Dear Readers,

When we launched Waterwheel Review, we were keen to explain why we were so moved and motivated by the image of the waterwheel. Water stands for language, an ever flowing, renewable source; the waterwheel, an engine of labor, circles through, lifting words and then dropping them back into the running stream. Our magazine is a mill, we said, where the waterwheel powers writing and publishing. “We want—and need—to make things.”

For a couple of years, now, we have known that we can’t make enough of our own things while we give so much energy to the work of others. We have had to cut substantially the time and attention devoted to our own writing, and mostly we have been glad to do it, determined to find a way to repay our own work in the end. We never did find that way.

If we could quit our jobs and earn that income publishing this magazine, we would take that deal in an instant. But that’s not the world we live in. For many, many months we have known this, but we couldn’t accept it until now. And thank goodness for that.

Every single issue of this magazine has been a wonder that transported and enchanted us. We can’t say we gloried in every moment. We read or edited or built the site at times while sick, exhausted, grieving—that’s the nature of any publication. But we damn well gloried in every word, every paired image and sound.

Four years and thirty-six issues: What an honor to publish our contributors. What a privilege to offer stunning work to our readers. We must use the word pleasure, too, always rolled out to accompany “honor and privilege,” but pleasure isn’t strong enough, nor is gratitude nor joy nor blessing. For once we find ourselves at a loss for words to express precisely what it has meant to keep this waterwheel turning.

Maybe this will do it: How many times does anyone ever fully achieve the glittering, half-glimpsed vision floating above; that winking, flirting piece of art we ache to manifest? For the three of us, precisely this once.

We will keep making things and so will you. We started this magazine with the image of the waterwheel and a Jean Rhys quote, and we will end in the same way, as we thank you for reading and submitting, and wish you and yours all the very best:

Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

September 1, 2024: Waterwheel Review will stay online for the foreseeable future. It remains as it looked for the final June 2024 issue.

Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

Catherine Schmitt

The Family Dollar

by Catherine Schmitt

November 2020

Taxicabs idle in the parking lot, engines running against the cold, drivers watching the abandoned gas station-convenience store on the opposite side of the street. 

One block away, wrapped in vinyl siding, stands the house where Henry David Thoreau stayed during his journeys to and from the Maine woods and the upper reaches of the Penobscot River. 

White devils of snow swirl across the asphalt. The lights are on inside the store, a beacon of abundance anchoring the corner of State Street and Broadway.

frying pan
Faygo soda
Coke (Pepsi products coming soon!)
giant plastic candy canes
seasoned butter beans
+  canned collards
$6,129.00,
the average consumer unit spending
on food in 2010, according to
the U.S. Census.

“Consumables” like groceries make up seventy percent of Family Dollar sales. The only other place to buy groceries downtown is the supermarket across from the waterfront, near the casino.

canned tuna
Campbell’s tomato soup
a pair of shoes
+   B & M Brick Oven baked beans
$414.46,
the average American’s annual spending
on food when Leon Levine opened the
first Family Dollar store in Charlotte,
North Carolina, in 1959.

During his travels in northern Maine in the 1850s, Thoreau’s hosts and guides fed him sweet cakes and venison, shad and salmon, ham, eggs, potatoes, mountain cranberries, tea sweetened with molasses. 

leopard-print hat and scarf set
Old Spice body wash
wireless phone (no contract needed)
Luvs diapers
cat food
dog food
Spam
+   Fast Fixin’ Chicken Tenders
30,496,
number of Family Dollars,
Dollar Generals,
and Dollar Trees
in the United States.

At one-tenth the size of Wal-Mart, a dollar store can squeeze into smaller spaces, an empty lot within walking distance, on a city corner where a woman sells mangoes on the sidewalk, but more likely an open field beyond.

Jones Ferry Road in Carrboro,
Graham Avenue in Bowling Green,
Route 107 in Royalton,
The intersection of Detroit and
Grace in Lakewood,
State Road 52 in San Antonio
Benjamin E. Mays Drive
in southwest Atlanta,
Florida Avenue, Seminole Heights,
A pasture north of Taos,
+   An aging town garage in Lubec
more than one
new dollar store
is built every day.

The Family Dollar on State Street in Bangor, Maine, is one of seven within a twenty-mile radius.

An office in Hong Kong
An office in Shenzhen
639,146 containers shipped
+   from China to the U.S. every year
31
percent of Family Dollar
merchandise is manufactured overseas.

Thoreau called Bangor “a star on the edge of night.” It was a bustling city on its way to becoming the lumber capital of the world. Beyond spread great forests of spruce and pine, a river full of fish, and territory of the Penobscot Indians, all of it changing by the time of Thoreau’s visit.

one box Family Gourmet
brand macaroni and cheese $0.55,
two-pack scrub sponges $1.50,
Congratulations
on your new baby
+   greeting card $1.00
$3.05,
the total of my last receipt
from the Family Dollar on State Street.

I don’t shop there often. But lots of people shop at Family Dollar a lot of the time.

In 2015, Dollar Tree, Inc. bought Family Dollar, selling 323 stores to rival Dollar General to comply with federal anti-trust law. Dollar General, meanwhile, responded to slow sales by expanding to rural towns, with freshly paved ample parking lots bordered by cut grass, bright yellow and black signs lighting up the night, erasing the stars.

Main Street, Searsport
Main Street, Hampden
Fort Ashby Road in Goodlettsville
Thomas Street in Rocky Mount
East White Street, Preston
K Street, San Miguel, across from the
Chevron Station
A farm at the corner of highways
+   87 & 18 in Rum Creek
1,000
Dollar General stores
were planned for construction in 2017.

The plate-glass windows in front of the Family Dollar reflect the low-angle rays of the early setting sun. Crows appear from the north and east, streams of black wings on their way to roost in the trees where pavement meets the river. Cabs idle, waiting for the rush hour calls. 

Before he visited Maine, Thoreau wrote: “…and the cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

What does a family need to survive? Paper or plastic, a dollar’s just a dollar. Always more going out than coming in—hard-earned and hard-spent on items destined for flotsam in some distant sea, a box of salt, a bottle of sugar, a can of protein purchased and consumed, in the end equal to nothing but a still-growling stomach, and a shredded plastic bag caught in branches too high to reach.

Catherine Schmitt writes about science, nature, and the environment. She is the author of three books of nonfiction. Her creative work has appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Three Nations Anthology, 1966, Terrain, Collectively Quarterly, Island Journal, and elsewhere, and is archived at catherineschmitt.com. She lives in Maine.