第1795-c期:How to keep your hometown from becoming a ghost town

Think about your hometown. Think about the place where important things have happened in your life and in the lives of those you love. Now, what if you woke up one day and it was just gone?

想想你的家乡。想一想在您和您所爱的人的生活中发生过重要事情的地方。现在，如果你有一天醒来，它就消失了怎么办？

My very first film was about a town that disappeared. I was 16 at the time, and my family was on a vacation to see the great national parks of the West. And somewhere in Wyoming we happened upon a classic tourist trap: an old Western ghost town. And admission was five dollars a head, and there were six of us and my dad was frugal. So his idea was send John in alone with the video camera, and the rest of the family will just watch the videotape later. So I ventured in alone and attempted to capture all of the mystery and mystique of this town lost to time.

我的第一部电影是关于一个消失的小镇。当时我 16 岁，我的家人正在度假，想参观西部的伟大国家公园。在怀俄明州的某个地方，我们遇到了一个经典的旅游陷阱：一个古老的西部鬼城。入场费是每人五美元，我们有六个人，我爸爸很节俭。所以他的想法是让约翰带着摄像机单独进去，其他家人稍后再看录像带。所以我独自冒险，试图捕捉这个小镇随时间流逝的所有神秘和神秘。

Now, old Western ghost towns capture our imagination because they are a touchstone to America's pioneer history. But in time I would come to understand that ghost towns still happen. Wildfires rage, earthquakes strike, levees break. But more commonly, it is the insidious, slow-motion disaster. Layoffs at the textile mill. The closing of a steel plant. Or the suburban sprawl that slowly sucks all life out of an old downtown, leaving it in constant decline.

现在，古老的西部鬼城抓住了我们的想象力，因为它们是美国开拓历史的试金石。但随着时间的推移，我会明白鬼城仍然存在。野火肆虐，地震袭来，堤坝决堤。但更常见的是，它是阴险的、缓慢发生的灾难。纺织厂裁员。一家钢铁厂的关闭。或者郊区的扩张慢慢地吸走了老城区的所有生命，让它不断衰落。

The COVID-19 lockdown turned every city into a temporary ghost town, and we’re still not sure if some communities can emerge from the economic devastation. And it also taught us that the forces that destroy cities are big and complex and out of our control and sometimes impossible to predict.

COVID-19 封锁使每个城市都变成了临时的鬼城，我们仍然不确定某些社区是否可以摆脱经济灾难。它还告诉我们，摧毁城市的力量庞大而复杂，超出了我们的控制，有时甚至无法预测。

But there is something that we can do, that we can control, that will help us navigate these challenges. We can develop community resilience. We can build civic pride and a strong identity for our communities that will give us the determination to survive and to succeed or to rebuild, even when rebuilding from ruins. And this is the power of the civic story.

但有些事情我们可以做，我们可以控制，这将帮助我们应对这些挑战。我们可以培养社区的韧性。我们可以为我们的社区建立公民自豪感和强烈的认同感，这将使我们有生存和成功或重建的决心，即使是在废墟中重建。这就是公民故事的力量。

I first learned that a story can change a city from a barber. When I was 24, I set out to make my first real film, a feature documentary about Route 66, once known as the Mother Road and the Main Street of America. And along this road is a tiny town in northern Arizona called Seligman. And in this town is where I met the barber, Angel Delgadillo, and he became one of the narrators in my film.

我第一次从一个理发师那里了解到一个故事可以改变一座城市。当我 24 岁时，我开始制作我的第一部真正的电影，一部关于 66 号公路的专题纪录片，这条公路曾经被称为美国的母亲之路和大街。沿着这条路是亚利桑那州北部一个叫做塞利格曼的小镇。在这个小镇上，我遇到了理发师 Angel Delgadillo，他成为了我电影中的旁白之一。

Now, hundreds of towns along Route 66 became 21st-century ghost towns when they were bypassed by the interstate freeway system. And Angel told me about the day that they opened Interstate 40 across Arizona and bypassed his town of Seligman. Up until that day, hundreds or even thousands of cars would pass by his barber shop window every day. He told me that the minute they open the lanes of I-40, the traffic stopped. And it was as if they had gone to the edge of town and put up a gate and forbidden people to come into town, like somebody had turned off a faucet. For years after this, he sat in his barber chair and stared out at the empty streets and realized Seligman was dying. And he grew bitter, and he grew angry.

现在，66 号公路沿线的数百个城镇在被州际高速公路系统绕过时变成了 21 世纪的鬼城。安吉尔告诉我那天他们开通了横跨亚利桑那州的 40 号州际公路，绕过了他的塞利格曼镇。直到那天，每天都有成百上千辆汽车经过他的理发店橱窗。他告诉我，他们一打开 I-40 的车道，交通就停止了。就好像他们走到了城镇的边缘，竖起了大门，禁止人们进城，就像有人关掉了水龙头一样。此后多年，他坐在理发椅上，凝视着空荡荡的街道，意识到塞利格曼快要死了。他变得苦涩，他变得愤怒。

And then he realized something important. While Seligman may be off the beaten path, it wasn't obsolete. It had something special. Route 66 was an important part of American history, and Seligman was part of that story. And he had a hunch that if the entire community embraced that heritage, it would lead to a future. So they swept the sidewalks and painted and cleaned up and petitioned the state of Arizona to mark the old road, the route through town, as a historic highway. And it took ten years, but eventually they did it. And the state of Arizona made the stretch from Williams through Seligman to Kingman an official historic Route 66 Highway, and the iconic 66 Highway shield signs returned. And that's when I met him. By then, his barbershop had morphed into a visitor center, and he was selling maps and souvenirs and mugs and fridge magnets and occasionally still giving a shave and a haircut. But mostly he was telling the story of Route 66 and posing for photos. And this story, their story, eventually revived Seligman. And not just Seligman, but dozens of towns, from Chicago to LA, were inspired by Angel and Seligman, and they also embraced their heritage and found a way forward. On a recent trip there, the Seligman visitor center told me they were averaging 160,000-200,000 visitors per year and Angel is still posing for photos 24 hours a day, as a life-sized cutout in his barber shop.

然后他意识到了一件很重要的事情。虽然塞利格曼可能不走寻常路，但它并没有过时。它有一些特别的东西。 66 号公路是美国历史的重要组成部分，而塞利格曼是这个故事的一部分。他有一种预感，如果整个社区都接受这种传统，那将会带来未来。因此，他们清扫了人行道，进行了粉刷和清理，并请求亚利桑那州将这条穿过城镇的旧路标记为历史悠久的公路。花了十年时间，但最终他们做到了。亚利桑那州将威廉姆斯经塞利格曼到金曼的路段定为具有历史意义的官方 66 号公路，标志性的 66 号公路盾牌标志又回来了。那就是我遇见他的时候。到那时，他的理发店已经变成了游客中心，他在卖地图、纪念品、马克杯和冰箱贴，偶尔还会刮胡子和理发。但大部分时间他都在讲述 66 号公路的故事并摆姿势拍照。而这个故事，他们的故事，最终让塞利格曼复活了。不仅仅是塞利格曼，从芝加哥到洛杉矶的几十个城镇都受到了安吉尔和塞利格曼的启发，他们也接受了他们的传统并找到了前进的道路。在最近的一次旅行中，塞利格曼游客中心告诉我他们每年平均有 160,000-200,000 名游客，Angel 仍然每天 24 小时摆姿势拍照，就像他理发店里的真人大小的剪纸一样。