A few summers ago I vacationed at a state park in West Virginia. On the way to the park, out in the middle of nowhere, I passed a beautiful new super sized department store. I would tell you the name of the store but this national chain is so big that I'm sure they would dispatch a team of lawyers to me and squash me like a bug. Suffice it to say they are BIG. A few miles down from the store I passed through what was once a healthy small town. It was dead like an old world ghost town with tumbleweeds blowing through it. The big store chain had killed it. Very sad. But the blame does not lie with the store chain. It lies with us, the small town consumer. We are abandoning healthy community economics to save a few dollars and a few minutes. We are losing our diversity as a people by selling off our small town, small company based jobs to mega-chains. These big-cash giants regularly sweep through our towns making big promises to our community leaders. They promise hundreds of new jobs, increased tax dollars and of course a greater availability of products, services and technology for our citizens. What they fail to mention is the short and long term losses we will inevitably incur as a result of their most gracious offer to grant us their presence.

I know a man who worked for a mega-company, which recently swept through our region. He is a good man. He has a family, a mortgage and a car payment. He serves faithfully in a local church. He donates many hours of his time each week to community and school based service. We'll call him Bill. Bill is a very hard worker. When the mega-company came to town he was happy to get a job with them. Bill worked hard. I mean drop-dead-at-night hard. But he was happy. He was providing for his family. One day, shortly after the mega-company got what it wanted out of Bill, and many of his work buddies, they let them go. They were now just a number fired by a slip of paper. No apologies. No remorse. No company representative to pat Bill and his fellow workers on the back. No local community leaders to send him off with hope. But the worse was yet to come. To add injury to insult the once friendly-big promises, mega-company decided to deny unemployment to save a few more bucks at Bill's expense. Bill was fortunate. The government didn't agree with the mega-company. After a David - Goliath battle, Bill got a few dollars a week to survive on.

Its a slow death process. A slow manipulation of your affections. A gradual twisting of what is real into what is surreal. A slow drain of community life from the foundations of our towns , small businesses.