Wring Your Hands—Or Move On?

“The town moved on, unlike a lot of other timber dependent towns that are still wringing their hands waiting for it to come back.” Charlie Mitchell was talking about how draconian changes in federal policy in the early 1990s killed their main industry of timber. “In the 60s, 40 to 50% of the employment base was in wood products. There were a couple of dozen plywood and sawmills. Today we only have one plywood mill left with about 180 employees.”

Changes like that are “gut-check times” for towns. It is when they come to a life changing time that they have to make a decision of which path they are going to go down as a town. Too many, sit back hoping that the glory years of yesterday will return. Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days song says it best:

I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was

Chorus:
Glory days well they’ll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days

Well there’s a girl that lives up the block
Back in school she could turn all the boy’s heads
Sometimes on a friday I’ll stop by
And have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband bobby well they split up
I guess it’s two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times,
She says when she feels like crying
She starts laughing thinking about

Chorus

My old man worked 20 years on the line
And they let him go
Now everywhere he goes out looking for work
They just tell him that he’s too old
I was 9 nine years old and he was working at the
Metuchen ford plant assembly line
Now he just sits on a stool down at the legion hall
But I can tell what’s on his mind

Glory days yeah goin back
Glory days aw he ain’t never had
Glory days, glory days

Now I think I’m going down to the well tonight
And I’m going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it
But I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of, well time slips away
And leaves you with nothing mister but
Boring stories of glory days

Chorus (repeat twice)


The turning point for Grants Pass came in 1996 when Master Brand Cabinets, owned by White-Electrolux was down to 130 employees and was planning to close. “We got wind of their potential closing and put together a package to keep them here. We put an Enterprise Zone in place to give them some tax abatements on new additions.” Today they have 700 employees as a division of Fortune Brands, selling custom wood kitchen and bath cabinets under the Thomasville line at Home Depot and other home improvement locations.

Wood products still account for about 1/3 of the 12.5% of the jobs in the manufacturing sector but most of these new jobs are in industries like doors, cabinets and other value added products. Grants Pass has moved beyond the commodity cyclicality of sawmills and plywood plants.

In the last ten years the number of jobs in the county has increased by over 20% as it has gone down the path of a more diversified economy.