Hundreds Expected at Prudhoe Main St. Meeting The Journal An application to overhaul Front Street in Prudhoe, including a new supermarket and more than 100 new homes, will go before Tynedale Council on Wednesday. The 68-page application will go before the council development control committee, with a recommendation that the scheme be given the go-ahead, subject to conditions.
Developer Buys Five Main Street Lots Cape Cod Times The developer who converted the old Storyland miniature golf property in Hyannis into a mixed-use condominium and retail development has purchased five lots on Main Street in Hyannis for $3.15 million.
Chamber Wants Lamp Posts on Main Street New Canaan Advertiser The Chamber of Commerce is hoping Phase II of the Village Lamp Post Plan will extend Elm Street’s charm — and sales — to Main Street, but it needs help from the Town, as well as local residents and merchants.
March 27, 2008
A 200-mile trip might take the average person six or seven hours. I've been known to do it in three days. That's because I always take the alternate route, otherwise known as Main Street, USA.
With the collection of Home Depots, Wal-Marts and Targets lining the highways, you could be anywhere. But you always know where you are when you're on Main Street, whatever the actual name of the street may be. I've also found that the nice thing about traveling on Main Street is that one seems to leads to another.
Unfortunately, some aren't what they used to be. But some are. In many towns, "the diner" is still on the corner where it has been for 30 years. There's Sal's Barber Shop, and now Sal Jr. has the first chair. The hardware store is a good place to talk about plaster screws for a few hours. There's the local version of Starbucks, where you don't have to pay $6 for a latte. And if you forget your wallet anywhere on Main Street, someone will send out an APB looking for you.
For more of the local color, you can look at those ubiquitous corkboards, with notes tacked to them announcing important things. Like the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast at the firehouse. Or a church rummage sale. Or one man's crusade to save the American Elm. That hardy breed of statuesque trees lined many Main Streets with a graceful, arching beauty - until urban development and a sudden epidemic took care of them.
If you dally too long on Main Street, you end up talking to strangers - who now feel like friends - and lose all track of time. Don't worry. Just consider the $15 parking ticket as a contribution to an American way of life well worth preserving.
Some Main Streets are quite resilient. They've survived Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street," Grace Metalious's "Peyton Place," and Frank Capra's "Bedford Falls." People gossip everywhere. The only difference in a small town is that everyone knows whom you're gossiping about - and that kind of makes it more intimate.
What really makes Main Street special is its intimacy. Even if you never lived near one, you feel it right away. And there's a certain comfort in knowing that this is a place that hasn't changed much.
For my next excursion, I have my eyes on the Lincoln Highway. About 3,400 miles, coast to coast. It has been called "The Main Street Across America."
I've taken parts of it, but have never made the entire trip. Is there anyone out there who has?
Main Street Memories Arkansas Blog Though the Block 2 lofts project began the revival of downtown as a place to live, it claimed one casualty. The Wallace Grill. Breakfast and lunch daily, served in the tightest of quarters: Catfish, fries and green beans ... extra tartar sauce. Heckuva deal
265 Main Street mainstreetdanbury.blogspot.com The Main Street post office opened for business on September 2, 1916. The city's four wards met at a point in the middle of the street directly in front of the post office, so it literally was at the center of town.
Consultant Begins Pre-Planning Phase wlmainstreet.blogspot.com Our consulting team is pouring over maps, reports, photos, and site plans provided to them by Town staff. They have conducted three site visits - one at the a.m. peak traffic hour, another at the p.m. peak hour, and finally a Saturday mid-day.
What's the best thing about your Main Street?
0% 33% 0% 0% 67%
Here in Los Angeles there are many versions of "main street" given the vastness of the city. But so many of our "main streets" are creations of developers and city ordinances and not the natural growth that creates, over time, a main street with true character.
One can only hope that the up-scale retail/residential urban "villages" we're creating will become, in time, a true "main street" and not just another blighted area when the retail fads and building styles wear thin. Perhaps it's the problem of a dynamic ever-changing international mega-city but I know we can create a city of character. One that preserves the character of the past and has a genuine nostalgia blended with the present and the needs of the future.
However, what we're creating is better than what we've had. L.A. has often been seen as a "temporary" city with people just passing through or leaving when their dreams turn to stone. In England, where I was born, the old buildings are very old and the "new building" was really new a 100 years ago. (of course that has changed now, I'm sure). In L.A. the old is still mostly new, but we are learning to cherish our heritage and preserve what's worthwhile.
This is why I choose to live in "Small Town, USA." I was at the Salvation Army shop just a few years ago, while in college, purchasing a carpet. The woman behind me asked if I was a student, and I said yes. She then asked if I had a car, and I truthfully responded 'no.' She told me to hold on, and ten minutes later was back with her church's van. When she drove me to my dorm, she gave me $20, her card, and her pastor's card. She told me to call if I ever needed somebody to talk to "because sometime college students need special help." You don't see that on I-40.
Jeepers; looks as if I just about have traveled that entire highway... albeit not in one fell swoop.
I'm headed back on a sentimental journey along there next week, in fact... my parents live in Omaha; which has absorbed two lovely villages along the highway, Benson and Dundee.
