"I'd like to recommend Once Upon a Town: The miracle of the North Platte Canteen by Bob Greene as a charming story of devotion and selflessness, and perhaps as an antidote to post election hostility and the flood of anger that seems to have been generated by Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed. This is a real change of pace book and a reality check on the American spirit.
"The people of the North Platte, Nebraska area met every troop train that passed through their town, which is on the main line of the Union Pacific, from December 17, 1941 until the end of 1945. Thousands of trains; hundreds of thousands of service men. They brought cookies, cakes, sandwiches, coffee and love to the lonely service men on their ways to fight the war. The book is a reassurance that Americans do have their generous moments when their acts have magnified repercussions that no one imagined.
"In a very unintended way, it is also a rebuttal to some of the harsh accusations that have been leveled at Wal-Mart. We all 'know' that Wal-Mart is responsible for the demise of the main street merchants. Greene's book indirectly disputes that. He points out without directly arguing the case, that in 1950, the main arteries of small towns like North Platte were the US highway and the passenger railroad, both of which went right through down town.
"The demise of rail passenger travel and the creation of Eisenhower's interstate highway system moved the focus of retailing. New strip malls grew up along the new interstates along with service areas for automobile travelers. Greene argues that those developments started the decline of downtowns. Travelers were not coming to town. And local merchants who could not provide adequate parking lost customers. It seemed much easier to drive to the new mall and park in their big parking lots. Even though Greene doesn't say so, all of this started before Wal-Mart came to town.
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"While Ehrenreich's experience in a low wage job is compelling, it is not representative of everyone's experiences. My anecdotal evidence is from a retired high school friend who works at Wal-Mart fulltime because it is the only employer he can find that will provide the supplemental medical insurance he and his chronically ill wife need to survive.
"Finally, much attention is spent criticizing Wal-Mart for the slave wages it pays to people in developing countries to produce the goods it sells. The flip side of this criticism is that because Wal-Mart's costs are low their prices are also. This means that thousands of Americans can save money on a staggering number of products thus having higher standards of living than would otherwise be available. In economic arguments, the plight of the producer often over shadows the benefits to the consumer, but there are always more consumers than producers.
"I am not a big fan of Wal-Mart and by choice I seldom shop there. But there is another side to the story Ehrenreich presents."
By Ken Wedding. 06.25.05 Updated 09.18.05.
