Over the years, I have made many snide comments
about the rapid population growth in my little section of North Carolina. In my Deborah Knott books, I have mourned the changes
and losses: loss of farmland, loss
of familiar landmarks, loss of
local newspapers that used to act as an ombudsman for its readers, loss of
community.
This picture, taken here in my neighborhood, is a
perfect metaphor. It shows a field
of tobacco in early August after the sand lugs have been harvested. Striding the field like alien behemoths
are those huge power structures that relay electricity for space-age gadgetry
from one end of the state to the other. There to the side is an uninhabited
tenant house. No power line to
it. In another few years, as the
housing market rebounds, it will probably be bulldozed, and dozens of
fully-wired houses will spring up where tobacco now grows.
“People have to live somewhere,” my Brooklyn-born
husband keeps telling me. “Get
over it.”
He’s fond of saying, “It takes a certain critical
mass if you want a decent symphony, the ballet, even real bagels, wines, and
cheeses other than Velveeta and hoop cheese.”
He’s
absolutely right. But North
Carolina has now passed New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts in population
and I kept thinking of that line by Edna Millay: “I know.
But I do not approve. And I
am not resigned.”
A
couple of weeks ago though, I had a medical emergency. (I’m fine now.
Absolutely no after-effects.) And now I must grudgingly admit that yes, the
mushrooming growth is why we have an excellent emergency care facility only six
miles away and not twenty-six miles away in Raleigh as it was in the “good ol’
days” when I was a child.
There
are pluses and minuses to every change, but Urgent Care is definitely a plus!
