Upstate New York seems to have enjoyed a relatively higher level of living some 20 years ago. Since that time, during my life, the community has been in a steady economic and social decline.

My generation and many of those raised locally in the last two decades were greatly influence by that collapse.

I remember the tumbling of Oxford store fronts and the not-so-spectacular rise of Wal-Mart. I barely remember the small businesses like Oxford Video. I remember them struggling. I didn’t really assimilate the true impact of things at the time, but I remember the disappearance of childhood friends, forced to relocate.

Before we had a county with two maximum security prisons and a Wal-Mart, there was Procter & Gamble and Victory Markets. In Oxford, just about everyone I know is employed by the state, either through the school district or Veterans’ Home.

They say that an early indicator of global warming can be detected by the melting of the ice caps. I have often wonder if perhaps upstate New York and other rural areas are preliminary indicators of increasing economic depravity on a larger scale.

This is all I have ever really known and so it can be difficult for me to even imagine my hometown any other way. The effects have unfortunately been a more pessimistic and far less enthusiastic view of the local affairs.