Transplants

I got this today from my friend Gina, TYVM hon! Very interesting and G-rated:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

So why is Gail so quiet, you might ask? WHAT could she be thinking, that would make her not blog? Gail is kinda blue. Well, make that very blue.

[NOTE: This is generally how I feel. I am not indicting all NYC people who have moved here. Over all, the transplants I know have probably enriched my life more than I was able to enrich theirs. This is how I feel, in general terms, in light of house hunting and not being able to stay in my home town.]

You know we are in the process of finding a home to buy. And the going is pretty damn tough. I spoke with one of the women I work with today, she is in the same boat I am. She and her hubby made an offer on a house, and a couple from NYC offered 20,000 more....10,000 over the asking price. My friend was really upset,- not only is she convinced that THAT was "her" house, but she's worried now,....with the tax break for first time home buyers, NYC'ers are coming out of the woodwork in my area, igniting a storm that started back in the 70's. She and her hubby JUST discovered what Steve and I have known for years....our community belongs to NYC now, there's no place for the locals here. And CERTAINLY no housing that locals can afford.
Steve and I are both multi-generational locals. We live in a county 45 minutes north of NYC. Our Dads and GrandDads lived in the same county they worked in. And so do we,...Steve and I both work in the county we live in.
In the mid 70's or so, we started getting transplants......people moving here from NYC. Which, technically wouldn't have been a problem. Except for 2 things. First, the NYC crowd, having been earning higher wages than us yokels, were out bidding locals on homes, and creating a market for McMansions...homes that are stupid expensive, and built with city people in mind. NO housing was being created for us yokels. There are extremely few jobs here that would support buying a half million dollar and up McMansion....unless you are a commuter. Second, while they moved here, they didn't Work here. They still commuted into the city or New Jersey. Creating a HUGE gap between the locals and the amenities they could give their children, and the city people, with those bigger, city-type salaries. Feel bad cause you don't get to see your kid a lot? Buy em a ton of clothes and a car, and forget the discipline. THAT's the type of stuff Steve and I started seeing when we graduated high school in this town.

As the years rolled by, Steve and I had our kids, in the same area we grew up and work in. And THEN the rift became glaringly apparent. Steve and I were the Mom and Dad that were always there, the city parents had to "work" [as if that wasn't what WE were doing,we were looked on as stupid for earning less than those absentee parents] and the money gap.....OMG, KIDS driving BRAND new cars, .........cars we could not afford and wouldn't buy even if we could.......and getting into trouble in those cars. While Mom and Dad worked. European vacations. Designer clothes. Music lessons in NYC, tennis lessons from a pro, the best of the best for those kids [read: the most expensive material things] the list is endless. We were shocked sometimes, at the material things these kids would have,...with no parental guidance at all. For a small community, the divide between the haves and have nots was terrible. The "haves" thought the solution to everything was to throw money at it. And the paradigm shifted, and changed our community forever.

We were discussing this at the gym I used to go to, and the owner,.....a NYC cop, married to a NYC cop, and both live, guess where, right here! Asked me, do all the locals think of us like that? And I was ashamed. I apologized to her......not for my opinion, because I have lived/ am living it and it is valid, but because I hurt the owner, whom I consider to be a friend. I told her, it's very hard,..............to see your community torn in 2, and become the bedroom of NYC. It's hard to grow up expecting to live a certain way in "your" town, and to have it ripped away by people with money, but no sense of what they were destroying. Who claimed to want "a better life, a country life, a yard for the kids" so they bought them out from under the locals.....then complained that there was nothing for the kids to do! They took the things we felt had value, claiming they wanted them, and then totally changed them or got rid of them altogether.

And on to today. Us stupid yokels can't buy a home in our home town, because evidently NYC owns our towns, and is busy buying what they haven't bought already. Dig THIS......the MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority].....responsible for mass transit in the city and environs....wants to tax OUR county, to keep costs down for............COMMUTERS ! We're supposed to pay a tax to keep commuter costs down,- even as we have no use for mass transit, as we work and live in our community.Another nail in our communities' coffin.

The commuters have never paid the true cost for what they've done here. Maybe if they actually started working in the county they live in, and put a little of the whining angst towards getting higher wages and more jobs in their new hometown, things would be different.

I try to remember, no matter how flat, a pancake always has 2 sides. I try to put myself in the shoes of the commuters. Who maybe wanted something better for their kids, like we all do. I wonder, if anywhere along the line,*I* made others pay for my choices, as the commuters have. And I wonder if they know what they did. And if they're sorry. And, if they had it to do over again, would either live and work in the same community, or stay in the city, and leave the yokels be.
This, my blog, is really the only place I can say how I feel about leaving my home. I know this area like the back of my hand, I remember it "back when". At my age, I'm gonna have to learn the backroads of a new place. And I HATE that. I HATE having to move from the town I was born in, and I HATE losing the sense of history and continuity, and contentment I feel here. I hate moving away from the schools we and our kids attended, and the cemetaries where my ancestors are buried. I am a small town person. It seems that every third person I care about here is a city transplant. And I care about those transplants, I don't blame them for what has happened here. I just wish with all my heart that this story could have a different ending. I love Steve and the kids, and we will make a great home no matter where we go. In my Wildest dreams, I NEVER thought it would be too much to ask to be able to buy our own home, in our home town.

March 24th

-National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day [my favorite! ]

~A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.~