Progress is not to be stopped

Editor,

Regarding Jan Tusick's letter in Dec. 1 Leader, "Progress in the name of cheap isn't good."

After reading the Tusick letter with all its redundancy about the evils of "cheap" I'd just like to ask this writer and others who are so adamantly opposed to any sort of progressiveness in the form of local commerce to please picture the small community of Polson in say the year of 1908.

1908 was the year my wife's father, Janoka Pound, came here at the age of six with his parents who left Kansas for the woods work here, and also the beauty of this place they'd heard about.

Back then, if you would picture the very few places of business that must have been here to cater to the locals' needs. There very likely was a saddle shop (among the others) that sold horse harnesses, buggy whips, and a few other items that the ranchers, farmers or passing teamsters must have at times really appreciated the proprietor of this store for stocking them. A busted harness in those days meant that a teamster was in big trouble with his load that might have been already overdue.

Now, please let's jump forward to say the middle 1920s when some entrepreneurs saw the need to come here to open a garage and filling station to cater to those same ranchers and teamsters who now were chugging into town with all kinds of new and modern stuff for the locals and those up in the Flathead area also.

Are you with me, Jan Tusick and others? This mom and pop shop that was selling all those buggy whips and other horse related items must have been laying awake very many nights thinking, "Why in God's name didn't we think to go into the automotive business when the time was right?"

I think I needn't write more on this subject now. If any of you who think we in Polson can somehow stop progress — like that which was tried so many years ago with closing of the U.S. Patent Office (everything had been invented by then)— well, I guess then those who think along those lines will just forever be left in the proverbial "dust" of time.

So please try to think as Thomas Jefferson must have 200 years ago, to the future with the Corps of Discovery. And all those of our predecessors who followed with a dream that laid over the horizon the west.

Wal-Mart is here, an American company, now also looking west. Show them your friendly western welcome, folks.

W.P. Will Elliott

Polson