Click.

There were more ruins to see, but I was done. Looking at places that weren’t places anymore felt like sightseeing in a graveyard.

I scanned the rest of the search results:

“Where Have All the Small Towns Gone?” Rural Intelligencer. Click.

“The Decline of Upstate New York,” The New York Times. Click.

“Bad News for Rural America,” Forbes. Click.

If I wanted to understand the problem, I had everything I needed right here. Page after page, article after article, all said the same thing about the towns of upstate New York: no jobs, no people, no future.

Many scary D-words were used. Down-in-the-dumps. Dwindling. Declining. Depressed. And my favorite: Dying. Exactly what you want to hear about your hometown.

What were my parents thinking when they decided to move to upstate New York? Had they done any research at all? They’d gotten us here just in time to see it disappear forever.

Then, on the third page, there was a hit with no D-words.

“How Tea Saved Krakow, NY,” The New York Times.

I clicked on the link, then took a big scoop of ice cream and let it melt on the spoon in my mouth as I read.

You can’t get more small-town than Krakow, New York. With just one traffic light, a gas station, and a general store, it’s easy to miss as you drive through.

I bit down on the spoon. Krakow was Petersville.

The only big employer in the area for decades was the Willow Paper Co. It was Willow that kept Krakow afloat while so many other upstate New York towns were drowning.

D. Drowning.

While small compared to most, the Willow mill had plenty of jobs to keep the tiny population of Krakow employed.

Then in 2005, Willow went bankrupt. The mill closed its doors, putting 225 people out of work. Krakow was in serious trouble.

Enter our hero: Alhaadi Okello, known around Krakow as “the Tea King.” Okello arrived in the United States from Kenya fifteen years ago on a lottery visa with two hundred dollars in his pocket and dreams of starting a tea business. He even knew what he’d call it: Majani (the word for “leaves” in Swahili). His suitcases were packed with tea leaves from his family’s farm in the Embu district of Kenya.

Today, Majani is on shelves in stores across the United States, and the company employs 203 people. Care to guess where Majani set up shop? That’s right: the old Willow Paper mill.

Krakow is now thriving. For the first time in years, the town is growing. Stop anybody on Main Street and ask what saved Krakow, you’ll get the same answer: the Tea King.

I must have forgotten about the spoon in my mouth because the next thing I knew, it clattered to the floor. I froze, listening for sounds in the hall, but all I heard was the wind chasing itself around the house. I let out the breath I’d been holding and went back to the article.