This is not a diary about mental health, but it might well be. It’s not even about kids, though it really is, under the surface.
If you live in Detroit, as I do, shopping is a commute. Two trips, one yesterday, one last week, made me think a lot about what’s happening in this economy.I decided to share what I saw.
Yesterday. My husband and I walked through a mall in the Detroit area, a newer one, built in an area swollen with new homes between Detroit and Ann Arbor. There is a big restaurant just inside one entrance. It looks like something out of a cheesy 60’s apocalyptic movie: Christmas decorations are still up; dead, dried up plants left in their jardinieres; salt and sugar on the tables; stacks of napkins and silverware are on the bar. All covered with a thick layer of dust.
I can imagine a fax coming in that last day: We are declaring bankruptcy. Close at once.
Many store fronts are closed. Others are empty, or covered with a “coming soon” sign. The largest group of people in the mall are older mall-walkers, and this is a weekend evening, when shoppers are usually filling area malls. There had been two anchoring department stores. One is still going, but the other has closed. That store is dead, along with all of its kind. The middle of the mall is filling with small stands, the kind which in NYC would be shopping carts. At one end, 150 chairs are lined up and a sign advertises Singer X, Country Music Star, will be entertaining there soon. As a sometime follower of country music, I have never heard of this person.
The mall itself reminded us of a tiny mall we once frequented in Muscatine, Iowa. The town was a pretty little spot for tourism, but when riverboat gambling came in, many small local business were driven out of business. And then the gambling left. The little town (and its mall), had not recovered after 5 years, might never do so.
Right now, Michigan seems like that.
Last week. I was buying food at a mega-store, and saw small groups of shoppers huddled and talking. They were here and there in the store as I pushed my cart around, not what I usually see on a Saturday afternoon shopping trip, my least favorite time to buy groceries. Snatches of conversation leaked out:
“They’re going to declare bankruptcy. . . this may be our last big shopping trip before the pink slip. . . all of our retirement is in their stock. . .pension protection? XXXXit!. . .not with bankruptcy.”
The last time I saw people huddled and talking in stores was on 9/11. Were they talking about Dana Corp? (Dana is our latest bankruptcy, see KlatooBaradaNikto’s diary)? Could be. Every second or third business here in SE Michigan is tied to the auto industry.
I don’t know what is going to happen in this state, but it is a harbinger of things to come across the country.