Ask an old newsman a question, the saying goes, and he might talk longer than you want to listen.
A young fella I know apparently hadn’t heard that warning, because whenever we see each other, we talk about doing business in various communities. He runs a business in a coal mining town, and that gets me thinking about the towns where I’ve worked.
My first job was in a college town – Laramie, Wyo. - and the thing you always heard was that college towns are recession proof. No matter how bad things were elsewhere, the free-spending college kids always came back in the fall. These days, they throw a big party in town when their bread and butter (the students) return in August.
Things got a little crazy on home football weekends. My boss locked the newspaper office door on those Saturday nights to keep drunk people from wandering in, thinking it was a bar.
Then I moved to a prison town – Rawlins, Wyo. - and despite the rough image prison towns have, I found it to be a real nice place. Railroaders, ranchers and prison guards kept the economy going. They were building a new prison at the time, and the nearby coal mines were booming, so it could be tough finding an apartment. A guy could make a lot more money driving a haul truck than working at the newspaper, so finding help could be difficult.
Then I moved to an oil town – Casper, Wyo. - which was just coming off good times, and facing some lean years. Private industry, not government, kept the place humming. But it suffered from the boom and bust cycle.
Then I moved to a power plant/coal mine town – Craig, Colo. That’s where I first heard the question, “If you’re so smart, what are you doing here?” Power plant and coal mining towns are great, as long as the power plant and the coal mines are booming, neither of which are assured. But they had some awesome elk hunting there, and that kept the motels full in the fall.
Then I moved (my critics said I couldn’t hold a job, but these were better jobs in the same company) to a manufacturing and farm town – Pekin, Ill. - just in time for a couple of the worst strikes ever at Caterpillar Tractor. That was rough. And in farming, I learned that when the crop is good, prices are bad. And when the crop is bad, prices are good, except you don’t have much to sell.
“Cheer up,” I would tell a farmer friend. “Maybe things will get worse!”
Then I moved to a farming/bagel manufacturing town – Mattoon, Ill. - which had the worst downtown I’d ever seen. Everyone thinks their downtown is bad, but they should see the one in Mattoon. They were working hard to diversify the economy there, and heaven help the newsman who wrote anything bad about the town.
Then I moved to a railroad town – North Platte, Neb. - where an engineer could earn $100,000 a year, but had to work so much to get it that they didn’t have a life. We argued a lot about high taxes and football in that town.
Then I retired to a state capital/railroad/military base town – Cheyenne, Wyo. - and finally found stability and economic bliss. Since I’ve been here, the old library and a grocery store were snapped up by the state for more office space and a parking lot. There are state offices all over town. They’re putting a big addition on the main state office building, and renovating the capitol building at great expense.
There are new subdivisions popping up, and apartments are tough to find. We have distribution centers, two military bases, and they’re about to spend billions rebuilding the missile silos north and east of town.
Government talks a good game about cutting back, but if you ask me, they never really do.
So my advice to that young fella was simple:
“Forget that Horace Greeley stuff about going west. If you really want to succeed, go to a state capital, young man! You won’t regret it.”
Contact Dave Simpson at davesimpson145@hotmail.com.