Looking for a Partner
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union LOOKING FORA PARTNER BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Oberlin, Kansas The most thoroughly thumbed book in and around Oberlin— a town of 2,300 set tidily amid the wheat fields of...
...That's because lots of old farmers keep moving into town," Lohoefener says...
...They may not perform the same functions as previously...
...We've got the list down to about 500 categories," Kempf says...
...For the most part, those hopes have neither been dashed nor fulfilled—they have simply been suspended...
...Although most Oberliners tend to view economic development efforts as capitalistic rather than cooperative, in their initial stages those efforts have assumed a distinctly communal appearance...
...In 1980 citizens added the "Tumbleweed Express," featuring a six-foot high locomotive, two gondola cars and a caboose...
...Rural sociologists like the Floras, meanwhile, see in Oberlin a narrow beam of hope for small communities already written off by mainstream scholars and policymakers...
...The people of Oberlin believe that somewhere among those myriad classifications there lurks at least one commercial category that is just right for their town...
...Multiplecommunitymembers put up relatively equal amounts that were enough to form a solid investment, but not enough to force one to leave town broke if the venture did not pay off...
...They really believe in their town," Kempf marvels...
...Volunteers laid the tracks...
...It's called a targeted industry study," says Jerry Kempf, "andit's where every small community needs to start...
...Internal Revenue Service...
...but somehow they stay in there for census after census...
...In addition to all the commercial activity, Oberlin boasts a still-intact K-12 school system as well as a 26-bed hospital that has just been remodeled to the tuneof $1.7 million...
...But one of these days we're going to run out of retiring farmers...
...Most seem befogged in nostalgia...
...In between those enterprises the citizens found other ways to keep busy...
...Up to now, of course, it's all been a piece of cake...
...All it contains are listings of more than 10,000 business and job categories, ranging from atom smasher to zoo keeper...
...It's a superlooking little town...
...The trick is to find it...
...More recently the residents built a factory and began turning out small boats and fiberglass trailers designed to float...
...They tend to " look to the past, often a past that assumes mythical virtues, rather than to seek and apply knowledge about current conditions that affect the community...
...In times like these, just slowing the retreat may be counted as a victory of sorts...
...So Kempf and the Oberlin citizens' committees may be in a race with economic time—with the gradual slipping away of family agriculture—as they hunt through the Standard Industrial Classification Code in search of a perfect matchup...
...For better or worse, the town has gotten itself involved in all manner of commercial dreams and schemes, starting with a citizen-owned television station in the 1950s that almost went bust...
...The overall county population of 4,800 has dropped about 10 per cent during the execrable '80s, though the town has held its own...
...The hospital is the county's largest employer...
...Believe me, I've tried both those gimmicks and I can tell you they're not the way to economic development.' The idea behind the study is to broker a love match between the town and some suitable industry...
...As in thousands of other small Midwest communities, Oberlin's once-solid agricultural base has been steadily eroding...
...Department of Agriculture...
...Kempf, a vice-president of the Sunflower Electric Power Corporation (a cooperative), has been shuttling the 120 miles between Oberlin and his home base in Hays, Kansas, helping Oberliners get their entrepreneurial act together...
...They prevail," he said, "despite most people's efforts to write them off...
...Certainly the investments have created fewer jobs than had been anticipated...
...In 1971 the demographer Glenn V. Fuguitt, having "studied small towns and villagesforanumberofyears," paid tribute to their remarkable knack for surviving...
...Innone of these cases was there any single major investor," note Cornelia and Jan Flora, two rural sociologists who have been drawn to Oberlin in order to learn what keeps it hopeful and unwearied despite so many disappointments...
...The farm crisis has been rough on Decatur County, as it has on all of Kansas, which lost more than 5,000 farms between 1982 and 1987...
...Individual donations and a $2,000 bank loan got things started with a Ferris wheel, pony rides and locally constructed kiddy rides and game booths...
