What do these have in common?
The pictures from yesterday are from Veblen SD. When Mom and Dad moved to Veblen in the early 80s they paid $18,000 for their house. That was about the amount of insurance money they got from their farm fire. At the time Veblen had a cafe, a grocery store, two bars, a lumber yard a couple of gas stations and more. Perhaps the biggest things going were a cheese factory and a pillow making factory. Pillows were made and sold in stores like JC Pennys. We would always stop at the cheese factory and get cheese when we visited. I do not know when but I think still in the 80s the cheese factory and pillow factory, at about the same time, closed down. With it the demise of Veblen followed. Over the years the grocery store closed, the cafe closed and houses stood empty. When Dad had his auction sale everything he had, including the house were sold for under $10,000. Perhaps WAY under that. Today the pictures are of what was the cheese factory and the pillow factory. BUT as one drives down Main Street most buildings are empty. The busy senior citizens center is now a bar/grill etc. There is of course the dairy with their 20,000+ milking cows but I see very little of that money in Veblen.
A clue about today's pictures. They also tell a bit of the story of the demise of rural America.
I actually got a tiny bit of work done yesterday. Terry has gotten two items painted over the last couple of days so she is ahead of me. I did find out one thing yesterday. The lawn guy who came over indicated he was sure we had a grub problem in the lawn but I found out that is not the case. I dug up 2 different patches in the lawn and found 1 grub in each patch which is NOT a problem.
No it is time to get on Bentley and ride a little. I did not do that the last two days so need to get back on track. Time to sip that last drop of FP and go.
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