In my college days, I was introduced to a way of thinking that has stayed with me. It was called the means and the meaning of something.
The example, as I remember it, went like this: Was it essential to know whether the world was created in seven literal days, or was it more important to understand that God created the world, loved what He made, and declared it good?
The point was not to dismiss questions of process, but to recognize that focusing only on how something happens can cause us to miss why it matters.
Sitting on my Main Street bench, the distinction between means and meaning, has resurfaced.
When conversations turn to preservation, restoration, and repurposing of Rocky Mount’s historic downtown buildings, we are good at talking about the means.
We discuss cost, codes, ownership, incentives, feasibility, and hold public hearings to introduce projects. (I have yet to find these meetings other than an exercise. Looking at some charts next to a gentleman, he said to me, “They have these meetings and then go on and do what they want to do anyway.”) I had to laugh.
Don’t get me wrong, practical concerns are a must, you can’t preserve a building on good intentions alone. But, the meaning of preservation lives somewhere deeper.
It lives in why these buildings were constructed with care in the first place. In the assumption, held by earlier generations, that Main Street mattered enough to be built to last.
These facades still speak to the street, even when their interiors are empty, and their roofs caved in. They continue to shape our sense of place for good or ill.
Without leadership committed to the public good, preservation becomes vulnerable and is sidelined by personal agendas. Main Street stalls, not because the work is unclear, but because it is being held captive by those working the system.
Recognizing this cause and effect is paramount.
This distinction matters. The city faces serious financial instability, unanswered questions, and missing millions of dollars. If leadership is not responsible, we want to know then, who is?
Preservation, at its heart, is not a technical challenge. It is a moral one. It asks whether we see ourselves as temporary occupants of a place, or as stewards of something handed to us with the expectation that we would care for it and pass it along.
Historic downtown Rocky Mount cannot remain background scenery for individual priorities and power.
Our historic downtown architecture already exists. The investment has already been made by those who came before us. What remains unresolved is not whether we can preserve and repurpose these buildings, but how long we allow malfeasance to go on that is our nemesis for investment and progress.
In the creation story, the means was never the stopwatch. It was the declaration that what was made was good.
Main Street is waiting for leadership willing to act on behalf of everyone over the intersts of a few.
Sitting here, watching the light change on these old buildings, it is clear that Rocky Mount needs leadership elected by the whole city, accountable to the whole city, and willing to put the public good ahead of private ambitions.
If we don’t change the way we elect City Council members, the shenanigans will continue to Rocky Mount’s determent and nothing will change.
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Main Street Rocky Mount 