Revitalize A Village and Move In Free
(Page 3 of 3)
January/February 1971
By Victor A. Croley
The greatest obstacle to recycling these old homes and deserted towns, of course, is the matter of money and the business of earning a living. If there were now industries and employment opportunities within reasonable distance of such properties, they wouldn't have been abandoned in the first place. If you can figure out a way to bring a little steady cash into one of these communities, you'll probably find that the rest of the recycling will take care of itself. And attracting that seed money may not be as difficult as you think.
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In the west, such famed ghost towns as Central City, Colorado; Deadwood, South Dakota; Tomestone, Arizona and Virginia City, Nevada have managed a measure of recovery by catering to the tourist trade. There are similar opportunities for many other ebbing villages.
The increasing interest in antiques (extending to artifacts of the 20's and 30's and even to milk cans still in use only two or three years ago) indicates that a creative revival of home crafts and handiwork should draw customers ready to swap dollars for butter molds, banjoes, straw dolls, quilts and other down-home products. Indeed, MOTHER NO. 6 reported on the success Don Melvin and his family currently enjoys with their chair caning, wood carving, organ repair and other "old time" home businesses. There are dozens of other interesting and satisfying methods of earning a livelihood (you'll be reading of many more in MOTHER —JS) that do not depend on a "good" location in a large city. Any one of thousands of dying country towns would be an ideal location for such an enterprise.
And wouldn't it be doubly satisfying if your little business—while making possibly a comfortable life in a big, old house for your family—also helped give an entire village a new lease on life?
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