town at the mall."

   And so what's happening to small town America? We all like small restaurants that serve hand-made sandwiches and home-made pie, but we're in such a hurry we pass by Gladys' Good Food Cafe to grab a quickie-burger at Burger King. And so Gladys closes her cafe, sells her equipment, and moves to a retirement village in Arizona.

   A week or two ago a St. Simon's Island shrimper was complaining that he couldn't stay in business because his boat had sprung a leak and had sunk. He could have prevented the leak by lining his hull with fiberglass, but it would have cost $140,000 and he couldn't afford it. He blamed the low price of shrimp for his not having the money to keep his boat in good repair, and he blamed the low price of shrimp on foreign fishermen who sold their shrimp at places like Costco for much less. I have sympathy for the man who lost his boat, but I wonder if at some time he hadn't been to Costco himself to buy tires or motor oil or sunglasses or refrigerators at a lower price. We all want our cake, and we want to eat it, too.

   And so a lot of Americans are out of work because foreign corporations can make light bulbs cheaper than Thomas Edison's General Electric can. So when GE stops making light bulbs and lays off thousands of workers, none of us like it. But we like buying our light bulbs at Wal-Mart.

I'm not exactly sure what cheap light bulbs or shrimp or refrigerators have to do with how dreary and forlorn Anderson, South Carolina is now. But I suspect there's a connection, and I haven't a clue as to how to put Gladys' Cafe back in business.

E. Noel Preston, M.D. is a pediatrician in solo practice in Peachtree Corners. 6063 Peachtree Parkway, Suite 202-A, Norcross. (770) 448-1553.

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