And I’m willing to make a nice new sign for the Skidmore Historical Society on adhesive vinyl or durable Tyvek with UV-durable ink and a nice, solid substrate and a plexiglass cover and I’ll do it at cost if we take up a collection. My estimate is less than $250, both sides.

And I’ll chip in the first $10.

In the past 45 days I’ve driven more than 6,000 miles through more than 20 states across the U.S. picking up equipment for my business. I’ve driven along the entire eastern seaboard from Massachusetts to West Palm Beach and west along the interstates through the heartland out to Jefferson City, Missouri across the Mississipi and back.

And I’ve talked to a lot of people along the way. And they’re hurting in a whole lot of places, bigtime.

I honestly don’t know how a lot of towns in this country continue to survive — they’re certainly not going to survive once their residents get whacked with the new, new reality of the taxes that are going to be necessary to cover Obama’s magnanimous gestures.

I drove through Akron, Ohio about a month ago and during the light of day it felt approximately as dangerous as Newark, NJ *at night*. The place is falling apart. Trash is strewn along the shoulders of Interstate 76/77, the grass and weeds along the highway haven’t been cut in months, and the place looks like it’s in a fine state of dilapidation/stagnation.

This is the headquarters of Goodyear Tire and Rubber. I guess they no longer manufacture anything there, it’s just a middle-management purgatory. My advice is to carry a gun if you’re driving through Akron at night, because if you break down you might need one. Sorry if I offend anyone, but Richmond, Virginia is not much better, and there are at least a half dozen others around the country on the routes that I took recently. America’s industrial base, in my estimation, is almost completely wrecked.

Obama’s economic policies are going to make that problem worse, not better. I really believe he wants it that way.

I saw that on my way from Spring to Dallas to go to my Grandfathers funeral. Lots businesses that are dead and the only place a big amount of business is in larger towns like Huntsville. Sad really. I guess I should take a picture of Old Town Spring. This economy is making that area look bad.

When I was a kid, there was a grassy median between the lanes a block from my house. My dad would go and mow the grass there every two weeks because the County didn’t do it often enough for his aste. Before my dad, Colonel Feind, who lived across from the median, had done it until he died in 1968.

My father appreciated his effort and took up the slack until I was old enough to mow lawns. One of my first clients was the Colonel’s widow, and my dad told me, “when you cut her grass, be sure and cut the median, too.” I did just that for three years, and when I grew up and moved out, my dad took up mowing it again.

After my parents sold the house and moved out of the city, nobody bothered with it anymore. The County came in after a couple of years and filled the median with cement.

there aren’t any “younger generations” there any more. Of the 128 people I graduated from high school with in ‘67, three remain in my home town. I travel a lot, and in my experience, America is empty except where it is crowded. Small town America will be gone altogether in a generation.