Posted on 08/02/2004 5:34:00 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
LEWISTOWN - Miranda Frymyer waits in front of the Armed Forces Recruiting Center for the shuttle bus to drive her to boot camp. She seems neither happy nor sad, but resigned.
The 18-year-old, sporting a blue Grateful Dead teddy bear tattoo on her chest, is surrounded by her mother, her stepmother, her father, her sister, her boyfriend and several family friends, none of whom want her to join the Army.
"We're having this war," her mother, Lisa Courtney, says. "I do not want my daughter going. I'm here to cry."
For Frymyer, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan seem like a better option than the losing battle for decent jobs in Lewistown, where the population is falling, unemployment is among the highest in the state, and heroin is the escapist drug of choice among some of her peers.
"I want to make something out of my life," Frymyer says, crossing her arms. "There's nothing here."
On that, her mother agrees.
"I don't want her to be like me. I was a mom at 16, and I'm in a dead-end job," Courtney says, wearing a white T-shirt that carries the warning, "Staring won't make me like you more."
Even dead-end jobs are scarce in Lewistown, despite the fact fewer people are sticking around to apply for them.
Over four decades, the population in the borough -- the Mifflin County seat -- has slipped 29 percent, to 8,998 in 2000, from 12,640 in 1960. Mifflin County's unemployment rate jumped from an annual average of 4.5 percent in 2000 to 7.5 percent in 2003 and is hovering at more than 8 percent this year, well above the 3.5 percent rate in the Harrisburg region and the state average of 6.1 percent.
A series of plant closings over six months -- some due to the transfer of jobs to other countries -- has made a bad situation worse.
Series of closings:
Depending on who is talking, outsourcing is either a natural part of free trade in a global economy or a new way of describing the "great sucking sound" of U.S. jobs going abroad, as Ross Perot warned during his presidential bid in 1992. If Perot needs a vacant building from which to say "I told you so," Lewistown has plenty.
In February, Lear Corp. shut its Lewistown plant, which made automotive carpeting, leaving 308 employees out of work. Lear, which operates plants in 34 countries, transferred the work that was done at Lewistown to other places, primarily Canada. The company gave some of its employees the option of working at other Lear facilities, including plants in Carlisle and Virginia, but there were few takers.
The same month, Standard Steel, founded in 1795 and instrumental to the railroad industry in the 1800s, closed its ring mill, where locomotive wheels were made. One of 49 U.S. steel companies that have declared bankruptcy since 1997, Standard Steel struggles with overseas competition, and while it continues to operate in the Lewistown area, 109 workers lost their jobs at the ring mill.
Mann Edge Tool Co., an ax-and-hammer factory that opened in the late 1800s and employed as many as 350 people 20 years ago, closed its Water Street plant in September, idling the remaining 49 workers. Before the closing, the business was purchased by Delaware-based Collins Tool Co., a subsidiary of Truper Herramientas in Mexico.
Collins Tool continues to operate in the Mifflin County Industrial Development Corp. plaza, but the work once done at the ax forge plant on Water Street is done overseas.
Last November, Guardian Industries, a glass manufacturer, closed its Lewistown plant, laid off 69 workers and sent the jobs to Mexico.
No help nearby:
Neighboring counties offer little respite for Lewistown residents.
Six plants in Centre County and one in Huntingdon County closed during the past year, because of either foreign competition or the outsourcing of jobs to other countries, says Cynthia Spencer, counselor at Lewistown CareerLink. She says another plant in Lewistown may downsize this summer, when some of the 200 jobs will be sent to India.
Twice a week, a dozen Lewistown residents, many of whom worked at Lear and Mann Edge, drive an hour to Harrisburg to take taxpayer-financed retraining courses at Harrisburg Area Community College. There, they are learning how to repair heating and air-conditioning systems.
The courses and extended unemployment compensation are part of the Trade Adjustment Assistance benefits that the displaced workers receive from the state Department of Labor and Industry and the U.S. Department of Labor.
