Thank God There’s No Good News.

This was the main street in Turners Falls, MA yesterday around 12 noon. Turners Falls is a crummy, old red-brick factory town which is trying to reproduce itself as a weekend destination, particularly during leaf-peeping times.

The town, which sits alongside where the Connecticut River makes a hard left and then a hard right before it flows down past Springfield and on into Connecticut, had several factories which used the water to provide steam power to run the machines which produced cheap table settings and was known in the olden days as the ‘cutlery town.’

Then along came World War II, and the factories switched from forks, knives and spoons to some kind of military supplies. Then after the war along came the Japanese and now the Chinese who produce the table settings sold in Wal Mart and that was the end of Turners Falls.

So, the town sat there slowly collapsing for fifty or so years, and in that respect, was typical of every other red-brick factory town in New England and throughout the United States. Until a few years ago, the only retail establishment that did any business in Turners Falls was the Salvation Army consignment store which occupies the space that used to be occupied by a supermarket until it went bust.

Want to buy food for the dinner table? You can always get some Spam and potato chips at the…