Business is as Busyness Does

Industry in Oakdale is a patchwork of produce and cattle-based agriculture, supported by a sizable service industry and a number of other stores. Their presence provides reason and commerce for the town, even if much of what is actually raised and grown is trucked and bartered elsewhere. Labor in these industries offer the people that inhabit this place with their identity, not to mention a sense for what defines them as denizens of the Central Valley, the "Heartland" of California so to speak.

Formerly, Hershey's populated the town but has since ceded its factory to more modest owners, while lea
ving its own once-prominent Visitor's Center as evidence of its decline and final escape to the South. Nevertheless, the town hasn't soon forgotten its presence, event for the depressing example the Center left: every year during early summer (and about the time when the Cowboys come out), the town holds an event which is now called "Cowboys and Chocolate," containing within itself both the admission of the decay of the city and its ostensible, aspired-for promise of resilience and overcoming even in light of foreboding economic circumstances.

Opposing the unceasing onslaught of mass-produced fast food are a constellation of home-grown cafes and restaurants that play to an array of tastes. They fit into two main categories: those that play to the parodical and self-effacing Cowboy image and 'Mexican food' joints. Although a more thorough and expansive approach is in order to really justify a claim, Oakdale has often been said to have some high-quality, highly-pleasing Mexican cuisine.

But like so many cities, the spectacle of various highly-routinized, highly-franchised fast food restaurants that mass produce commodity-like food abuts many of the other locally-initiated gastronomic endeavors, leaving in their wake failed business after failed business

And while my own proclivities disincline me from partaking, this place as well entertains a number of meat-centric eateries, focused on aggregating, broiling, baking and serving various cuisines that participate in the spectacle of Oakdale as a 'cow'town.