Wa Examiner:
UNIONTOWN, Pennsylvania — Why don’t you leave?
That’s a question you get a lot if you’re from a place like this Fayette County city — an old steel town, auto town, coal town, or any formerly industrial small city. These are the kinds of places people call “the middle of nowhere.”
“Move, for God’s sake!” was the kind advice National Review’s Kevin Williamson gave to people living in economically suffering and socially collapsing places. “Get the hell out.”
“These people haven’t been left behind,” explained one liberal writer at Vox.com. “They’ve chosen not to keep up.”
People in the United States are moving less than we did before, and this is widely seen as a problem by economists and sociologists left, right, and center.
Many of those who live in Uniontown or Garbutt agree: They get out, or they at least wish they could. For the elite (“the mobile, global, and educated front row,” as author Chris Arnade puts it), staying in a place that doesn’t offer great economic opportunity and that is full of pitfalls such as drugs, crime, and poor public schools, the idea of staying put, seems insane.
But enough people do stay by choice that anyone who wants to understand our country needs to ask why. That is, if you’re not from here, it’s worth seriously taking time to consider the reasons why people stay.
“I would never leave,” Bob, a semi-retired 62-year-old electrician, told me at Smitty’s. Uniontown is an hour or more south of Pittsburgh. When his job used to drag him every day up to Pittsburgh, or even north of Pittsburgh, his boss suggested Bob move closer to the city. “I said, ‘F— you. I ain’t leaving.’”
“Why not?” I asked.
This question irritated Bob, but he humored me with some reasons. more
Uniontown is my home town. I moved back here after fifty years away. I’ve lived in California, Hawaii, Nevada and Washington, but this has always been home. It’s beautiful country, nice people, and I have family ties, which my husband wanted me to have close before he passed away, I have not regretted my move home. And Smitty’s has some great pizza and burgers. ;-). Good medical care is close in Pittsburgh and Morgantown, and PA has some great benefits for seniors. But mostly it the beauty of the place and the great people.
https://mdmpix.com/2015/2015-10-22_016/.
Good for you RC. I’m glad that you’re “back home” and with your family.
We all want to be home.
Because family is what it’s all about.
Thanks, F4UCorsair. I am also very proud of my family ties going back to Revolutionary War times in this area. My great-great grandparents, James and Rebecca Sampey, ran the Mt. Washington Tavern which was a stagecoach stop on the old National Road, originally established by George Washington. It it situated on the Fort Necessity National Battlefield. They are buried at the Mount Washington Presbyterian Church near there. Her portrait still hangs in the dining room of the tavern, which is open to visitors as part of the National Park.
https://www.nps.gov/fone/learn/historyculture/upload/FONE%20MWTSiteB_NBl_pcheader.pdf.
I used to drive through Uniontown on my way over the ridge to Confluence for whitewater fun.
I heard they were a bunch of bitter clingers, but my source is a known liar.