A once busy corner in Birch Tree, MO.































Going to a small town can be a trip into our cultural past. Look at this Coke ad painted on the brick wall in downtown Birch Tree, Missouri. In my section of the Ozarks, there are many backwater villages that were once more vibrant. Life back then was much more local than it is today. Every “Main Street” was lined with merchant’s shops selling goods and services that are now bought at the chain discount store out on the highway or perhaps in a neighboring town. Once the “Farm to Market” roads (paved in the early part of the last century to “ . . . get Missouri out of the mud”) carried agricultural products to the town and shoppers to downtown (on Friday or Saturday) to buy the few dry goods and groceries needed to supplement what was produced on the homestead farm. Perhaps a trip to the shoe repair place was needed to re-sole a pair of work boots or Sunday-go-to-meeting dress shoes. Maybe there was a trip to the two-seat barber shop. The downtown was a going thing, and definitely a place to window shop, perhaps at the local Woolworth, Ben Franklin, or Newberry’s.

I remember people seriously discussing whether or not the new-fangled shopping center that was going in at my town would “go over.” Go over it did, driving one of the earliest nails in the coffin of old town. I think the thing that really did it in, however, was the production of better automobiles and the rising expectations of the younger generations. The intensely local way of life with all its close-knit and traditional ways died a natural death with the arrival of mass media, reliable personal transportation, and the decreasing viability of the small family farm. There was also the ages old story of changing trade routes. When passenger trains were no longer a primary means of transportation, the local depot either closed or only opened for a few stops a week.

There’s no going back to a simpler time, and I have a feeling that it wouldn’t be all that simple anyway. We are products of our own time, and that’s where we fit. Truth to tell, there never was a “golden age.” The past is a wonderful place to visit because it tells us where we came from. But we can’t live there even if we want to.
The next time your travels lead you to one of these small towns, take the time to look around and imagine what it was like for the people who built and inhabited it. It may tell you a story worth the contemplation.