The benefits, awarded to workers who lose their jobs as a result of outsourcing and international trade, do little to mask the damage to this once-thriving manufacturing town.
"Lewistown is decimated," says Bill Thompson, an instructor at HACC's Harrisburg campus. "Businesses are shutting down or cutting back."
Making ends meet:
When not commuting and learning, the students -- mostly middle-age white men with families to support -- try to make ends meet by painting houses, fixing cars, cutting grass and doing other odd jobs, Thompson says.
And on the rare occasion when full-time jobs open, a feeding frenzy ensues. At a recent daylong job fair at Trinity Packaging in Lewistown, more than 120 people showed up on a 90-degree weekday to apply for 35 jobs.
"We had to start turning people away at 5:30, so I'm sure there would have been more," says Lisa Woodruff, human resources manager at Trinity, where workers stuff plastic bags into boxes. "Our job fairs usually attract 50 to 60 [applicants], tops."
One applicant, Austin Shank, 19, went to the job fair because he's tired of working at Dairy Queen near his home in Reedsville. Of the eight children in the Shank family, three work for the ice cream chain, says Austin's mother, Martha Shank, as she sits on Trinity's front lawn and watches her son fill out his application.
"I have another son who's been looking for a job for two years, and he has a master's degree," Martha Shank says. "The jobs he's looking for ain't here. He's thinking of going into the Navy."
Austin is thinking of someplace other than Lewistown.
"If I can get a good enough job somewhere, I'll leave," he says.
Many people who get jobs at Trinity don't stay long, says Eric Goss, 28, who has worked at the plant for five years.
"A lot of people don't last more than a couple of hours," Goss says during a break. "Most don't last more than a week. It's noisy, and it's 20 degrees hotter than it is outside. With 100 percent humidity."
Goss says he has little choice but to weather the conditions. He's paid at top scale, $12.13 an hour, or $25,200 a year.
"Ain't too bad," Goss says. "Can't find anything else."
That's essentially the same reason Nicholas Seaholtz, 26, is filling out his application in his parked car. He drove to the job fair with his girlfriend, Ashley Druckemiller, 18, from their nearby hometown of Milroy. They left their infant son, Cole, in the care of his grandparents.
"I'll take whatever I can get, really," Seaholtz says. "It really doesn't matter as long as I can get a job."
Seaholtz says he has applied at 15 places since December, when he lost his job as a heavy-equipment operator.
"I think it's about time to move out of this state," he says. "Go out West. Down South. That's what it's coming to."
Rob Postal, president of the Mifflin County Industrial Development Corp., shares Seaholtz's frustration.
"I can understand the long-term benefit of outsourcing," Postal says. "But we don't have an adjustment for the short-term problems that are occurring. I understand that cheaper labor helps companies, but short-term, we're hurting."
Unlike other parts of Pennsylvania, including Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, "we don't have the service and government jobs to pick up the slack from the manufacturing losses," Postal says. "We're not replacing these jobs lost in manufacturing with other jobs. Those jobs that do come, the wages are not going to be the same."
Feeling the pain:
Other businesses in town are experiencing the trickle-down effect of outsourcing, consolidation and downsizing.
Revenue at Lewistown Florist is down 20 percent from a year ago, owner Mark Lawson says. He describes the current economic slump as the worst he's seen in the 24 years he has run the store.
"It's a lack of jobs," Lawson says. "People have no money to spend, and it's not getting better. Everybody feels it."
The opening of a Wal-Mart just outside Lewistown a decade ago didn't help matters, Lawson says, because it "also took business away" from downtown merchants.
"We're getting by," Lawson says while standing behind the counter of his shop, where he's surrounded by colorful flower arrangements and a caged bird but no customers. "Hopefully, something will turn around here."
Business is only slightly better at Henry's Subs & Suds, where two patrons sip beers in the otherwise empty bar.
"It's been like this for a while now," bartender Denise Fultz says. "Every week it gets worse. There's nothing in this town, and the people who are here don't have money."
Every once in awhile, road-construction crews who live outside of Lewistown stop in for beers after working on the highway widening project at routes 322 and 22.
