Wikaryasz

This summer, I’ve been increasingly interested in the stability of my community. Is Alpena growing its economic impact? Are community members making the community a better place to live? Are my peers ditching their phones to seek connections irl (in real life)?

I haven’t come to a conclusion that any of these questions are being answered in the positive. Or even leaning towards the positive.

I’m invested in the answers to these questions because I’m wondering if Alpena is the right place to raise my future children (because I want to start a family).

Is Alpena the right community to find a future spouse? Will there be jobs in the future for my spouse and I to raise our children comfortably? Will there still be a strong church community 10 years from now? Will there be local restaurants I can take my family to on weekends or will they all be closed?

This year’s Fourth of July has made me question the direction to which community members wish for Alpena to take in the future. To better understand my concerns, let me tell you a little bit about how I spent my summers as a child:

Summers were sometimes lonely, listless periods of my childhood spent wandering fields of corn and wheat, away from my peers and organized activities. To my mother’s credit, she let me have free reign over how I spent my summer months, though she made sure to remind me how my consistent existence in the household created more messes for her to clean up.

I was a messy child.

I did not have neighbors who had children of my own age. I could not ride my bike down the street (I lived on a dirt road) to find a new friend. My companions through the summer months were myself, the animals on our little hobby farm, and the characters in the books I read or the characters I created in the stories I wrote.

The summers that I got to care for little, baby cows were the most memorable, but most summer days of my youth were spent swimming, walking barefoot, eating vegetables from the garden, and longing for the start of the school year.

Not a terrible way to grow up.

One summer I convinced my mother to make me homemade elephant ears nearly every night. We’d fry homemade dough in a cast iron skillet filled to the brim with grease and cover every inch with homemade cinnamon sugar. We’d eat the gooey, crispy treat on our deck in the dark and listen to the hum of coyotes in the distance.

I lived, and still live, on 80 acres of property surrounded by woods and the nearest neighbor is about a half a mile from our house. (This neighbor is my father’s cousin, if that is important for context.) At times, summers were isolating and rather boring due to proximity and financial constraints.

My father worked overtime and almost every Saturday in the summer growing up. We were a single income household for many years so family vacations weren’t really a thing. We didn’t camp. We didn’t travel. I didn’t have travel sports. The most I saw people in the summer, outside of my own family, was when we’d go grocery shopping or I went to dance class once a week.

The burden of finding excitement within my own little world was overwhelming at times. I took to long distance running, often running 20 miles a week, to pass the hours, days, and weeks until I had school to occupy my time.

Still, as boring as those days seemed to me then, bright, lingering memories of festive summer holidays remain the most poignant.

Growing up, celebrating the Fourth of July was expensive for my family, but we always made it a point to attend the fireworks. We’d set up at the Alpena Mall parking lot, light off sparklers, and rollerblade until the show started. Most years we got Arby’s as a late night snack, which was a treat.

Some years, we got to experience the full “Fourth of July in Alpena” experience: the parade, community activities, and fireworks. I remember the fanfare, excitement, and buzz around town. Every turn you took it seemed like there was something else to do, a game to play, or an activity to participate in with other children.

It was a reprieve from my listless days spent at home.

This year, I paid close attention to how busy the town was for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation. I was hoping that it would be an echo of my childhood, telling me that Alpena is alive, well, and thriving.

I was disappointed, to say the least.

On my drive to Starlite Beach on the Fourth, I was concerned to see downtown deserted by 1 p.m. in the afternoon. I stopped at a business north of town and the cashier told me that it had been slow and all her customers said they avoided the parade like the plague.

This made me sad.

I wish there had been more fanfare, more excitement, more parties this year. More … people. I wish there had been a rock band playing Bruce Springsteen at Culligan Plaza on that Thursday night. I wish there were young people my age wandering through the shops, getting ice cream, enjoying the nightlife. I wish businesses had been selling “America 250th in Alpena” swag all over town.

Personally, there was no draw for me to stay in town and spend money at all that weekend. My mother and I went to the fireworks, stayed for twenty minutes, and left to beat the traffic. On Saturday, I drove to town to volunteer at the Sandcastle Contest (there were only 8 teams), spent $11 at the only food truck that was parked by the beach, and drove home. I spent the rest of the evening at a family friend’s river property where we ate a hobo dinner, had a few drinks, and then lit off fireworks for about an hour and a half.

(And these were not fireworks you can buy in the Walmart parking lot. These were fireworks that campers at Campers Cove could see over the tree line.)

I’m not mad that I didn’t spend a ton of money on recreation for the Fourth of July. I am concerned, however, that there were others like me who chose to take money away from Alpena and spend it elsewhere because there was no reason for them to stay in town.

What if there was a really good band playing at Culligan Plaza on Saturday night that drew campers into town for dinner and drinks? What if Second Avenue was shut down and food trucks and vendors lined each side of the street?

Though a lackluster Fourth of July does not impact my life greatly, it was depressing. I felt as though an opportunity to breathe life and excitement into my hometown was missed. My childhood memories of Fourth of July fun have been replaced with a community’s burden to set off fireworks and host a parade which everyone complains about.

I am totally fine with creating my own excitement for summertime. However, I worry that everyone’s desire to celebrate at home or away from Alpena is at the expense of community connectedness and economic opportunity.