“Don’t wanna be buried in debt or in sin
so we pray to Jesus and we play the lotto
Cause there ain’t but two ways
we can change tomorrow.”
- Songwriter Brandy Clark, from “Pray to Jesus”
At public meetings I’ve attended for the last 35 years, some jackass will always stand up and say, “This town is dying.”
It’s not and it won’t be until the mountains fall down and the fish streams dry up many lifetimes from now. Until then, waves of young people and old people will keep washing up here all starry-eyed, fat retirements or remittance checks in hand, professing their love and vowing to stay forever.
Haines is a mecca and meccas attract people and investment, deserved or not.
But many other towns in rural America are dying and the ramifications of those deaths arrive here in the politics and policies of dangerous fools like Donald Trump and Mike Dunleavy which threaten our town as much or more than the perpetual proposed mines around here.
Too many Americans are becoming desperate and taking out their desperation in the voting booth. They’re gambling with their futures, and with ours.
A little more than a year ago I rode a bicycle through a few of these desperate spots on the Plains. Places like Calhoun, Missouri, where weeds are growing up through wreckage of a collapsed brick home across the street from city hall.
Calhoun is a stop on the Katy Trail, one of America’s rails-to-trails success stories. The limestone trail spans nearly the width of the Show-Me State, tracing the steps of the Lewis and Clark Expedition as it straddles the Missouri River.
But the trail won’t save Calhoun. It doesn’t appear to have made a dent. The town’s median family income is $25, 417. Men make $22,292 a year here; women, on average, $17,750. Calhoun is 90 percent white, just less than 500 people.
A Sonic drive-in on the outskirts of Calhoun appears to be the most recent construction in 30 years. I image there’s a Dollar General around some corner. The nationwide chain of oversized junk-food stores has tapped into America’s blighted rural and urban pockets. Its stores pop up like black-and-yellow mushrooms on the eastern Plains.
While cycling on the Katy Trail’s eastern side I shared drinks with a young, professional couple from St. Louis who told me there’s no need to ride west of scenic Hermann, a tony town of wineries and historic buildings. After that, the towns “get kind of scary,” they said.
Calhoun was more sad than scary. No young people, no retirees, no one starry-eyed with dreams and money is showing up there, not even to open a bicycle shop to serve the young professionals whizzing by on the Katy Trail.
By all appearances, Calhoun is dying. So are other small towns on the Plains, places like Mokane, Mo., where the town’s run-down bar and grill offers burgers and three different ways to lose your money gambling, including a keno-type game on the TV over the bar.
Casinos and mega-churches were among the biggest buildings I saw in Missouri. Outside St. Louis, a giant church has taken over a former shopping mall. A few miles away, the Hollywood Casino gleams on a manicured lawn not far from urban blight and razor wire.
Americans are investing in the invisible powers of faith and chance.
Is it any wonder those same folks might vote for Donald Trump, a candidate with no political experience who promised pie in the sky? Is it any wonder that Missouri is represented in the U.S. Senate by Josh Hawley, a goon who supported the Jan. 6 attempted coup? Is it any wonder that Alaskans in 2018 voted for Dunleavy, a man whose biggest promise was more free money?
People who lose sight of hope start investing in the unseen, the unknown and any long-shot gamble.
Alaskans like to assume they’re at a safe distance from places like Calhoun, Missouri. And with $72 billion in the bank – nearly $100,000 for each of the 732,000 Alaskans – they might believe a rosier fate awaits them.
But votes for Dunleavy tell us Alaska and Missouri aren’t that far apart.