Q: How did you come up with the idea for this play?

Kurt Peters: The owner of a small grocery store in a town near our Wisconsin farm told me, “When gas goes below $3 a gallon my sales go down because people feel it’s worth driving 15 miles to Monroe to get lower prices.” That got me to thinking about what would happen if people stopped shopping at his store, one of the few businesses left in the town. The story grew from there.

Q: Why are there are few thriving businesses in that town?

KP: Millburg and its real-life counterpart are no different from thousands of other small Midwest towns. The US has lost 400,000 family farms since 1980 and that represents a lot of money not spent in grocery stores, drugstores, restaurants and so on. Add to that the big-box chains—Wal-Mart in particular—that killed off local retailers while reducing wages for retail workers. Finally, corporate-owned factories moved to the lower-wage, non-unionized South starting in the 1970s. Small towns used to have their share of such factories. All those high-paying, good-benefits jobs are gone—with little to replace them.

Q: That’s a lot to take in!

KP: The latest threat is from dollar stores that sell highly processed food at low prices in areas with few grocery options, placing further pressure on the independent grocery stores that remain and creating food deserts even in the midst of farm fields.

Q: Grand Family Foods is about how a small town has been hammered. Why should we in the suburbs or cities care about that?

KP: Grand Family Foods is not just about the dire situation that small Midwest towns face. It’s a story about our economic and political systems. Who has access to power? Financial resources? Affordable food and shelter? Infrastructure like clean water, roads, Internet access? It’s about how the way we take care of each other reflects who we are.       

Q: The arrival in Millburg of a payday loan store is an interesting subplot. Tell me about that.

KP: Payday loan stores target low-income consumers with few other financing options. Their hook is that they don’t permit installment repayment, so if you can’t pay the full amount on the due date, they renew the entire amount of the loan and hit you with another fee. One study shows that people typically pay $520 to borrow $350. They’re banned in 11 states, including Illinois, but not Wisconsin. They’re an example of financial servitude and predatory profiting.

Q: Speaking of profit, how does Rick in the play make a profit?

KP: He barely does. In fact, part of the dynamic of his situation is that he has to rely on a spouse’s salary to keep the store afloat. The play doesn’t dwell on that point, but it’s there as a reminder that it takes a group effort to make a difference.

Q: You mentioned talking to the real-life owner of the store near your farm. Are the characters based on real people?

KP: Like Rick, the real-life store owner was also the mayor. But beyond that, I have no idea of his personal life. Jean is one of those people we’ve all known. Kilroy is a composite—every town has its Kilroy. I drew some of the situations from incidents from my days as a newspaper reporter.

Q: You’ve been an Evanstonian for more than 40 years. What made you think you could write about small towns?

KP: I grew up in Wilmette, which felt like a small town at the time, although it’s a bedroom suburb of Chicago now. My parents and grandparents had grown up there, also; my mother on a 2nd-generation family farm. Our neighborhood was the church, the school, two grocery stores, a hardware store, a drugstore, a dime store – and my parents knew most of the owners. A lot of relatives on both sides of the family lived within a mile or two of where we lived and we saw them almost daily just going about our lives. My first newspaper job was in Harvard, Ill., population 5,000. From there I moved to the daily newspaper in Rockford, a mid-sized city with a small-town vibe.

Q. What about Millburg makes it a Midwestern town?

KP: Millburg residents have a reserve that is typical of the Midwest. At the same time, they’re not afraid to step up. Gov. J.B. Pritzker summed it up recently when he said about the migrant crisis: “Maybe some of you think this is not our problem and we should just let the migrants starve or freeze to death. But that’s not what decent Midwesterners do.” That applies not just to welcoming the stranger–it goes for anyone who needs help.

Q: Is there any hope for Millburg and other towns like it?

KP: The issues facing small towns are larger than individual towns themselves can address. Solutions will require big-picture thinking. But people of goodwill shouldn’t give up. If you believe in the power of democracy and grassroots movements, and the ripple effect of a good action, then you can hope that even the smallest efforts in small towns – and suburbs and big cities as well – can make a difference in people’s lives. As Edward Everett Hale (19^th Century Unitarian minister and author) said, “I can’t do everything, but I can do something.” Go out and do something!