Oh, c'mon anny. Pittsburgh and Philly are okay. I always enjoyed visiting those cities.
But economically speaking, Pittsburgh faced the same thing Cleveland did. So it's not surprising.
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."
What the hell. Is Lewistown the only city in PA? Philadelphia, Pittsburh, Harrisburg (those are the only PA cities I can think of) have to be a lot closer than Iraq or Trashkanistan.
Having lived in large cities in PA, Pittsbutgh, Reading, Philadelphia. Iraq may indeed be preferable.
The problem is not jobs leaving the country, it is not capital equipment leaving the country, the problem is not intellectual property leaving the country, the problem is not contracts going to communistic/fascistic/socialistic government run countries that prop up their companies with government funds to defer losses that the US companies cannot compete against...
THE PROBLEM IS YOUR ATTITUDE ABOUT IT!! JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THINGS WILL GET BETTER AND THEY WILL!
But then, I'm not exactly Mr. Geography.
One of the things that most people don't seem to understand is that it is damn near impossible to employ large numbers of people in manufacturing unless they are willing to settle for a standard of living that is substantially lower than that of most Americans. That's always the way it's been, and it will always be so . . . if you are going to make widgets in a factory, you have to be selling them to people who can afford to buy them. And you probably won't be able to afford them yourself.
Oh, c'mon anny. Pittsburgh and Philly are okay. I always enjoyed visiting those cities.
But economically speaking, Pittsburgh faced the same thing Cleveland did. So it's not surprising.
Rob, visiting and LIVING there are two different thangs.
Corrupt local pols. Dumb citizenry. Crappy weather. *Sigh* I did ten years of hard time in PA. Sucky roads that under a 500 year plan to get them repaved, etc.
Pittsburgh and Philly have fantastic museums and restaurants, however.
My company is hiring,freepmail me.
Or is there something else your worried about?
Well there's the Peoples Socialist Republic of Maryland:
Nearest city with pop. 50,000+: Frederick, MD (81.7 miles, pop. 52,767).
Nearest city with pop. 200,000+: Baltimore, MD (110.8 miles, pop. 651,154).
Nearest city with pop. 1,000,000+: Philadelphia, PA (171.9 miles, pop. 1,517,550).
Now explain to us all why you live in Nevada? And I live in Oklahoma? And Marty lives in California?
That's true.
;-)
I was in Lewistown last week. That is one very bleak place.
They do, however, have terrific baseball program for the kids. Mifflin's 13-year-olds kicked our behinds, and our kids' team is very good.
The auto industry is one of the few industries in which that is the case. That's because automobile manufacturing is a complex process that involves input from a wide array of industries -- including agriculture (for rubber), mining (for coal, iron, nickel, etc.), and manufacturing (for fabrication of steel, plastics, etc.).
Henry Ford was able to pay his assembly line workers enough money to make the products of their work affordable, but only because these workers were simply at the last point in a long line of processes that were carried out by workers who could not afford to buy new cars. The worker on the rubber plantation in the Philippines wasn't driving around in a brand new Ford . . . nor was the coal miner in Scranton, PA . . . or the iron and nickel mines of Canada.
One of the most sobering realities of economics is that people generally must be employed working for people who have a higher standard of living than they do. If you think about it, it's almost obvious . . . you never see a landscaper mowing lawns in modest neighborhoods, do you?
Oops! I apologize. I get called Dianna a lot and it always ticks me.
; )
If you had a two-page map of PA, Lewistown would be right in the crack, right in the middle of the state. My dad was born there, joined the USAF at 17, and got the heck out as soon as he could. I still have relatives in Mifflin County; some people are just unwilling to leave. If they want something better, they gotta go get it, not just sit home and complain!
Atta girl, Tabitha!
I'm sure it is now that the good jobs are all gone. At least they got wally world - right..
I agree that Lewistown is much like many other towns in the vicinity, including Frackville and Shenandoah. Shenandoah, by the way, was at one time the most heavily concentrated population in the United States in terms of persons per square mile.
I don't know about you and Marty,
but back in '82, economic conditions forced me to reluctantly leave Pennsylvania and become a nomad. Since then, I've lived in NC, Md, Ky, Mi and now NV. In fact, my entire family was uprooted at that time and have made similar journeys of their own. Despite being a large family, we no longer have any relatives in Pennsylvania. Everybody is scattered all over the nation. It makes it extremely difficult to get everybody together for family events.
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