Joni Mitchell's song gets me every time. The refrain:
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
Cabela's wants to build a big store in Rogers, Minnesota, on the I-94 Growth Corridor between the Twin Cities and Saint Cloud. The store promo mentions high tech tools for being unpleasant to fish, "and, of course, weapons, every kind of firearm... and a whole variety of hunting knives." Based on Owatonna's experience, this store is likely to be a huge tourist attaction.
There will never be any kids in Rogers who get fascinated with guns and gather up 40 or 50 of them and go hunting in the high school. That could never happen in Rogers. And nobody mad at his wife is going to start thinking of uses for a hunting knife. Not in Rogers. Oh, and all those people who drive 50 or 80 or 200 miles to have a look at really fancy firearms -- they won't have any effect at all on the town, except dropping some money at the gas station and the diner.
Every so often the book of Proverbs gets it right: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind." Joni Mitchell said it better, though.
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.