GATES
By Zabian ZzyzzyxRelationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings.
- Bob Dylan; Gates of Eden
We are a pretty out-of-date bunch living here in this Ashe County holler, for sure.
Our friends next door held a tent meeting one summer and invited us.
We didn’t go, but did listen from the porch.
They leave their horse in our paddock, and then watch our house when we’re gone. We feed the barn kitty down at the horse farm; his owner tills our garden spot.
The matriarch of one of the extended local families does some stitching for us, makes jam, won’t take any money.
Up and down this road we exchange garden produce, recipes, gossip, services, barter, talk, waves.
This being what remains in the world of neighborliness, or as it is sometimes called… community.
Community being a concept that will be disappearing soon from a neighborhood near you to make way for the modern version.
The Gated Community.
You won’t get to know these folks so well because they don’t want to know you, so they put up the gates.
You will be allowed through those gates if you tend their yards, mind their children, or clean their houses, but that’s about it.
This construct, designed in time-honored fashion to keep one group of people (poor) away from another group (rich), is however remarkable in having devised some new twists to the tale.
Many times no one actually lives in these gated communities; they just visit when it gets too hot down in Florida.
Large subdivisions sit on the ground in Alleghany County, road names in Spanish, featuring a majority of empty lots that just keep changing hands without any building at all, leading some local wags to speculate on their role in, well, cleaning up certain unfortunate trails in the origin of the money to build them.
Realtors pimping this ‘progress’ like to boast about how it raises property values.
Which raises property taxes.
Which makes it difficult or impossible for local families to keep their land.
So they have to sell it.
To the realtors and developers who can make more gated communities, and more money.
Further dividing the rich and poor.
And killing community.
Marx called this class warfare and he was right; too bad he was wrong about the solution to it because without another alternative on the table we are in for more of it the next two years at least.
Warfare and short-term thinking best represent what this corporate model is good for and good at.
We had to marvel up here in the mountains at our local Board of Realtors, who recently made a statement opposing a proposal to build windmills in Ashe County.
Now a large windfarm running along a ridgetop is going to create controversy, so a diverse group of people opposed it.
But for the realtors, who are systematically destroying Ashe County and traditional communities all over the state with their gates and subdivisions and sprawl, to cite the good of Ashe County in their opposition was below even their normal subterranean base line of hypocrisy.
Which leads to the following Modest Proposal.
Stop them from doing it.
Now we know we aren’t going to see zoning up here, besides, zoning doesn’t work.
Land speculation is legal and likely to remain so, along with hypocrisy and greed.
So, we, ourselves, the community, should put up a gate.
A Big One.
Something along the lines of The Great Wall of China comes to mind, designed to keep out barbarian invaders.
Exactly.
You have to pass a test to drive, right?
If your reason to drive up to the High Country is to destroy it, then no, you can’t come in and you are going to be turned away.
You know how developers are prone to name their monstrosities after what they have driven from the gates; plants, animals, local culture?
For example when you see a sign for Cedar Crest, and notice all the cedars have been cut from the crest of the hilltop.
So lets put a big sign up at the bottom of the mountain that says FLORIDA BACKWASH HEIGHTS.
And then drive them from our gates.
