It's not like a ghost town that you see in an old cowboy picture. Rather, it's a place with occasional spots of activity, encircling empty buildings of inactivity. Now, when everyone walks through downtown, you still see streets containing the same old brown buildings edged with corroded metal beams and black-covered windows obscuring the sun. It's as if the buildings are afraid to show their faces, for fear of reminding everyone how they once were and what they have now become.

Once proud landmarks like the Consumers Building and the Hayes Hotel now have sideways-hanging signs with “For Lease” printed on them. Pieces of paper with words like “condemned” and “set for demolition” flap in the breeze. Brown rust now blends into old brick-covered faces-bricks once assembled by proud citizens. These were the very same buildings where Jackson's forefathers gathered and planned the future of the town. But to the city's credit, there is a move to use these buildings again for business.

Most Jacksonians who were living here in the 1980's know why these buildings became vacant. Many people were laid off from their jobs. Plants closed down, and the mighty hands that kept Detroit going became idle. They became the hands that signed unemployment checks and drove Japanese cars on their way to far away places in search of new jobs in places like California, Arizona and New Mexico. These places took in the large numbers that made the American landscape seem like a big teeter-totter, with one side on the southwest dipping to the ground, while the northeast stood high in the atmosphere of uncertainty.

This town was once a proud part of the American automobile's past. Cam shafts and tires were made in small towns like Jackson, Lansing and the many counties surrounding Detroit, where it all started. The industry grew and thrived and for many years, it seemed like the prosperous times would never end for the state. But, unfortunately, they eventually did.

When I grew up in Jackson, my father and both my grandfathers worked in factories. We were middle-class, and having factory work at the time was a big deal. With these new jobs, the men in my family suddenly didn't seem like just my father and my grandfathers anymore. They seemed mightier, more alive and quite imposing, with their greasy shirts and their stories of smoke and stench and loud noises.

But one by one, the car industry began to lay off our mighty men. As the economy fell, the bottom fell out of the lives of these strong men. All of a sudden, they were standing in unemployment lines, looking for something else to work at, besides building cars. Cars were all they knew, so it was especially hard to adjust to.

And now, instead of looking mighty, they started to shrink in size. I don't mean literally-they just didn't look like the mighty men that they once were, when they were working for Goodyear and Fisher Body. They looked knocked down. They appeared defeated.

This doesn't have to happen again in 2008. Living in the southwest, I saw what relatively small towns could do with a little ingenuity. Towns like Tucson, Arizona that went through hard times as well, learned to bounce back. It was amazing to see them turn into bustling cities in a relatively short amount of time.

And here's how they did it!

Before they became major players in the economy of the country (and the world), these towns were investing their business in corporations from out of town. Tucson asked for businesses like Geico to build a customer service center there. They reduced Geico's property taxes to encourage them to build and to hire local workers to fill their buildings. It was a successful partnership.

Ask other towns out there how they became successful-how they became part of the global economy. Ask them how they were able to stop their businesses from becoming rusty relics of the past.

However you plan on tackling this problem, start slow, but start now.

This can be done. Unite for a change and who knows what could be accomplished in a short period of time. Pay more in higher taxes for it. I know that it's hard for Jacksonians to pay more taxes, but pay whatever you can. Let's not have our kids grow up to look at anymore empty buildings and wonder why nothing was done.