“Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” was running through my head as I sat down to write this column. I think it was being broadcast telepathically from the Lindsay Olive Bowl, our historic sports complex that hosted adult baseball teams in the past as well as youths’, and high school football games as well. The olive-shaped scoreboard, donated by Lindsay High School Students and Lindsay Ripe Olive Company, still has places to record the downs and quarters as well as the runs and innings. Going there, even when it is empty of people, provides an experience of continuity, being part of Lindsay’s past better days as well as the better ones we hope will come.
But if you’ve been following the
plans for Lindsay with even a half-open eye, you’ll know they’re not coming
soon. We have at least two strikes
against us, if not three: the half-baked
plans put forward by staff and the lack of critical questioning and oversight
of those plans by the council. The third
strike is we, the people, who do not believe we can influence this process and
just stay out of it.
I think the reason the Olive Bowl
was singing to me is the memory of the missing trees at the Lindsay Public Golf
Course, which was closed in February to prepare for its renovation into soccer
fields. The grant money that had been
secured to renovate the Olive Bowl was moved from that purpose to the purpose
of demolishing the golf course in order to build five new soccer fields (at the
proposal of staff, the approval of Council, and the excitement of the youth
soccer teams who stood to benefit from these new fields.) The coaches of the baseball teams got the
word a little late, and so were not able to muster their youthful players to be
at the council meeting where this approval occurred.
The reason given for this
money-shifting was that the Olive Bowl’s renovation plans had been stymied by
the death of the engineer in charge, and with the non-extendable deadline of
June 30 for the expenditure of these funds, the money would be rescued from
potential loss by diverting them to this more easily completed project.
Since February I have been watching
the golf course with an anxious eye, hoping for a reprieve. Even as the grass grew long this spring,
golfers were going out and hitting balls in the rough, so to speak. The leaves on the trees returned, and the
landscape moved from being a well-trimmed park to a sortof nature preserve,
still lovely, green-treed open space.
Then the grass turned yellow, and
sometime in late May while I was travelling, they cut the trees. They didn’t cut them down, mind you: they just beheaded them, cut off all their
limbs, and left 10’ tall stumps standing bare-naked in the sun. It looks brutal to me.
And now there are less than three
weeks to go before that money has to be spent to make soccer fields for all
those excited youth. When the kids
thought of having soccer fields there, did they imagine the trees remaining to
provide shade for the parents on the sidelines?
Did the coaches realize the city intended to turn a simple paradise into
yet another shadeless desert in summer?
Did any of us?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Trudy
Wischemann is a pained tree-hugger who lives in Lindsay. You can send her your thoughts c/o P.O. Box
1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
No comments:
Post a Comment