Living in a "good neighborhood" can mean many different things to many different people. For me it's more about what else can be found in that neighborhood. Not so much the people The places really. The way neighborhoods look in our country has changed a lot in my lifetime. A good neighborhood will have some very specific things. Many of those things are hard to find, because they're located as a conglomerate in one central location, or just don't exist at all. It is neighborhoods, and what they have or do not have, that is on my mind for this episode.
On My Mind is complaining about my neighborhood's deficiencies.
Looking for a hardware store, it's a 20 minute drive one way. Liquor store, I don't even know where to go I've made the trip before (looking for creme de mint for the subscription episode). So a "quality" neighborhood has certain things……… gas stations, markets, restaurants, a "local", dry cleaner and alteration, auto repair shop, a movie theater, pharmacy, banks/atm, barbershop/hairdresser….. lesser things like a jewelry store, watch repair, sporting goods, how about a cobbler or a haberdashery?!?!?.. specialty sorts of things are nice.
Much is taken over by the big grocery stores, they deal in meat, produce, baked goods, even a hardware section and pharmacy. In smaller communities it's the Walmart that carries the entire load of anything, anyone would want. For decades, in urban areas, there was a speciality shop for everything.. walk out the door and turn one way or the other to a bakery, butcher shop, produce market, hardware… whatever. Society got mobile, went to the suburbs and became more spread out, our needs went from a short walk to a short drive…… spreading way out more as time goes by. Specialty stores (mom and pop) went to the wayside. Big became better.
And neighborhoods changed as a result while the automobile became indispensable. Demand determines supply, so as the demand for local neighborhood "things", like liquor stores and hardware stores diminished, so did the number of such neighborhood things. I grew up a suburb kid, but as I can recall our neighborhood was well stocked with easily accessable and neccessary stores, markets, and such.
I guess mail order, like the behemoth Amazon will only exasserbate the issue. I hesitate to say problem, because for people other than me, it doesn't seem to be a problem. I guess I could of gotten Creme De' Mint delieverd to me from somewhere.
So, yes, I do miss the good ole' neighborhood. I'm sure that concept is gone the way of the woolly mammoth, gone and never to return.
On “Mindset for Happiness” the topic is how important discipline is to achieving our goals.
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