Nostalgic for when the American Dream wasn't just about money

I grew up in a weird time.

It was the end of one era and the beginning of another. I got to see things that had been in place for decades, if not longer.

The main streets were still populated by little shops and stores. So called "Mom and Pop" shops. Family businesses.

Small grocery stores, shoe stores, upholstery shops, taverns, bars, diners, restaurants, bakeries, auto repair, photography studios, game parlors, the corner drugstores.

I walk down the same streets now and I see empty buildings, national chain stores and still some small businesses. Yet, these new small businesses are different.

Not different in that many are started and run be "minorities". You could go into any neighborhood and find shops particular to the neighborhood going back to the start of the town.

No, I mean that there is a different feel about the new small shops. Like they are waiting to be the next national chain. Except for the maybe one third of them which feel like they are a front for something less 'nice' going on. Run down, unkempt, staffed by surly people. You've walked by them and maybe into them before.

They are missing pride in being a small business. In being a family business.

There are fewer of them out there as the government continually makes laws that favor corporations in taxes and considerations for loans and other considerations related to doing business.

Everyone is looking for the next big pile of money that they think corporations represent.

Have you ever noticed how many people think the American Dream is about accumulation of wealth?

Forget the "old" American Dream. Of being free and having opportunities to be your own person. To do what you believed in with dedication, work and commitment.

That's what the American Dream was. The ability to do it your way, beholden to no religious rules or government micro-management.

These days, everyone seems more concerned about what kind of big payoff they might get by being an investor in a big or soon-to-be-big corporation. Did you know that a corporation is a legal game? It's just a way to remove liability, accountability from the people running the business and who make the decisions. It's an artificial entity, a ghost. The people in charge a removed a step step. They answer only to investors who tell them one thing, "make more money".

The shop, store and other small, family business owners from the past weren't all looking to be rich. They wanted to be comfortable, sure. More importantly though, they wanted something that was theirs.

There is a special sense of pride you ave running a small business. One that comes from not just selling products or services. It comes from being part of something bigger. Community.

That means being responsible for what you do, People knowing you, knowing they could trust you (or maybe not trust you, there were some of those too), not just the company name or the staff members, but they had direct access to you, the business owner.

In so many ways, it seems like those days are gone. I can still see and go in to so many of those small shops from when I was younger. An experience my younger brothers even started to miss out on as I got older. Experiences my own kids likely won't ever really see, unless something changes.

Now, they won't even let people open up a shop in their own neighborhoods where some of the old ones still stand empty. Because the city has changed the rules, wanting to keep residential neighborhoods only residential. Meaning that now instead of running down to the corner or a block or two to get something, you have to go at least a mile in any direction to get something.

More of the city government telling you what to do "for your own good".

I have started a small, family business. It's service oriented and run out of my house and a rented storage facility for now. someday I hope to have a brick and mortar shop though. A place people can come in and ask questions, talk to me or buy some of the items I have to sell that goes along with the services I perform as well.

I want to get one of those closed up, small shops in the neighborhood and open it's doors back up.

To me, that's a dream worth having.