Dear Editor,
A couple of weeks ago, the Weekend Pinnacle published a detailed article about John Barrett and McKinnon Lumber. I encourage anyone who missed it to look it up.
Ever since I heard that Lowe’s was planning to open a new site in Hollister, and in fact, that “it’s a done deal” according to some, I regretted missing any board of supervisors, city council, or planning department meetings to discuss it, because I have a strong opinion and preference in regard to this project.
I like the idea of adding new jobs for Hollister people. But I wonder, did the planning department do an economic impact study in this regard? According to the chamber of commerce list of local businesses, it would appear that there are about 35 local businesses likely to be impacted by the opening of a Lowe’s store. What happens to the owners of those local businesses, and to their employees? Some of them will close, no doubt, as did local stationery stores in Gilroy and Hollister when Staples and Office Max stores opened, and former employees may be looking for work in the new stores. We could end up with a net job loss.
“Big box stores” are convenient – I shop at Staples all the time. But there’s a big impact on a town’s economy when 35 businesses are likely to be affected by the coming of one big box store, owned outside the county, whose profits will also go outside the county, and whose financial “multiplier effect” will not go into local families’ incomes and the local economy.
I’ve seen urban blight settle on and even kill once-thriving local economies back where I came from on the East Coast – no more McGuigans’ Shoestore on Main Street in Piedmont, no Style Shop, no Murphy’s 5&10, no Half-Price Store in Westernport, no Fishers’ Soda Fountain, no Kenny’s Market. Most of what’s left seem to be churches and bars. Even the Star and Majestic theaters where we eagerly awaited Friday night cowboy movies and Sunday matinees are closed.
Gilroy doesn’t look so good either – the outlets are a great source of entry-level jobs for young people, but the downtown is struggling to keep its head above water. Despite new planning projects, Gilroy still feels like a town with “no there there.”
I’m new to Hollister – nine years here now. One of the things I like very much about Hollister is its similarity to the towns where I grew up. I lived in the “Tri-towns” – three small towns clustered on the Potomac River – 500, 900, 1,500 people – and lived very near a larger town of 7,000. “The City,” to us, where we went at least once a year to do Christmas shopping, was Cumberland Maryland (pop. About 30,000). Cumberland’s downtown nearly died when a shopping center was built in nearby Lavale, a few miles up the river. Now it’s finally being revived, according to a New York Times article I read a month or so ago. But basically a generation or two was deprived of the (to me) wonderful experience of growing up in an integrated, friendly environment, where the shopkeepers were our relatives and friends, and knew our needs and preferences on a first-person basis, and where we took for granted that their businesses and their families thrived because of our trade. Business wasn’t just business – it was clothed in personal relationships, between real people – what theologian Martin Buber called the “I-Thou” relationship instead of “I-It.”
People are starving for human relationship and human contact in today’s world. I know it – I have been a counselor here for the nine years or so I’ve lived here, and I hear about it every day. Many parents are concerned that their children are becoming addicted to computerized games, and their spouses to the Internet. Many fractured marriages are staying together “for the sake of the house,” which people have been led to believe they could afford but can’t. There are “house widows” and “commute widows” all over town, and one or both spouses often commute two to three hours to work every day. Older children are left to entertain themselves as best they can. Some form their own “families” – Nortenos and Surenos, and children of white-collar workers as well as field workers often end up in juvie because parents are exhausted after working long hours, and have little energy to invest in their families. Most teenagers try drugs – at least pot and alcohol, and often worse. A lot of them pull through it in a few years, but many don’t.
But back to McKinnon – it matters to me to have face-to-face contact with a local person in his/her own business when I do want to buy the rare plank for bookshelves, or whatever else. If I need a piece of vinyl for a kitchen, I’m happy driving to Lowe’s in Gilroy, 20 beautiful miles away, over Frazer Lake Road, where I can count the bird species I see – hawks, egrets, even kites (in two places, no less!), and in the springtime, redwing blackbirds perching each on his/her own fence post. This is living an unalienated life – embedded in the natural world, talking to real people (not all of whom are necessarily as personable as John Barrett, by the way, but it sure beats robots). Compare the face-to-face transaction with the endless and frustrating process of punching in a series of numbers on the phone tree of a large insurance corporation or a government agency … It’s the complete opposite of shopping with a local merchant who probably gets your order right the first time, and if he doesn’t, well, he fixes it up for you.
John McKinnon and people like him are a vanishing breed, unfortunately, and we should be protecting them at least as carefully as we protect the local condors. Because if we don’t, they won’t be here much longer, and San Benito County will be that much poorer for their loss.
I think the “Old People” already know this, and maybe even the “New People” do too. It’s one of the aspects of small town life that will vanish if it isn’t cherished.
Nancy Laleau, Hollister
