If You Like Cities

Published on Nov. 7, 2012 in the Sun-Gazette

Working at the market one night I ran into one of the great human divides: rural vs. urban.
A friend and I were talking as I scanned, and he bagged, a customer’s groceries. I mentioned having gone online to look at photos of the disaster in New York from Superstorm Sandy, and that I’d recognized many of the place names from having lived on Long Island.
“You lived in New York?” he asked incredulously. “Why would you move away from the most fantastic city in the world?”
“It’s OK if you like cities,” I replied, to which both he and the young woman bagging at the next register said “Oh, yes, I like cities.  Cities are much better places than a town like Lindsay.”  They rued the day they each moved here, and dreamed out loud what it would be like to live in a city like San Diego, close to the border and the sea.
I felt a sense of loss, as if they’d already moved away to some better life, which is what I want for them as their friend.  It made me remember the opening line to Frank Sinatra’s song about New York:  “Those little town blues...”
I only went into New York City a dozen times in the three years I lived on the north shore of Long Island, an hour away.  For me it was terrifying, and it wasn’t just the unfamiliarity.  It was the terrible sense of vulnerability of so much weight packed on such a small piece of land:  the concrete and wires, people and cars, the multiple old bridges, the tunnels below water, below riverbed and sea floor.  It was the huge amount of energy and money required just to keep water, food and energy supplied to the people who live there as well as those flowing in and out like tidal surges twice daily.  Even in good weather my body tensed at the clear possibilities for disaster, and it was hard to breathe until I got home to our low-density community.
So looking at the photos online just made me sad, and a little homesick.  Sad for the losses of life and loved spaces, sad for the horrible shock they’ve faced that their lives aren’t safe, that death and danger from that kind of living are real.  Sad for all the small business owners who make livings helping people hold that kind of life together, now faced with holding those businesses together until things return to normal.
“I bet you’re glad you don’t live there now,” said another friend after listing the environmental damages behind and the engineering nightmares ahead.  I went through one hurricane while I was there, and the risks were clear though the damage from that storm in our rural area was minimal.
But New York is not particularly dangerous geography.  It’s the high concentrations of people that create disastrous impacts from natural events like storms, tornados and earthquakes.  What it takes to build, sustain and repair places like New York and New Orleans, San Francisco and Los Angeles is enormous, and we all foot the bill one way or another.  Thanks, but I’ll keep my little town blues.
-Trudy Wischemann is a writer who was raised by a city-phobic father and a city-loving mother. You can send her your feelings on cities - P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay, CA  93247.
- This column is not a news article but the opinion of the writer and does not reflect the views of The Foothills Sun-Gazette newspaper.