MAY 2016 • NEBRASKAland 63
It's much the same with small towns
– slowly dying. Buildings rotting and
decaying. Towns that once had three
service stations, a feed-and-seed store,
a car dealership, two grocery stores,
hardware store, lumberyard and other
businesses sold just about everything
small-town people and farmers or
ranchers needed. And now the towns
have a bank, tavern, and convenience
store. Even the main street buildings
are neglected. There is no new paint.
The building's protective shells are
wearing away as an act of erosion. The
structure of the building is starting to
fail – soaked by years of rain and snow
and sun. Big black carpenter ants chew
studs into pulp. Nails that once held
the frame together are rusted down to
hardly anything. Box elder bugs gather
on September days where there is rot
around windows and doors. Basking in
the last warmth of summer, probing for
a breach in the wall so they can move
inside for the winter.
Once, almost every small town had
a crib-style wooden grain elevator
protected by sheet-metal exteriors.
If they did not perish in a fire they
were invincible against the weather
and aging. But once one nail and then
another rusted and the corner of one of
the metal sheets opened a small gap,
the wind relentlessly pried, pried until
another nail and another nail gave free
and eventually the sheet was shed. And
then another sheet. And then another
sheet, exposing the stacked two-by-
eights or two-by-sixes to rain and rot.
