Friends of Mat-Su no friend …

A Spectrum, by Bob Vromen

After living in the Matanuska Valley core area for the last 48 years and watching it evolve from a few scattered farmsteads into the diversified character that it now displays, it is brought to my mind that a great many lives have been nurtured in the process. In my own instance, I have raised an extended family. I have great neighbors.

Each and every person has idiosyncrasies. It is this aspect of their nature that has equipped them to face the challenges of this great land. Within their means they have built homes, businesses and most often succeeded to contribute to their families and the community.

It has been the freedom to pull oneself up by the bootstraps, apply a full day's effort for a full day's pay and live within one's means. In the past that meant a house with only insulating board for sheathing, but attempting to make the inside warm and comfortable as paydays allowed. Some people had full-time jobs while many worked seasonally at construction, farming, mining and odd jobs so they could repay those who grubstaked them through the winter.

Neighborhoods reflected the meager economics. It was not displayed as an area, but as individual cases. Neighbors did not chide at an instance where the pick-up truck sat in the yard next door or that someone had piled a load of slabs from the sawmill to await being applied as siding or cut up for firewood.

Tolerance was the word of the day. It was the neighborly thing to express. People came from "some other" place and had different ways of doing things, but it did not detract from the fact that they came to Alaska for a new start, to change their way of life or seek opportunity in a new pursuit.

We learned from one another and built a community pride based upon mutual respect and abiding our differences as good neighbors do.

An evil has crept into the Valley that insidiously sets the stage for a high degree of intolerance and elitism. It appears that we should prescribe to our neighbors and those yet to come that uniformity must prevail. We will not tolerate grandparents living within a single-family dwelling with their own separate "living quarters," as that constitutes a two-family situation.

We will call for multi-family units to line our arterial roadways to form a "buffer fence" against traffic noise as it affects single-family residential areas adversely. Occupants of such units will not enjoy peace and quiet as a cost of their particular circumstances.

We have come to so enjoy the traffic congestion at mail areas, post offices and grocery stores that we can no longer think of a convenient location for a service that we now drive several miles to access. That vacant property, which in the past would have brought a family enterprise into being, will not be in anyone's dream. The criteria to establish a commercial activity will necessitate more than a second mortgage on the house. Don't think of selling potholders out of your home; the traffic of a couple of friends could violate the parking limit. Good-bye Tupperware parties.

Everyone has some degree of pride in their neighborhood. Come spring we all clean up the yard, volunteer to remove debris from public areas and generally keep our treasures in some acceptable order. My grandkids will keep me in constant violation of junk rules as they dismantle bicycles, construct push-mobiles out of scrap lumber and discarded tricycles and leave them in various stages of assembly and disrepair. I will have to use my social security to erect a screen that my neighbors not be offended.

Have we become so jaded that we have to write rules as to how to enjoy our lives? Whatever became of the friendly neighbor who leaned over the fence and said, "I'm free next weekend, how about I help you clean up the yard or mow the grass?" So he's a slob and is not receptive. There are covenants for our subdivision. To enforce them I have to get support from the homeowners association and eventually I may have to go to court. That costs me money. If the borough adopts zoning laws, they will be going to court. That costs us all money.

"Friends of Mat-Su" is, in my opinion, no friend. They are expressing the same philosophy that we have heard so many times -- zone, zone, zone. Ask why? Are we in such a state of saturated land use that we are now endowed with dictating that our patterns of living should be cast in a pattern that dictates a strong trend towards being a bedroom community of Anchorage? We deserve better than that. We have the resources, the land base and the talent to outstrip the mediocre approach advocated by the "friends." If they truly support promoting sustainable livelihood, they'd be assisting in identifying resources, techniques and contacting talents to provide more year-round employment and bolster the everyday opportunity to live and work in the Valley.

We have the sense to tolerate differences; take away the differences and you remove the need to be tolerant. An intolerant society becomes a cruel society.

Bob Vromen is a Palmer resident.