When a local business that served as a community hub closes, residents may need to create a new meeting space

Dairy Queens served as a gathering spot for many rural
Texas residents. (Photo by Jaime Adame, Daily Yonder)

 

As Dairy Queens shutter in rural communities across Texas, locals see their social spaces disappear. The ice cream franchise shops have long served as places of connection for small-town residents.

"In rural areas, sites where people choose to gather are 'neither work nor home, but they anchor everything in between,' as a former rural school superintendent, Melissa Sadorf put it in a recent essay on the importance of what are sometimes called 'third places,'" reports Jaime Adame of The Daily Yonder.

Dairy Queen closures in Texas surged this year over legal disputes within the company, and smaller communities felt the loss. "Out of some 30 locations to shut down statewide, twelve were in towns with fewer than 3,000 people," Adame writes. "Civic leaders and townspeople must now grapple with literal empty spaces and rips in the fabric of community life."

When the Dairy Queen in Canadian, Texas, closed, the small town of roughly 2,300 people in northern Texas dearly missed the connection spot the restaurant once provided. The community is still working to recover from fierce wildfires that burned down parts of the town last year.

Remelle Farrar, interim director for the local economic development corporation in Canadian, told Adame, "It’s an impact to our culture, absolutely. . . . [It was] a place to go for many members of our population after the event of the day, to go sit and talk… and relax."

While Dairy Queen is still considered a "Texas icon. . . . The view of Dairy Queen as a community’s social hub doesn’t ring true as much as it did decades ago, even in rural Texas," Adame reports. "Rural areas are more likely to struggle at providing such third places, according to Danielle Rhubart, a researcher at Penn State University who studies rural health and well-being."

To fill holes the closure of a Dairy Queen or similar spot can leave behind, residents of smaller communities need to look around their town and see what alternatives are available. Adame explains, "Creating a third place can involve adapting unused buildings, even a former church. Rhubart said it’s important for small communities to support local businesses and make use of what’s already in place, such as libraries or outdoor spaces like parks, to ensure that welcoming places exist for people to gather."

Some N.Y. sheriffs say they won't enforce the state's new law banning concealed weapons in many public places

Several sheriffs in upstate New York say they don't plan on aggressively enforcing the state's new law that forbids concealed weapons in a long list of public spaces "including, but not limited to, government buildings and religious centers, health facilities and homeless shelters, schools and subways, stadiums and state parks," reports Jesse McKinley and Cole Louison for The New York Times. In an interview Wayne County Sheriff Robert Milby said the law covers "basically everywhere. If anyone thinks we’re going to go out and take a proactive stance against this, that’s not going to happen."

Sheriff Robert Milby
(Lauren Petracca for The New York Times)

The legislature passed the law over the summer. It took effect Sept. 1 but its legality has been the subject of court battles. Last week, a federal judge blocked large portions of it. The New York State Sheriffs' Association called the law a "thoughtless, reactionary action" that punishes law-abiding citizens. The sheriff of mostly rural Montgomery County said that almost every household in his jurisdiction had some sort of gun. Mike Filicetti, the sheriff in Niagara County, said his office will make no arrests on the law without his authorization and that the law is "a very, very low priority for me."

Supporters of the law accused the sheriffs of endangering the public for not supporting the law, McKinley and Louison report. David Pucino, the deputy chief counsel at Giffords Law Center, which works to lessen gun violence, said that several states have laws restricting concealed weapons in places like airports, courthouses and bars. “The statements that we’ve been seeing here are ideological statements,” Pucino said of the sheriffs. “And that’s not an appropriate basis for a sheriff to enforce or not enforce laws.”