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Some gigs are a pain and some are a joy. This one fell somewhere in between.

The Source

Some gigs are a pain and some are a joy. This one fell somewhere in between. I’d been hired by a town in Central Illinois to interview some of the burg’s residents and design a presentation. Lots of hours, but it was one of those projects that wrote itself if you could find the right people. Maybe fifty hours of interviews and a hundred or so in editing…piece of cake. Let’s call the place Townville, a small city similar to Jacksonville in many respects. I interviewed folks from all walks of life, from the professionals to the day workers to those out of work. The initial contact usually went something like this: “Hi, this is Ken Bradbury. You probably don’t know me and I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’d just like to talk to you a bit about Townville.” Of course this is the opening gambit for every telemarketer in the world so I soon had to go to the referral method: “Hi. I’m Ken Bradbury. Your friend Joe Schmo said that you might be someone who could talk to me about your hometown of Townville.” I batted about .775 with this tact and since that average would have gotten my number retired by the Cardinals, I went with it. Somewhere toward the end of every interview I’d ask, “Is there anything that makes you sad about Townville? Any you miss from the old days? Anything you’d like to see happen to your town?” The answers varied a bit, but most revolved around the theme of, “I wish things were back like they were.” The respondents talked of having a variety of grocery stores, a diversity of restaurants, the ability to buy everything they needed without leaving town. Okay, nothing new about that, but here’s where things started getting strange. Just for fun…well…may just to be perverse, I quizzed them a bit further. I asked them where they did most of their shopping, their eating out, and their business. I was astounded at what I heard. Almost without exception, all of these fine folks who bemoaned the loss of business in their town traveled to other towns to do a significant amount of their business. One lady…I’m not kidding….said, “Could we do the interview in (she named another town)? We really don’t have a good coffee place here in town.” Her dog-gone town had at least ten places to sit and have a great cup of coffee! And then toward the end of the interview she actually had the nerve to say, “The town seems to be dying. People are going out of town to buy things. I can remember when the square was full of business and you could hardly find a place to park.” So I sat there…some twenty miles from Townville, paying $1.21 cents for a cup of coffee that cost 81 cents in the lady’s hometown, listening to her sad tale of people leaving town to do business. If she’d had any sense of humor at all I’d have thought she was joking. When I bought my first house in the school district where I was to teach, I went to a couple of banks to get the money. . . one in the school district and one outside. Both banks agreed to finance the house for identical rates, but my local bank required a title search, a $200 item that this new teacher hated to pay. I called my financial adviser, my father, and he said, “Pay your interest in the district that pays your wages.” I coughed up the extra bucks. It didn’t make fiscal sense, but it made human sense. Good move, Dad. There are worse New Year’s resolutions we could make than simply deciding to look around Jacksonville before shuffling our tail off to other places without thinking. No matter the price, our local businesses have an edge that we might not consider. Jacksonville has a car dealer who supports the local symphony. Jacksonville has lawyers who sponsor shows at the Theatre Guild. Jacksonville has a grocery store that’s a major supporter of nearly every community activity. Our area banks are some of the greatest underwriters of the arts and youth work. We have a local painting contractor who works endless hours revitalizing a youth camp. Look in the programs of the next concert, play, dance recital or fundraiser and you’ll see very little sponsorship from Springfield or Taylorville or Quincy. The price on your next car or bag of groceries won’t spell this out, but the investment is there. A New Year’s Resolution? Shop local. It makes human sense.