It is always a fun going to a new pool, where I have not coached or visited in many years: see what changes have occurred, new starting blocks, different lane lines, and to check out the record board. It is a peak into history at some places and in others, a way to connect with high performing student-athletes perhaps All-Americans or Olympians, who may have competed there in the past.
This evening coaching a high school swim meet, before warm-ups I found myself staring at the record board for longer than I care to realize. I had not been to this pool before and the high school is in an area where there are two Big Three auto plants in the community. What most captured my attention, looking at the pool’s scoreboard, it seems to be an analogy of middle America, particularly here in the Midwest Rust Belt. This place, the pool like the community, was booming and peaked in the mid-60s when the Ford engine plant and the GM plant in the next town over employed more than 10,000 people.
This town and the school have been in steady decline since 1980, until 2010. The plants that counted employees in the thousands now count in the hundreds. That shrink inevitably caused a declining tax base. To remain economically feasible for the community, this school district was forced to merge with the neighboring town in 2011.
I took a picture of the scoreboard because it is, in a way, an illustration of this decline. I go to a lot of pools and nowhere are the peak performances so centered in the distant past like this place. For those unfamiliar with swimming record boards, the second and fourth columns are the record setter, listed as first initial, last name, high school name, and year the record was set (two digits). There has been a huge increase in swimming technology and performance in the last decade, which has catapulted performances and records everywhere, the full breadth of that topic is a series of posts in its own right. Looking at the dates on the record board (centered in the 1970s) makes me think this community, with its primarily low technology, outmoded jobs, was left behind.
As I look at it I think, is this the type of decline that the populist voter experienced, this left behind feel, whether it is due to insufficient opportunities or their jobs being replaced by automation or exported to some low-cost country? Are these the communities that incited and excited the new presidency. Where the populist idea ‘making things great again’ resonates. The reality is the average American, regardless of sex or race, is better off today than they were in 1965, but the average American white male with only a high school diploma is much worse off. Those are the ones that strived for and passed down the jobs at the Big Three plants, only to have those well paying, low barrier occupations replaced by automation, outsourced to a supplier, or eliminated completely.
I grew up in a community like this, so the experience and this visual illustration really hit me. The experience and visit tonight generated conflicting emotions of interest, nostalgia, and empathy. Like most issues, the real answers here are complex and prone to heated debate.
Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company image from http://postindustrialrustbelt.blogspot.com/2014/10/rust-belt.html