...Sure, people hoped to get theirmoney back, but mainly they hoped to improve the economy...
...The feeling was we were investing in the community," says Gregg Lohoefener, a local financial consultant who helped raise $315,000 to start the boatworks...
...Yet there it is, alive and kicking and looking forward to the next century...
...Civic pride, alas, has sometimes led to civic disaster...
...As Jerry Kempf points out, "That's a lot of money for most folks...
...Remarkably, just about everyone in the county at one time or another has chipped in with money, time and imagination...
...they may even lose considerable population...
...The boats were elegant, according to one observer, but the trailers "looked awful and dragged like a dead hog...
...The future of small communities is not foreordained," insist the Floras in a paper prepared for the U.S...
...It still shows films at least four nights a week...
...Individual investments in the bus and boat projects, for instance, ran between $500 and $2,000...
...Theneatly clipped lawns, the awnings on the storefronts downtown...
...It may still be possible for " entrepreneurial communities" like Oberlin to control their own destinies—that is, to find a raison d'être beyond farming...
...It is the Standard Industrial Classifications Code, a thick, plotless volume published by the U.S...
...That idea didn't pan out either...
...States of the Union LOOKING FORA PARTNER BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Oberlin, Kansas The most thoroughly thumbed book in and around Oberlin— a town of 2,300 set tidily amid the wheat fields of northwest Kansas— is neither the Farmer's Almanacnor The Road Less Traveled...
...But after all was said and done, only the carnival could be counted a financial success...
...Everything's freshly swept and clean...
...They opened a large feedlot, built a dairy (700 cows), launched a bus manufacturing company, inaugurated an annual, area-wide carnival sponsored by the Decatur County Chamber of Commerce, and salvaged a defunct movie theater on Main Street...
...In truth, few of the contributors expected their dollars to "pay off " in any sense other than civic...
...Some of the money may go to assist the movie theater, called the Sunflower Cinema, which reopened in 1977 after citizens spent more than $80,000 refurbishing the building...
...Not with a brochure about how terrific the to wn is, and certainly not with a 12-minute video...
...It was eventually sold to Wichita investors...
...Along with their neighbors in surrounding Decatur County, these folks have spent at least four decades beating back the tide of economic decline in the farmbelt—or, as Randall Braden, the editor of the weekly Oberlin Herald, has put it, "struggling to keep our little community together into the next century...
...To demonstrate his point, Fuguitt cited a newspaper headline he had seen recently: "Small Town Dies, But Life Goes On...
...Rural arithmetic, a Minnesota friend once told me, holds that "two-plus-two had better equal five, 'cause it sure as hell don't equal four...
...they may in fact serve as little more than population nodes...
...It's been quite a struggle...
...The homegrown carnival sprouted in 1973 as a wholesome alternative to traveling road shows with their "shady characters...
...But to local citizens, ever hopeful of luring new businesses to town, the drab columns make for powerful literature...
...And there's no money tree in Oberlin...
...They consider it a privilege to uve there...
...Now comes the really tough part...
...But even such loyal fans as the Floras concede that few small towns have awakened to their peril, much less to their opportunities...
...It is a form of rural arithmetic...
...All the projects started by the town are still going, though the majority of them under new auspices and in more modest guises than the citizenry may havewished...
...What the sociologists have in mind is nothing less than "the integration of rural communities into a global economy as relatively self-sufficient and equal players...
...For Oberlin, life begins inside people'sheads...
...Last August the carnival set another revenue record, grossing more than $37,000...
...As Lohoefener says, reflecting Oberlin's characteristic mood of wry optimism, "We're not getting ahead, but I wouldn't say we were going backwards too fast...
...Not that the local citizens need encouragement...
...Indeed, by most economists' slide-rule measures the town no longer has reason to exist...
...You can tell right away there's something special about the place," he goes on...
...Oberlin's stubborn boosterism is not unusual, at least not on the Plains...
Vol. 72 • October 1989 • No. 15