I'm meeting with friends who are coming from further down the highway, Columbus and Schuyler, Nebraska. Ancestral stomping grounds.
My heart beats faster just thinking about it! I'll be you don't hear that often about Nebraska, do you Mr. Peterman?
drdgscott said...
Let me offer a sugggestion: when you do it, do it on a motorcycle. My 14 year old daughter and I rode the Lincoln Highway seven years ago "just because it was there." On a bike, you not only see small town America -- you smell it! Freshly mown lawns just outside of town, heady mixtures of caramel popcorn or frying chicken on Main Street, the fecund yet sweet smell of orchards in bloom.
A motorcycle provides a few freedoms that passengers in "cages" never have -- like waving at Amish children peering curiously out of the back window of buggies in rural Indiana or the phenominal satisfaction of slaking the kind of deep set thirst that only comes with the passing of the wind at a local gas station. People talk to bikers in a way that they never do with other motorists. I remember pulling into a diner in Ohio and being approached by an elderly lady who had just stepped out of Grant Wood's "American Gothic." "Is this your daughter?" she asked. When I said yes, she told me that she and her husband had gone everywhere on a turquoise Harley Davidson decades before. "You have a good ride," she said to my daughter, and patted her on the back of the hand.
Try getting an exchange like that in the family truckster!
What a trip that would be, from sea to shining sea, you couldn’t help but feel the freedom of road as it raced under you. Your tires thumping over the veins of this country as you make your way to the west. I have always wanted to take this trip, of course as gas prices climb and people here on the home front fight for my attention; my journey will have to wait. I think every American should make this trip; it is the only way to ever get in the sweet melancholy of everything that has happened in our past. May I recommend having know real plan for your trip, don’t predict what state you will be in by sunset, just drive. If you happen to pass through Memphis be sure to stop at an Ernestine and Hazel’s and grab a bite to eat, try the chili, its some of the best in world (or so I’ve heard), next to Cincinnati of course. So fill your tank and hit the road, tell the wife and kids and even your boss, “I’ll see you in a few weeks.”
Well Heiress, you're right I don't hear a great deal about Nebraska; however, I've been there and have many fond memories. I must admit though it is a bit different from the south of France.
And ExPat, everything is relative in the world. 100 years old in England and Europe is new while we call it historical here. I guess we have to remember that our whole country is only 200-400 years old depending on how you want to measure it.
I believe that Main Street USA as we knew it in the past has been neglected. The growth of the Wal-Mart’s, Targets, Lowes, Home Depots, and chain grocery stores have drawn the home town folks away from Main Street.
In my town, there are no longer any shops to get your groceries, books& magazines, clothes, or the necessities of life on Main Street. Everyone now has to get in the car and drive to these groups of stores.
Ten to twenty years ago in town, we had a dress shop, shoe repair, 2 grocery stores plus a Safeway, magazine stand, book store, shoe store, a jewelry store, 14 Antiques shoes, a Laundromat, health aid store, a pharmacy, and antique mall.
Today, we do have four bars, three sandwich shops, a subway and three restaurants (only the Mexican restaurant is busy), a pharmacy, video/tan salon, tattoo parlor, a Dollar General, one antique shop, a chocolate & cigar shop and 2 thrift type stores and a antique mall. The rest of Main Street is Edward D. Jones, a mortgage company, insurance offices and two banks.
The town council is counting on all the new homes that have been built in the last year to pay for all the services. Most of the new homes are vacate because the town is 75 miles away from decent employment opportunities where the possible owners of these homes could earn money to afford their mortgages. The other problem is that gasoline is over $3.00/gallon. So why move 75 miles one way from work?
Suddenly, the town council members that are running for re-elections are saying that tourism will be the savior even though gasoline is still over $3.00 a gallon. There are several committees of citizens of the town working on projects. One project is a pocket park to provide a restful place for the citizens to sit, another project was to cut down the trees on Main Street and replace them with a potted plants. The committees are not working as a team to improve their main street. There are no projects to draw business in town so the citizens won’t go to the mega stores on the way home from their jobs in the big city.
So I believe the face of small town America’s Main Street has changed at least in my part of America. My hope is that we wake up before it is too late to revive Main Street in small town America.
Mr. Peterman:
Thank you for reading my post and your response.
My house is 63 years old and it may be included in an historic preservation zone. In L.A. it's achieved "historic status". (as they say: "only in America") But it's a great start. I was born in my Grandmother's house in England. It was a newer home - 100 years old when I was born. I've heard it's still occupied.
Thank you for this site
ExPat
pa farm said...
Isn't it ironic that "developers" of land and shopping malls attempt to re-create the small town main street look while the REAL THING crumbles before our eyes. Walk mainstreet Butler, PA or any mainstreet that has been around for that long and you see in it's architecture, history unfold. You may have to stop and look up now and then. Stop and look up. It's worth it Main streets around here are being revitalized though. Let's hope it's not too late.
My fondest Main Street memory, by the way, happened on our honeymoon 20 years ago, when passing through a small PA town we happened upon their Memorial Day parade. A precious and genuine moment I'll never forget.