will see this blog, so I will be as candid as I can be. At this juncture, I should probably say something along the lines of "I really don't care what people think," but anyone who says that is lying. We all care what others think, and it's a perverse form of narcissism to claim that you don't. It's as if to say, "I have arrived at a form of perfection that you, perhaps, are too stupid to admire." That, essentially, is the claim that Donald Trump is making about the American people, that those who do admire him are in accord with his magnificence, those that don't are losers, too stupid to admit their own inferiority. I don't admire him, think him the harbinger of everything that is wrong with this country, but then perhaps he is right. I am a loser, though I hope I'm not so stupid as to deny or hide my own inferiority.
Here's the thing. I live in Mountain Home, Idaho, recently voted the "worst place to live in Idaho." There are reasons for that. We've lived here a little over a year, so my view is not deeply, deeply nuanced, but there are some things that do stand out. First, the military base -- Mountain Home AFB. It is an enclave that sits about nine miles outside of town and is the main economic base of the city. If there is a middle class in Mountain Home, it's found there, among the enlisted and officers of the base, though that might be a stretch. Second, the "locals" -- the people who "grew up in mountain home." They are rural folk, living either on the edge of poverty. They are the toothless, tattooed, people of Walmart with questionable standards of hygiene and an attitude that would be easily recognized on the streets of LA or Chicago or NY. They constitute a gang of sorts, a loosely affiliated group with a shared set of xenophobic fuck-you-all attitudes that substitute "survival skills" for "street smarts." Their iconic hero would be Darryl from the Walking Dead. The military people tend to look down on the locals, the locals tend to depend upon and consequently resent the military. It's a classic story.
There is a third group, the "ex-pats" -- those are the folks who own property or farmland in the surround, but live in Boise and commute, treating the community as a bedroom. Many of the AF folks, particularly the officers, fit into this category as well. There is, perhaps, a fourth group, the "might was well be ex-pats," those that live here, but live in willful ignorance of the present decay. The people who fill the "government" posts in the town likely fit into these category.
I will come back to them, but the basic attitudes of the town are divided between condescension and resentment. The economic life the town is likewise divided between Walmart and what I call the junk re-cyclers. Here, I have an admission to make. My wife and I, wanting to finally put down some real roots and become a part of a community, did a really, really, really stupid thing. We opened a small business. It's a sporting goods store, focused on a passion of mine -- fly fishing. We really had modest expectations, but even those have been disappointed for reasons that now are obvious. Yesterday, I had three people come into the shop. One was a local looking for flippers. He had picked up a float tube at a garage sale, and was now looking for flippers. He had already checked at Walmart and the thrift store across the street from our shop, and came in on the off chance that we might have some. We didn't. Another was a set of locals. They had evidently caught a bunch of perch at CJ strike, a reservoir near us, and were looking for a filet board so they could "fill their freezer." They too had already checked at the thrift store and Walmart, and had come in on the off chance that we might have one. We didn't. The last was a military guy and his son. He looked around, complemented the store, and said he would be back. It's likely that he will, and he'll make a small purchase, but it'll all be too little, too late for us. I'll stick it out until the end of December, but I've decided that I'm done then. We'll quietly close our store, and I'll sell the inventory, or what I can of it, on eBay.
Walmart made a fundamental change in the town. The long term locals recognize it and resent Walmart in some of the same ways that they resent the military. Before Walmart, the downtown area of Mountain Home was thriving. After Walmart, it is pretty much a ghost town. There are a few struggling bars, and restaurants, and a liquor store, but the remainder mostly offer predatory "financial services." On our block, there is an empty store front, a consignment/used furniture store, us, a branch mortgage office, a quicky loan office, an empty store, another empty store, an engraver, and a day-care. In the six months that we've been open, two of the store fronts emptied out, one was a real estate agent, another was another consignment/used clothing store. When our store closes, there will be yet another empty storefront. Since we have been in business, an antique store and an appliance store have closed down, leaving large empty store fronts on parallel streets where the story is much the same. The downtown area of mountain home is depressed and depressing unless, of course, you are a fan of dive bars and tattoo parlors. Any small business that sells anything that Walmart sells (or could sell) quickly went out of business. While they don't have much in the way of fly fishing, they do have a very modest selection of flies that sell at or below my cost. As one customer (who didn't buy anything) put it, "I don't have a problem paying less at Walmart." Those that resent Walmart, nevertheless, don't have a problem paying less.
The appliance store is somewhat the same story with a twist. They went out of business, in large part, because you can go on line, order a refrigerator from Lowes, and have it delivered in Mountain Home Even with a delivery fee, it's cheaper than one bought in town. The businesses that still exist in Mountain Home sell things that Walmart doesn't sell or Lowes won't deliver or that can't be bought on line, and the large corporate structures have pretty much made the small mom & pop a thing of history.
The other business that still has a place in Mountain Home is what I call the junk re-cycler. The thrift store, of course, is in this business. The thrift store takes donations, puts a price tag on them, and re-sells them. On the assumption that one man's trash is another's treasure, people are in and out of the thrift store all day long buying other people's cast offs on the assumption that they're getting a "deal." They may even feel that they're "helping," because ostensibly the thrift stores exists, as their web-site puts it, to "generate a stable source of funding to help support our therapeutic programs and services. That's the reason we have thrift store in the first place -- to raise money to help the kids who need us, regardless of they family's ability to pay for services." They are the third largest retailer in town and reality, of course, is often otherwise. The used items are priced at or above new retail at a place like Walmart. Perception, though, is the rule, and like my customer, who didn't have a problem paying less at Walmart, they don't have a problem buying something used for less if they think they're getting a deal. I wonder too, altruistically, what percentage of the revenue generated by such stores goes directly to "help the kids" and how much to "overhead." Even if all the profits go to "help the kids," it is nevertheless a thriving economic concern that supports a large overhead of under paid (or unpaid) workers who can only afford to shop at Walmart and, you guessed it, the thrift store.
As cheap junk from Walmart is re-cycled through the thrift store, Mountain Home itself begins to look increasingly threadbare and trashy and ultimately irrelevant while those with money isolate themselves more and more from those that don't. Don't kid yourself. A good and growing portion of America is beginning to look more and more like Mountain Home. At least Mountain Home has the Air Base ...
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