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Chase City has so much to offer but every attempt to exploit assets already here is met with a stony silence or yet another can't do response, telling the questioner of the many attempts that have failed. One can see for ones-self the dozen or more businesses, stores and restaurants that have failed in the last five years.
Half or more were due to a lack of sufficiently attractive merchandizing, but others through no fault of the operators but of greedy landlords and a government caused business unfriendly climate. It seems that if you want only an okay from government you had better bring fistfuls of state and federal money, showing what a thief you are, taking taxpayer money for your private venture---promising to bring jobs for it.
Trying to do honest business is a downer.
One of our great assets seldom used is the R. E. Lee Auditorium. Your correspondent has been to several musical productions in surrounding towns when he would rather stay in Chase City for them. Our theater is bigger and better than the others. Yet we have only occasional local productions that, in spite of large numbers of really talented---some of them famous--- local musicals, are mostly either karaoke performances or embarrassingly amateurish.
Chase City once hosted statewide folk music competitions. Yes, Chase City. Why it went away I don't know. I am sure I will hear. It would take a lot of effort to put us on the map again---but between both the Estes Center ballroom and the R. E. Lee Auditorium---with a number of people working on it--- we could host Bluegrass and Old Time Country and Gospel music and do a much better job than, say, speed ticket happy Clarksville.
It would help other local attractions like the Macallum More Museum and Gardens as well. A couple of rich guys could buy main street property, like they did in fomerly dead Gordonsville and with the Buckingham Branch Railroad we could even have excursion trains --- like they do in Dillwyn. Another rich dude could build a replica of the long, and stupidly, town down railroad station which could house offices and shops.
We are blessed with a five excellent roads into town, a railroad, lots of water for the big, government financed, industry that will never come here, a good climate, and some of the nicest people in the world. All we need is a creative and positive spirit.
And get that stupid old hotel that burned down after only five years' operation off our town masthead! It has been gone over 100 years! No one can even tell me where it was!
Oh, and junk news?
I just "junked" from email my favorite national newspaper, The Washington Times "24/7" --- separate from its regular newspaper.
Why? I am tired of news "articles" barely two paragraphs long that tell the reader next to nothing. Sound bites. The curious reader then has to search and search trying to find more information. But due to the soundbite, Twitter, epidemic seldom are real stories found out there except in foreign news sources.
Except for local news right here in Chase City and environs. The local weeklies may be the only sources of real reporting anymore----other than sensational murder stories and scandals involving entertainment idiots no intelligent American cares about.
Have a nice day!
Mike Smith
Chase City
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