Those workers brighten the atmosphere, Fultz says. "They come in, carry on and talk about sex."
When local residents do stop in, the conversations are "basically about how bad it sucks here," she says.
Gerald Hummel, president of the Greater Lewistown Corp., sees the town as half-full, not half-empty. He points to the highway expansion and the presence of Wal-Mart, or "Wally World," as the locals call it, as examples of growth, not decay, and says the region's access to rail service can attract business.
"The core stuff is here," Hummel says. "What isn't here is anybody's attention" to the area's potential.
Hummel's office is one of several county offices in the space formerly occupied by a Danks department store, which closed eight years ago. The 54,000-square-foot building had been vacant until four years ago.
The recent spate of plant closings follows years of other departures. Rite Aid moved out of town, as did three discount stores -- Murphy's, Kresge's and McCrory's. The Bon-Ton is still in town, Hummel says with pride.
But Hummel doesn't try to hide the obvious, that losses outweigh the gains in Lewistown. He escorts a visitor outside and glances across the parking lot at the latest reminder of that imbalance, the idled Mann Edge Tool building.
"What's happened here has taken place over so many years, it does not strike anyone as being dramatic," he says.
Plenty of volunteers:
Back at the recruiting center, Army Sgt. Joshua Ochs, 31, has no trouble finding volunteers, despite the rising death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"They know we're capable of doing more for them than Lewistown can," Ochs says while waiting with his latest recruits for the shuttle bus.
Some people join because "they just want to do their part" for the country, says Ochs, who speaks in short, crisp sentences and wears a closely cropped crewcut. Others join because "there's nothing to do in this town," he says.
The shuttle pulls up, and Frymyer lingers in a long group hug with her family members, who are crying.
Ochs, standing to the side, ends the goodbyes.
"Let's go," he says.
As Frymyer rides off to boot camp, her stepsister, Tabitha Campbell, 13, issues a warning to no one in particular.
"If she gets hurt over there," she says, "we'll go over and nuke 'em."
Well I've seen picture of my grandfather in new Fords from that time. Although he made his best money during WWII as I recall.
But Kerry is going to do nothing economically for them on these issues - unless they want to be on public assistance. true, they may vote for him because he is the "other guy", but not because he has any affirmative message on this.
Do the political math, should there ne a ruthless race to the bottom? What will be the political and social fallout from this? Do you want socialized medicined and a bigger welfare state than ever before because of the votes of the displaced workers and imported labor?
Ahh, but I'm not whining. Rather, I'm working to change attitudes and perceptions.
Start a business.
No thank you. My present employment pays me enough to buy my needs, along with a number of luxuries.
Move to a state with a better tax and regulatory environment.
Texas is a notably business friendly state. I see no reason to move.
Figure out how to automate your industry to make labor rate arbitrage irrelevent.
I could. But that wouldn't do my fellow Americans much good.
Act like a conservative, not a union socialist.
Act like a conservative, you say? Do you mean someone who believes in the constitution, someone who supports the views of some of our greatest presidents? If that's what you mean, my opposition to free traitors is fully conservative.
On the other hand, the free traitors are those who follow the teachings of Bill Clinton, father of the WTO - and who would betray U.S. sovereignty by sending American jobs to communist China.
I suggest that you act like a conservative, not a U.N. globalist that seeks to destroy the U.S.
Upper Roxborough (above Parker Ave.), and Roxborough proper (Ridge Ave. to Fairmount Park) is reliably Republican. Santourm and Fisher carried these areas in 2000. You could actually carve a nice Republican legislative district out of Roxborough, East Falls, and Chestnut Hill. Unfortunately, they are split up among 3 or 4 Democrat dominated districts.
Be sure to give that photo of Eugene Debs taped to your monitor a kiss for me before you go beddie-by tonight.
It's funny how people (like Willie Green??) see only doom and gloom in a Bush economy where the unemployment is 5.6 percent and falling.
