My wife and I live in a loft in a community called Commercial Street in Springfield Missouri. It sits along the Frisco Railroad and once upon a time was a transportation and cultural hub in Springfield. It was home to theaters, saloons, factories, elegant hotels, and restaurants. As time went on, as it often seems to do, businesses like Wal-Mart, shopping malls, and large chain restaurants moved into town forcing the local businesses to close their doors, as is often the case. Commercial Street began to decay. From what I am told, Commercial Street became a very unsavory place to visit. And, as many cities are starting to do, a revitalization has begun to bring life and commerce back to downtown urban areas. Slowly but surely, Commercial street is beginning to rebrand itself as a premier place to live, work, and play.
As far as restaurants are concerned, we are developing into an international culinary hub. I live across from my favorite coffee shop and cafe called Big Mammas (they have soups and specialty grilled cheese sandwiches that will forever change your opinion on soups and sandwiches) down the road is a Springfield mainstay in Pizza House, a Lebanese place opened up a few months ago, The Artisan Oven opened below me only last month (their bread pudding was suburb), and here in a few short weeks a Peruvian place is opening up on the corner. We even have a local brewery and world renowned chocolate factory.
Outside of restaurants though, it seems that the only store fronts you will find that are not vacant are that of antique shops and thrift stores. I love these shops. The owners are some of the nicest people you will ever meet, some of whom even donated or loaned items to decorate my wife and I's vintage themed wedding. But have you ever stopped to realize the sad irony of an antique shop or a thrift store?
I know these stores have found a new life since shows like Antique Road show, DIY television, and songs like Macklemore's "Thrift Shop" but really take time to consider the tragedy of the items in this store, or even the fact that these stores have to exist.
Growing up in Kansas and now residing in Missouri, its not hard to drive through all these small towns that, at one time, used to be thriving communities, to see them reduced to next to nothing. When I was in college there used to be this particular route that I would travel on between my parent's home and the campus that would go through the Flint Hills, that was absolutely gorgeous. On that two and a half hour drive there were approximately towns I would drive through, and three of them are nearly run down. At one point in time, these locations were deemed a great place to live, new houses being built all the time, and I'm sure that each one of those families would never dare think that one day the place they call home, a place where under layers of paint they would find the marks of their children's heights on the wall, is now teetering upon the brink of being condemned. The roof they hung Christmas lights on near crumbling, and the porch and yard they watched their children play in is now littered with broken appliances and overgrown grass.
It never fails that in each of these small towns there is always an antique shop, selling the last great treasures of these once great towns. Towns like Cottonwood Falls and Matfield Green have been reduced to mile markers and places for weather people to point to on a map for a reference of a storms proximity to larger towns. Yet antique stores persist in these towns, to sell the possessions that were once the envy of the entire community.
These are objects that people loved, envied, even cherished, things that people saved up money for, things that people designed and built in a factory or by hand, and now they reside, forgotten in a shop, collecting dust.
Take time to consider, the clothes you are wearing in this instant, the chair you are sitting in, the art on your wall, will either one day be thrown away/destroyed, end up in an antique/thrift shop, or if you're lucky passed down to remain loved and cherished. I know I for one can only hope that if my belongings are not passed on to friends and loved ones that establishments such as antique shops and thrift stores can find them homes where they can find further use.
Another tragedy lies in the fact that these stores all over the country are closing left and right, with consumers choosing to to consume newer items. I'm guilty of it. It's a vicious cycle. Our precious new items we are so desperate to purchase and consume will also one day face the same problem.
And so it is in considering the tragic and ironic nature of these store do we realize the futility of our possessions. They are simply objects we own for just a small window of time. The objects we love, we will grow to hate.
Let us learn contentment.
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