Reason Cecil’s Grocery, Part 2

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part series that was originally published in the September 26, 2016, issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com

I am now 69 and have gone to Barnes since my first haircut. My two sons and one of my grandsons got their first haircuts there, too. I have always said the  problems of the country could be solved better in Barnes Barber Shop than in Congress.

Not far from Burlington were other businesses owned and operated by locals, such as Parker Esso (later Exxon), Sherrod Amoco, Troutman’s Grocery, and Sonners Drug Store.

Now, only Barnes Barber Shop survives, down from five barbers to 85-year-old Ernie Barnes and his daughter, Debbie. All the empty stores now front on Martin Luther King Blvd., formerly McCalla Avenue.

Blaine Farmer, who owned and operated the hardware store, was always helpful and friendly. When you would buy some nails (or anything else), he would always say, “That will be about 60 cents” (or some other figure). The price was always less than you expected and always an even number. I wonder how he settled up his sales taxes with the state.

What happened in Burlington and East Knoxville happened all over the country. Our government grew bigger, more dictatorial, less personal, and more removed from control by the people; businesses grew bigger, less personal, and customers had to deal with people in India or some other foreign country when there was a problem.

Government contracts, tax breaks, and favorable regulatory rulings usually went to the biggest companies. Almost every industry, especially if it was highly regulated by the federal government, ended up in the hands of a few giant corporations.

There was a time when a man could start almost any small business, and while he might not have gotten rich, he could at least make a decent living.

A poor man could start a gas station, but now it would cost him a small fortune. Last year, a principal at a South Knoxville elementary school told me, “Congressman, you would not believe all the permits and regulations my husband and I had to go through to open a one-man sign shop.”

The Democrats in Congress passed the Dodd-Frank law several years ago, supposedly to rein in the big banks that caused the recent Great Recession. Since then, the five largest banks have doubled their percentage of total U.S. deposits from roughly 22 percent to over 44 percent, and several hundred small banks have gone out of business. I have been told it is almost impossible for a bank to survive now if its deposits total less than a billion dollars.

Government regulators have an easier time (and feel more important) dealing with one giant business than with 100 small or medium-sized ones. And only giant firms can afford the staff necessary to keep up with the thousands of rules and regulations.

We now live in a country where most of the businesses in the fashionable areas of almost every city are the same. Ours is a computerized, impersonal world, and perhaps it can’t be turned around.

But the great interest in buying more locally grown food is encouraging. It will be a long, slow, difficult process, but I hope we can begin to make our country kinder, more humane, and less impersonal.

Those in government could and should lead the way by reducing power at the distant federal level and placing more things under local control. We need more leaders who will try to make it much easier for businesses like Reason Cecil’s Grocery and Blaine Farmer’s Hardware to survive.

While this article was published in Chronicles Magazine eight years ago, it is even more applicable today. Government actions during the COVID scandal caused several hundred thousands of small businesses to go under (and several Big Pharma executives to become billionaires). Liberals continue to make the federal government bigger and more bureaucratic. This is great for the biggest businesses in every industry but very harmful to small business and the little guy. Millions started “working” at home, spending even more time on their computers and

less time in face-to-face meetings. Social media has, in some ways, become very anti-social. We need to move in a kinder, more humane direction, becoming more of a front porch nation instead of one that gives even more control to a distant, very impersonal government.

-John J. Duncan Jr.