Yet, back in the mid-1990s, with exactly the same unemployment rate of 5.6 percent, many were raving about the great economy. So much so that people refused to rock the boat by giving the boot to Clinton.
Perceptions are a funny thing. I live in Southeast Pennsylvania and I find the economy to be execptionally strong, almost to the point it is over-amping.
No kidding? They were all welfare hacks last I was there.
Thanks for the update.
It all depends on where you are, and what industry. Some places are really hurting. I guess that's how it's been forever.
You are thinking of the couple of apartment complexes now filling with Section 8 and the like. The surrounding homeowners out vote them.
btt
I have no great love for Chinese products or the government factories that produce them. Consider, however, that there are a few of you on FR who are out there practicing knee-jerk protectionism, and making it sound as though trade is a bad thing in general. You should aim your shots precisely rather than attacking all offshore activities with a broad brush. Otherwise, your generalizations and exaggerations will be little different those used by the liberal bloggers and propogandists like Michael Moore.
Think about it.
The Democrats approach to business: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."---Ronald Reagan
If it faces competition, make broad generalizations and whine.---Free Traitor Posters on FR
Hmmmm.... "butt of the Poconos"? Wellsboro isn't even _in_ the Poconos. It's up in the Rt. 6 corridor, running along the mid-top of the state.
Having said that, being from southwestern Connecticut (just above "The Gold Coast"), I think rural Pennsylvania offers a welcome change for someone looking to get away from "liberal suburbia". Indeed, Wellsboro is one of the towns to which I'm considering retiring, when that time comes in a few more years.
I've been to Lewistown, too, as I have a friend in Beaver Springs, not that far away. Indeed, I rented a small apartment in Montgomery, a few miles north, back in 1987, but didn't stay (was trying to relocate to another part of the railroad, actually glad I didn't do it, because I'd be working for the Nazi Subdivision [NS] if I had). I don't see why others call the place a dump... just another small Pennsylvania town. Go about 10 miles west up Rt. 45 to Mifflinburg, and it's like something out of a picture book: beautiful old-time town.
Compared to suburban Connecticut -- overcrowded, cultured, fabublously wealthy, and fabulously EXPENSIVE -- to me, the small towns of rural Pennsylvania _are_ "the better life" I'm seeking in retirement. A much more conservative "attitude", as well. And... since the folks there don't have lots of cash to be throwing around, I doubt you'll see many illegal Mexicans mowing lawns, or doing much of anything else. Nothing for them to do there. Conversely, here in my Connecticut city, there are numerous "illegal immigrant hotels" - houses with 30 people in them and a dozen cars parked outside - within a few doors of my home in this not-so-long-ago-nice neighborhood.
I'm sensing that there are many other boomer-age folks who feel as I do: that, when the time comes, they're going to entertain migrating from "high cost" areas into "lower cost" ones. All these currently-depressed small towns, are going to find new roles: as havens for those who are sick of progressive society, and are fleeing towards places where they can recapture the spirit of times past, such as the 50's and early 60's when they were growing up...
Cheers!
- John
He didn't raise wages, he offered a bonus. For that bonus he owned your asp. He controlled who you associated with, what you drank, when you went to church, whether you gambled, what you said to your wife, what language you spoke at home. Even at that, the bonuses were eliminated with the depression.
Even with the bonus Americans wouldn't take the jobs. His workforce came from eastern Europe and the deep south. Hank needed workers and the blacks in the south needed work. You could have drawn a line at Mason-Dixon and said that anyone who crosses this line is ILLEGAL and still they would have come. On many lines English was a rarity. He did force his workers to take English classes.
You cannot repeal the laws of economics.
The jobs are popping up all around it.. Lock Haven, Williamsport, Lewisburg, State College.
Jesus.
Right, I think we heard about those in the article and the discussion. You must be one of those guys who thinks it equity to rob a guy of a diamond and point to where he might find a dirty penny.
No, I don't care to do that. But since you are so fond of the U.N. globalist agenda and free traitin' in general, you should print out a picture of Bill Clinton and worship him. His ideals are a perfect template for free traitors everywhere.
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