Ugly, old, torn-up, out-of-business small towns in the South (power lines, home)

[Julian/SWE]

I thought I should have brought this subject up a long time ago...
For you people that have been in example: Alabama, Tennessee or Louisiana, haven't you noticed how torn and out of buissness most of the very small towns are in these mentioned states?
I have been driving through Alabama a lot and stopped at a lot of places on my long trips.
I mean mostly very small towns on the highway.
An example is when I was in Alabama I whent down on a highway on my way to Florence, I stopped to get something to eat and the only place on the highway(near where I was then) was a little town called Cherokee.
So I whent off the highway and drove in to the town.
And I drove slowly through the downtown/main town.
And then I couldn't help to notice how all the buildings that used to be resturant/cafe/store had broken and open windows with millions of bricks on there whay to fall off the building and a million of blocks that where missing from the building.
And I also noticed that everything that was located in the torn downtown buildings was out of bussiness and closed down.
And of course thay didn't have any sidewalks that where walk-able and the roads where of course town also.
The hudge power lines following the road where on their way to fall down.
There was a lot of town parking lots with big cracks in the astfalt.
But then finally I found a in bussiness place, but it was in a torn location like the out of bussiness resturants/shops/cafes.
I think it was called something weird like "The hooty tooty place" (I don't think it means anything) and it was a cafe with lunch.
When I walked in I felt like I was in the same place and situation as the guy in the movie "The hitcher" or whatever its called, when the main guy goes in to that weird resturant in the middle of nowhere and he orders french-fries and it turns out to be a finger he's eating.
The food was okay (luckely it wasn't a finger)
But what still bothered me was the look and the extremely bad keep-up of the town.
This was an example so what I'm saying is that I've seen a lot of these places in the south.

These places make me sick!

[Chicago60614]

You see this in small towns everywhere in America...mostly in areas that are/were huge agriculture centers.


The United States was much more agrarian in the 1700's up through the early 1900's. Millions of people moved to the US and headed straight for new farms and small communities that were popping up everywhere.

Fast forward to 2008, and the urban/suburban culture with all the ammenities and jobs are the focus of the country. The farms we have are much more automated, and many small towns lost their businesses/factories and likewise people to the larger cities and more massive/streamlined factories of the cities.


Lose the farms....lose your jobs....lose your people. It's not just a southern thing. I guess it's sad for the small towns, but at the end of the day it's just a natural progression for a country that grew up so fast.

You went from indians and trees to tens of millions of people on farms/rural settings in only a few decades. The country progressed extremely fast, and within another few decades you had massive cities and job centers. Small towns will always be around, but in this day and age we have many more of them sitting around than people who desire to fill them.

[Awesomo.2000]

a lot of it has to do with Walmarts too. I know, I know, Here is another anti-Walmart hippie yipping and yapping. But it is true that since the 1980s big box store shopping has killed mainstreets. It started earlier than the 80s, but big box stores really started killing mainstreets in the 80s. It is the American dream to one day all live in a homogenous suburb, shop in big stores with no architectual aesthetic at all, buy cheap crap from Walmart, and spend all of our time in a large big box shut off from our neighbors and reality watching American Idol and the biggest loser. It may sound bad, but just imagine if the Nazis one the war..........................

[Smtchll]

My home town is kinda like that. Main street and what was once downtown is mostly abandoned businesses. But the area around Wal-Mart is booming, there are new businesses popping up all the time.