Carbon Copy America

My wife and I came down off the mountain this weekend and visited “civilization” to engage in the most popular sport in America: leisure shopping. Visiting the Mall of Georgia is like visiting Altamonte Mall. The similarities start with traffic lights, waiting to make turns, localized strip malls with a variety of specialty stores, car dealers using balloons to lure naïve consumers, and franchised eateries overfeeding overweight patrons. My first inclination is to shop locally, like I did in New Smyrna at Coronado Hardware or eating at the Dolphin View, but lacking choices I was forced to head to the Mall.

My intent here is not to complain about the Mall, but to comment on willfulness to trade perceived success for lost identity. I have previously written about the “good old days”, circa 2006 during the boom, and also commented on the loss of small towns in my column, “Taking Back Roads.” At the end of our shopping expedition on Saturday my wife, LeeAnn, said, “we could be anywhere in America. Looking around the stores and architecture are no different here or in Altamonte Springs, Ft. Worth, or Minneapolis.” Her observation was spot on; we chose the economic path that brought our destruction and it started in the early 1990’s. Thinking back to the 1970s and 1980s, appliance and electronics stores were locally owned; Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy did not exist except in their original markets. Wal-Mart was a regional Arkansas chain, not a megastore found in every town in America. Even the Mall’s department stores appeared quirky to the out-of-state traveler as they represented decades old local businesses like Burdines, Daytons, Wanamakers, and Gimbels. And of course, the out parcels of Linens and Things, Old Navy, and Michaels did not exist.

In the 1990’s with easy access to money, a rapidly rising stock market, low barriers to brokerage services and do-it-yourself investment attitudes the economic boom erased our identity. Local architecture and business acquiesced to national franchises and bland buildings void of character delivering mass-produced Chinese merchandise meant to symbolize success to anonymous strangers. On a local level builders nationalized and did the same, trading character for mass production of McMansions with bathrooms larger than the prior generation’s living rooms. New Smyrna Beach and Cleveland, Georgia lag behind, but yet both claim progress by advancing box stores and abandoning local business heritage. Just push “Copy”, America has lost her character.