A Little Bit of Everything

This one is answering...

"Programmed into the human soul is a preference for the near and familiar and a suspicion of the remote and abstract."

Is that true, in your opinion?

Do you, like Thomas Jefferson, prefer the local and the familiar? Or do you like the efficient and the widespread?

Do you like the fact that you can go into a McDonald's anywhere in the world and know what you will receive? Go to a Barnes and Noble and have a certain quality control? Or would you prefer a more diverse and "real" offering on a smaller scale? "Direct" democracy?

Here's my answer:

I can remember distinctly the hot July day 5 years ago my brother, my mother, and I, crammed into a car stuffed with luggage, boxes and miscellaneous food wrappers, drove across the sate line of Kentucky. Our long trek from California had finally led us to our new home. I also remember distinctly the first place we stopped, to rest and to eat. McDonalds. It was familiar, in a place that seemed foreign to me, with its bright reds and yellows and its half-awake teenager behind the counter wondering who in their right mind was there at four in the morning.

Maybe McDonalds is evil, out to destroy the weaker and purer home town restaurants but at that point I just wanted a place to eat, and something I knew I would enjoy. From this point of view I do not mind the larger corporations of this world but truly I am a small town girl. Not that I was born in a small town (I’m a home grown Venturan) but that I believe in the small town mentality. I love the smell of old and used books at a local bookstore and the thrill of a hunt. I love finding the best bargain as I travel from booth to booth at the Farmer’s Market.

I am a lucky person in many ways, one of which is I have lived both in a place where bigger is better and also in a place where your town is who you are. Growing up in Ventura I really don’t know where my parents shopped. I have faded memories of Target, Trader Joes, and Fresh Choice, Subway was a major thing too. Never McDonalds but a Wendy’s frosty was never turned down. No shops that weren’t “mass producers” or quant stores where hey know your name. I can’t name any Ventura restaurants except maybe fancy ones on special occasions. It was a Hamilton paradise you might say.

But then I moved.

In Kentucky I remember being shocked when we first drove down its streets and people greeted us as if we were their best friends. It was impolite not to wave. Your next door neighbors weren’t like in California where a step would bring you onto their lawn, you actually had to walk half a block to get to the next house. But despite the distance you neighbor was family. You knew their names, their birthdays, when they were sick, what they did for a living, you were even invited to their family Thanksgiving dinners. You didn’t knock, you just walked in and grabbed a pop from the fridge and sat on their couch. Can you imagine someone doing that in California? Your neighborhood was the most important thing there was. It was the Beetles’ song “Be True to Your School” in a larger way, “Be True to Your City”. You were proud to be born and raised in Danville, Kentucky. You supported the city, bought from its stores, ate in its restaurants.

If a store announced it was going out of business because another store had outsourced them, pretty soon everyone would rally around them. It would never go out of business unless it was a bad business.

What major places were there, Wal-mart and all the standard fast food joints (there wasn’t much in Danville, the nearest Michael’s was an hour away, the nearest Albertson’s the same distance.) were made local. It didn’t matter what large name was on the outside you knew the person behind the counter and they knew you too. Jobs were given to relatives and to friends not to just anyone who needed a job. Outsiders were not welcome. New businesses, unless started by a local, soon went out of business. You could not, in any way, get a job if you did not know personally someone who also worked their. It took my mom 1 of the 3 years we lived in KY to get a job, and she had an amazing resume. She finally got the job she did (which she had applied to before) because she mentioned she was the friend of the sister of one of the workers there. My brother, with no work experience, walked into Wendy’s, a place where his best friend’s mom was manager, along with four other more experienced applicants. He was working that same day before the others had a chance to say anything.

So even though when I lived in Kentucky everything was about local pride (I mean who gave a rip what happened outside of Kentucky anyways? Unless of course it was a football game with UK in it…[ : ) my family still went to Wal-mart, the place to be for any person. Yes it was a big store but for people in Danville it meant clothes they could finally afford.

Danville was never a place for the rich. It was a community of farmers and their descendants, a place Jeffferson would have been proud of. You didn’t buy things from stores, you traded, you shared. So the economy of course was not the best. You wouldn’t have a good living as a banker. People were poor and happy. They were even happier when they could buy everything they needed at a cheap price at Wal-mart, where you could get food, clothes, and get new glasses all in the same building. Wal-mart is a good thing to them.

They cling to the familiar for “Programmed into the human soul is a preference for the near and familiar and a suspicion of the remote and abstract." Wal-mart was familiar, Danville’s local shops were familiar, banks, malls, and lawyers were not.

Danville was more home to me than Ventura ever was because I love feeling connected. I am all about loyalty and would rather see more jobs in America than overseas. I would rather not have McDonald’s take over the world (can you imagine how fat we would be?). But as an American citizen whose family is technically below the poverty line, who has to eat free lunches and had food stamps and has a mother who wonders if she will be able to cash the next paycheck I know we need these institutions. I am not a Hamilton, I do not love them or their monopolizing powers but I cannot see living without them. My family needs Cosco and Wal-mart, Subway and Ross.

That is how we live, in a world with a Hamilton mind and a Jefferson heart.