They cut the ribbon on a hot morning at the edge of town, out where the cotton used to be. The mayor had a pair of scissors the size of hedge clippers, and the company sent a young man in a pressed shirt who said our town had the kind of values his employers were looking for. I believed him. I still do.
In my part of the world, when a new family moves onto the road, you carry over a pie. That is just manners. So when a company of that size decided to build among us, the town did what any good neighbor would do. We brought a pie. It was a large pie. We gave them the land for very little, and we built the road out to the gate, and we told them they would not have to pay much of anything toward the schools for a good long while. Some people called that a giveaway. I call it hospitality.
What strikes me is how gracious they were about it. They could have gone to the next county over, and they told us so, more than once, during the negotiations. The next county had pies of its own. But they chose us. They took the land and the road and the years without a tax bill, and they did not complain once. That is the mark of a good neighbor. They knew how to receive.
Now, I have heard the grumbling at the feed store. The school board had to tighten its belt the same year the plant opened. The clinic in town still has a doctor only part of the week. A woman I know asked why the town could find money for a road to a warehouse and not for a road to the cemetery. I understand her. But you do not hold back a pie because your own kitchen is a little bare. That is not how neighbors behave.
And think of the jobs. There are good people out there now, on the night shift and the day shift, and they are grateful to have the work. Some of them were working before the plant came, at other places that have since closed, but that is the nature of progress. A great company draws the life out of a town into itself, the way a big tree draws the water. You do not cut down the tree for that. You admire how tall it grows.
People forget that a corporation does not have to choose anybody. It has no hometown. It has no grandmother buried here. It could be anywhere, and it chose to be with us, for as long as the terms are good. If that is not generosity, I do not know what is.
When I fill in my ballot this fall, I will mark it for the Republican for Senate, so that towns like ours keep the freedom to bake that pie. I gather the other side wants companies of that size to pay their share toward the schools and the clinic, and I can think of nothing more embarrassing than handing a guest a bill.
We gave them everything we had, and they were kind enough to take it.
D. M.