I don't remember the huge store/warehouse type establishments we have now, where your kids can gorge themselves on fast food, you can file your taxes, get new tires, or have an eye exam, all while shopping......and to be honest, I don't know that all these options are any better. Yes, such features keep us contained inside one building longer, so we spend more money, but we still don't have conversations or friendly interactions with the actual owners of stores as we once did. Then again, were those things really "better"?
I'm going to say YES, they were. I loved places where my somewhat shy immigrant father could find common ground with local store owners or with the people who worked there, spend half an hour in conversation. I thought it was cool that my parents occasionally met folks with similar interests who then turned into friends, tennis partners, fellow hikers, etc. I liked thinking there would be familiar faces behind the counter each time we walked in. One day, years after moving away from my hometown (city), I returned home and ran errands for my parents, which took me back to the same hardware store of my childhood, and to see the same family still running it and remembering MY family made me tear up with the familiarness of it all. (there was also that heartbreak a few years later, when I returned to that same place, and driving around the corner realized with a sickening jolt the hardware store was bulldozed and just over to the left stood a massive chain building). ðŸ˜
But those people; connections; the fierce loyalty of my father who loved returning to places where good service was the norm.....they were the soul of our existence and human engagement. I don't know what it would be like to grow up now, without those anchors and pillars of stability and warmth and friendship I remember....and those are things I mourn over, for the younger generations. They simply will never have that close-knit bond with real people in their neighborhoods, store owners who become friends, the easy give and take of comfortable interactions, the places you could point out and recommend with pride.
Yes, i think we were "better" then....a little richer perhaps, for having known actual humans. I don't choose independently owned businesses now out of any sense of guilt or obligation; I choose them because the make our world and this corner of the USA a better place to live. I just hope we can keep some of these people in business and employed, because the vast and barren landscape of today isn't nearly as warm or pleasant.
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