Let me tell you about the time when my little unincorporated community of Chamblissburg hit the big time.
We’re a middle-of-nowhere kind of Virginia community — easily 20 minutes from everywhere that normal folks care about. The curvy roads around the foothills mean that we measure everything in terms of time and not miles. My area is home to a gas station, one diner, a well-pump company, an old feed and supply store that now focuses on tobacco and alcohol, and a handful of churches and auto mechanics.
And, of course, farmers!
Our rolling hills have an abundance of hay and soybean fields, as well as cattle and horse pastures. If you have a couple of hundred acres, you may get a dismissive eyeroll by someone from Illinois or Nebraska, but here in Virginia, you’re likely one of the larger farms. Our machinery just tends to age — sometimes gracefully, sometimes not — so there isn’t a lot of shine on the equipment anymore. (The only ‘shine you’re likely to see in these parts is usually served in a mason jar and will give you a twitch in your eye that’ll last through the weekend.)
Very little activity happens in Chamblissburg. Anyone headed this way from the cities or suburbs is almost certainly just passing through to somewhere more exciting.
But that made the anticipation of new business construction all that much more tingling. In more than 15 years of living here, I couldn’t remember a new business being built. Sure, our old buildings have been repurposed here and there, but nothing from the ground up.
So, when those heavy Caterpillar machines began grading the land along the main road, people were talking. It was the epitome of small-town gossip. Gone was the talk about the weather or what was said at church last Sunday. It was all about what was going in across from the old feed store.
And gossip and speculation was all we had. Sadly, there’s no sign of “local media” anymore, so we weren’t going to learn what was going on from the newspaper or TV stations — not that we were on their radars very much back when local news was a vibrant entity.
Most of us guessed it would be an HVAC company or maybe a plumbing contractor. The ground was leveled, the foundation was laid, and the grayish-white stone structure began to be erected. Ooooh, it could be an HVAC company or another tradesman. The base of the building started like the perfect combination of office and equipment storage that someone could work out of.
But, um, that’s pretty big, isn’t it? And where are the windows? Why on Earth would somebody build a fortress-like structure out here, unless they had something really, really valuable to protect. Jay Leno has his basement full of classic cars in a small town in northern Indiana; is it possible someone like that could be doing something to put our little burg on the map?
And then came the muddy black siding … and we all immediately understood. If you’ve ever felt that weird twinge of anticipation and disappointment coming to blows in your brain, that’s what we were feeling.
If rural America had its own version of Starbucks — you know, a too-frequent chain store that seems to crop up at every turn whether you ask for it or not — it would have to be Dollar General.
Whether you call it an eyesore or an opportunity, Chamblissburg joined nearly 19,000 other communities across the U.S. to have a Dollar General. We had arrived! Though perhaps a century too late, considering most people would say this area departed back when the post office left prior to the Great Depression.
Yet, it really didn’t take long for me to set my cynicism aside. I now only had to drive seven minutes down the road to stock up on Cheerios, Crest, orange juice, batteries, cheese slices, hot dogs, or thank you cards. And this Dollar General even had fresh fruit — apples, grapes, bananas, strawberries (coincidentally, many of which complement moonshine nicely)!
I get that for someone who lives in a college town or a big city, their “wow factor” is on the scale of stadiums, museums, and corporate headquarters. But in areas like mine where you have only a couple of dozen people (or less) per square mile, it’s interesting to be a destination for something — anything — new.
Still, I know we shouldn’t feel too special. Before long, there’ll be another one cropping up, roughly 5.1 miles down the road, and fighting the same staffing shortages that they have here in little ol’ Chamblissburg.
Ryan Tipps is the founder and managing editor of AGDAILY. He has covered farming since 2011, and his writing has been honored by state- and national-level agricultural organizations.
