A tale of two cities

Resslin' Around by Casey Ressler

Last weekend, Colony Christmas took over downtown Palmer. Every year, it's one the events that my family has circled on the calendar.

The whole Colony Christmas aura feels like a Norman Rockwell painting to me, because everything is just, well, right. It's the holidays, there are sleigh rides and hot cocoa, fireworks and games and now, even a train that rolls right through town. It's a Christmas painting through and through.

The layout of most Alaska towns and cities, my hometown of Wasilla included, doesn't promote that small-town feeling quite the way Palmer does. Palmer has a legitimate downtown area, as opposed to a strip of four-lane highway that bisects the town. That small-town feel is what people who move here from the Lower 48 often talk about missing most about their old hometowns.

One of my first writing assignments was back at Michigan State University, where I went to college. As part of our journalism class, we drew outlying towns and actually developed a "beat" for the semester, and we had to cover it much like we would if we were actually writing for a newspaper. I remember my first time walking around my chosen town. I parked and walked to the caf/ for lunch, then walked over to the police station to introduce myself. I then walked over to a bookstore, and then to the school district building, and then back to my car.

"I feel like I'm in Palmer," I thought to myself.

As the big box stores pop up all over Wasilla, with a new one seemingly opening each day, it's nice to see Palmer at least trying to hold on to that small-town feel. Even when Fred Meyer threw up it's new store in Palmer, it was done with the downtown feeling in mind.

The two cities hold two different feelings about growth and industry and just about everything else -- and neither is necessarily right, and neither is necessarily wrong. They are just two different attitudes. The towns have never been more different than the course they each are taking now, but you can't really say one is better than the other -- just ask the Wasilla folks who head over to Palmer for Colony Christmas, or the Palmer folks who have to drive to Wasilla if they want anything from Wal-Mart, Sears and now Home Depot or Lowe's.

Colony Christmas puts all that into perspective. On our way there, we passed all the big box stores, the new roads and the frantic traffic of Wasilla. The day in Palmer was nice and slow, and we had a leisurely time walking around enjoying the Christmas spirit. Later that night, once we were home, I needed something from Wal-Mart and was glad that it was only five minutes away, however. I wouldn't have felt like driving across the Valley on a whim.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor.