Death of a Small Town

A grand old house that hasn’t been updated for decades might be described as having ‘good bones.’ My wife and I bought a good bones house, and after 25 years of updating years of neglect we have the place we envisioned when we bought the bag of bones.

And so it is for a lot of neglected cities in America. Taylor, Texas rejected the highway that Round Rock accepted, which envisioned the prosperity that it promised. And Round Rock reaped. But is it a zero sum game? Winner and lots of losers? In America?

Downtown Taylor has good bones. It prospered in cattle and cotton when the railroad came through 150 years ago. You see that on the main street. Handsome but empty multi story red clay buildings. The theater hasn’t seen a show for a while but with a little care…

The clerk in the sporting goods store moved here after 30 years as a programmer for the US Geological Service living in Austin.

He’s here for the peace and quiet, he enjoys his job, and he’s happy to be away from the frustration of living in Austin. He says that it’s impossible there to get the police to respond to routine traffic accidents, unless one is blocking an intersection, or for a house break in. They prefer to have private insurance handle those incidents.

The Ideal Barber shop has a shrine to John Wayne and reruns of “The Virginian” playing on what might be my grandparents TV. Twenty five bucks, (same as Maine!) but he uses a straight razor through warm shaving cream on your neck, which I appreciate. Traffic is getting busy and maybe it’s time, he tells ‘the wife,’ to move further east. He got caught in traffic the other day, backed up for a High School game, one light to the next.

The “Man Store” is two years old. Everything they sell has been worn by an employee, the proprietor tells me, which I take to mean that they endorse their wares. It has that select feel. And though it clearly caters to a younger demographic than I present, I buy a t shirt and a pair of running shorts.

It’s doing well, an investment for his parents, and he runs it and makes the decisions. His father is in the oil business and they’re back here after stints in Amarillo and Beijing.

I mention this to the sporting goods clerk and he nods and says the owner is related to the owner of his business. He says everyone is related.

Or coming back. Or pleasantly stopping in. The barista is from Kansas but moving to LA. The five members of the City Council have deep roots in town. The Mayor is the great nephew of a famous cowboy who toured with Will Rogers.

It’s not hard to like this place, good bones and decay and K.C. Jones was born here! Boom town to quiet crossroads off the path from Austin to Dallas or Houston. It seems to me that the 1950s, keep-your-head-down decision to reject the highway, settling into a simpler life in a small town, has worked for Taylor.

And then Samsung came along. I leave Ideal, coiffed for another few weeks and round the corner and there they are. Sitting at an outside table at the coffee shop, looking more out of place than I. Engaged in animated discussion, “Samsung Engineer” written on the backs of their jackets. Cue the evil villain music. Unless they’re town saviors.

Just outside downtown, on the way to Hutto, a flock of cranes works on the first of nine Samsung manufacturing plants that may eventually employ 18,000, just more than the population of Taylor.

The barber isn’t a fan of Samsung coming to town. He says that small towns aren’t equipped to handle such a massive development. Where will they get the water? He wonders what Taylor will be like in ten years, but says he won’t be around to see it. I’m not sure if he’s thinking of his potential move east or something more definite.

The gentleman in the seat next to me says nothing. After he leaves the barber tells me he’s the banker. Several generations. He took over after his father, who was well into his 70’s, “caught Covid” and passed. I might guess at the banker’s take on Samsung.

The City Council approved the development and there is a movement to change the City Charter for “more transparency.” The move is fueled by the Council’s decision to ignore their hand picked compensation consultant’s recommendation and increase theirs “4000%” from 25 dollars. If there was much debate over Samsung no one mentions it to us.

Taylor thrived with the railroad and survived the highway. Ten years from now will tell how it adapts to Samsung. The main street will not look the same, good bones put to certain use. There will be more traffic.

And the shrine to John Wayne will be gone. Or moved East.