I love my local community.I actually live in a traditionally poor area which has had a recent influx of wealthy people here to buy up the beachfront properties, tear them down and build ugly McMansions along the foreshore....but I digress.
I love my area. My mother doesn't quite agree.
Let's just put it out there that I was born and raised in the privilege of The Hills. My childhood friends were the children of multi-millionaires. I moved away (as soon as I could) when I was seventeen (and pregnant with Rocket). I moved to a wealthy area along the coast. Every two years, I moved a little further north and liked it a little bit more. When I landed in our current community, it was like coming home. Everyone I know who moves here, or even comes for a visit, cannot get over how friendly everyone is!
Of course it helps for us that it is the gayest community in our state :)
The local church is run by a lesbian minister, and it is a safe place for us to raise our children, as free as we can be from homophobia. There are out teachers at the school, and in every local business....but I digress again.
The point is gay or straight, everyone is welcome. There are a large number of group homes in my area, populated with the people most of society choose to forget. These older men are some genuine, warm, friendly people who just want a fair go. Every business owner along the shopping strip generally know them by name, and people stop in the streets to talk to them. They sit on the foreshore and play guitar and play with their three legged dog. It is a safe place for all.
It is an area where the teenage boys are more likely to be seen with fishing rods heading to the river or the jetty, or on scooters and skateboards at the park. Kids still play footy and cricket in the streets.
Someone I know interstate commented after hearing me rave about our community
- oh I see why your house prices are so low...you moved to the 1950's!
And it's kind of true. And you know what? Maybe that's why I love it.
My mother is warming to it. I now find myself embarking on mission:impossible...getting her to move here. It would make a dramatic improvement to her life and make her debt free as she would have ample money from selling her house and buying a really nice one down here.
Wish me luck...this won't be easy!
image of my town circa 1978.
Sounds like you live in a great place. I live in a very homogeneous community. Everyone is a republican with manicured yards and as a minority I feel narrowed eyes sometimes when I find myself at the grocery store (oh yeah- I also live in the south). When I was in my early 20's we just looked for an affordable place to live and living here in the burbs was cheaper than living in the more cultural and diverse city--- if only the housing market would pick up so we could hightail it out, your post makes me wish it even more!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds great! I love 'old' towns like that. The feeling of community, that's harder and harder to come by in these days of electronic communication.
ReplyDeleteGood luck on the mom front!!