Bangkok. New York. London. Paris. Rome. These big city names stand-alone and don’t need any extra titles dangling behind to give more oomph.
I’m driving down two lane Providence Road forever when I finally come upon the brown metal sign with white lettering, “Welcome to Waxhaw, Home of the Waxhaw Indians.”
Once I cross the railroad tracks and make a right at the one stoplight in town onto Main Street I come upon another sign, “Waxhaw, the birthplace of the 7th president of the United States, Andrew Jackson.” Ironically he was also a forceful proponent of Indian removal. But surprisingly that isn’t mentioned on the sign.
Waxhaw wants to make sure visitors know why they should visit and do this by explaining itself on signs. But most Waxhaw citizens are proud to not be from one of those big-name cities. They enjoy keeping their community cozy and kicking out anything that may interfere with the friendly small-town feel.
Maybe that is why there still isn’t a Wal-Mart in Waxhaw, even though I’m sure the dreaded day is on its way. I can picture the approaching endless debates at town meetings, write-ups all over the Waxhaw Gazette, and newscasters broadcasting interviews of irate citizens on Channel 9, “More traffic, more taxes, less small businesses! NO!”
It seems that every week on the out-skirts of Waxhaw new housing developments pop-up with new shopping centers next-door, slowly inching their way to the heart of the town. But until the cow pasture next to the post office is turned into a parking deck, I’m convinced Waxhaw is still a small-town.
Sukhothai used to be the old capital of Thailand. When I was going to visit my boyfriend Dominic’s hometown, that is the line I told my friends from home who had never heard of it, yet again, adding a title to make a small-town worthy of a visit.
The town reminded me so much of my own Waxhaw. Dominic and I popped around on his friend’s red Honda motorbike to an internet café, 7-11, drink stalls, and restaurants to visit where Dominic’s old friends worked. We even stopped by the video game store where he worked as a teenager. Everyone asked him how his grandma was and what was new. And they all discussed “The Big C.”
The Big C is not a bad word that you shorten by saying The Big C, but it’s a shopping center chain, reminiscent of a Wal-Mart Super center. It has everything you need, and is open even until 11 p.m., so you can get things whenever you want. Wow!
But like there will be in Waxhaw, there was debate about the rise of the bright green sign with red letters spouting Big C on the edge of town. The quaint stores even displayed posters in Thai spouting, “No to the Big C!” But unlike Waxhaw, it came.
The first weekend I went to Sukhothai everyone was discussing the Big C being built. The next month when I went, it had opened. During that visit, everything was Big C. I saw pictures at Dominic’s teacher’s house of the never before seen traffic on the road the day it opened. There wasn’t one person we met who didn’t mention it somehow in the conversation. We also went to it three times in two days.
While wandering the aisles I felt I was in an American superstore again, minus the rice cookers everywhere, the meat sitting unpackaged ready to be picked through and peering at packages of coagulated chicken blood which always looks to me like chocolate mousse. And of course near the checkout we ran into Dominic’s old friends he hadn’t seen since college. I was struck with Waxhawness like crazy.
I know that the small businesses in Sukhothai are stressed out, but I can’t say that it wasn’t nice to sit at Swenson’s (an “American” ice-cream parlor) and eat chocolate ice cream and buy Tupperware and bug spray without having to go to a million different random stores.
But Sukhothai doesn’t just have a Big C. I think as long as the ancient ruins still rise on the horizon and visitors come from afar to visit and leave telling everyone how they just went to Sukhothai,Thailand’s old capital, it will still be a small town.
And that makes me happy. Almost as much as Waxhaw home of the Waxhaw Indians AND the 7th president of the United States makes me happy.
