As regular readers know, we moved this summer, from Fort Wayne, Indiana to Birmingham, Alabama. It’s been interesting and generally fantastic.
When I meet folks down here and go through the obligatory “Yeah, we just moved from Indiana….” etc., I often get a sort of concerned look in response. Concerned, I think, as to how we are adapating to The South. I hasten to assure them that we are, indeed, no strangers to The South. I moved to Knoxville at 13, went to UT and Vanderbilt, lived in Virginia and Florida, Michael lived in Florida for ages, and really, the anomaly was the Indiana Years (despite the fact, as my husband will quickly remind me, I was born in Bloomington. I was, I was.)
I assure them of this, as well as of the fact that we are positively thrilled to be here for a number of reasons, including the fact that we could list the FW house for sale with snow shovels included.
But we are happy to be here for other reasons, too. I’ve no doubt that enumerating them will offend Fort Wayne loyalists, but so be it. It was, in short, one of the oddest places I’ve ever lived. I still cannot figure it out. For the life of me, I can’t. It wasn’t awful or bad. It was just strange, honestly.
When Fort Wayne first loomed in my future, I looked it up, and noted, “Second Largest City in Indiana.” Well, I reasoned, that’s got to be good news. Nashville, after all, is the second-largest city in Tennessee, and that’s a great town. So, it must translate. Even a little bit. Right?
Wrong.
I think it’s important to point out some positive aspects of The Fort. I would say, in all honesty, that it is an excellent place to raise children – up to a point, that point being the teen years when the secondary school options really shrank and wobbled in quality.
We lived in one of the older parts of the city, in a real neighborhood with sidewalks and a neighborhood church and school and a fantastic park one block away from my house. It was safe (at least it felt safe) – it was…a neighborhood. (A part of the city, though, I feel moved to point out though, that we were warned against. Oh, you don’t want to live in the South Side. My Translation: Black people live there. Hispanics, too. The horror.)
Most of the daily tasks (except for Michael driving to work) occurred within a 2-mile radius of the house. There were lots of things to do with children, even if those things were relatively small in scale and repeated themselves every year. Children don’t remember. They don’t care. Everything is new to them, every day. The Fort Wayne Zoo was small, but really excellent, and a fantastic place to take my boys and just let them run and race and practically pet the kangaroos. Great library.
Beyond that, the place just never grabbed me. It didn’t threaten to kill my soul and I certainly wasn’t “unhappy” at all – I had two babies, wrote 16 books, etc., But there was a flatness about life that puzzled me.
(I take it back about the zoo and the library being the top selling points – add “affordable” to the mix. If you want a ridiculously large amount of house for your money, go to Fort Wayne. More specifically, go to Fort Wayne and buy my house - please.)
A story: The job Michael had up there was previously held by a fellow who, when he first had the job, commuted, in a way, on a weekly basis, from a town about two hours away. At one point he decided that this was silly and that he would just move to Fort Wayne. He and his family lasted a year and then went back to the university town where they had originally lived. He spoke of the parochialism of the area. I wondered if he was just being a snob. (Sorry, Jim!)
After about a year myself, I got it.
Although in a way, I still don’t get it.
I’ve visited most, if not all of the major cities in the Midwest. Trust me, Fort Wayne is…different. I don’t know how you characterize a town. I don’t know on what basis you can generalize or describe a gestalt, an identity for a collection of 250,000 people.
I’ll charge into the breach. There is just this very settled, insular sensibility. From year to year (and we lived there 8), nothing much changed. A few more chain restaurants came into town, a couple left. Noises were made about downtown redevelopment, but nothing much happened (until this past year when a development centered on a new baseball stadium for the town’s AA team was constructed downtown – Harrison Square – I wish it well.) During the summer there are festivals in Headwaters Park, close to downtown, almost every week, but even they bear a certain stasis. I’ve been to GermanFest every year for seven years, and every single year, the 6 or 7 vendors of Teutonic Trinkets were arrayed in the exact same L-shaped arrangement on the west end of the grounds. Unchanging. Nothing new.
I take that back. Things did change. From my vantage point in the South Side, the Hispanic and Asian populations exploded. Interesting little panaderias and taquerias opened, as did things like a Burmese coffee shop and a Nation of Islam prayer center and Burmese Buddhist temples and such, hardly any of which was ever noted by the local media. Invisible under the shadow of Germanfest or a golf tournament or the latest touring production of a tribute band to some 70’s rock band.
Eh, this sounds petty and silly. I’ll keep trying and maybe Nance can chime in (if she’s not ticked off from the political rant I shot her way earlier today) and help me. Okay, I’ll just put it this way:
(And you probably should know that these comments echo the conversations I’ve been reading in Fort Wayne-based blogs for years. The questions and frustrations and puzzlement about Fort Wayne’s identity and life is not unique to me. People who live there have these conversations and ask these questions – all the time. It is part of trying to understand how to bring economic life back to the area instead of just standing watching it walk away.)
It is very hard to get in and out of Fort Wayne, to and from interesting places. Looking at the map, from the bird’s-eye, you’d think it wouldn’t be so bad. Chicago doesn’t look so far, and neither do the Ohio “C” cities or even Detroit.
But they are. They don’t have to be, but they are – because there is no direct interestate route to any of them except Detroit. It should take about 2. 5 hours to get to Chicago – if there was a direct interestate. But you have to go on state roads, through stupid towns, stopping at lights along the way. Same for Cleveland, for Columbus, for Cincinnati. Neither does an Interestate go directly through Fort Wayne – I read once that the reason this was so was that it was felt that it would contribute to exacerbating neighborhood racial segregation – to divide the city with interestate highways. Guess what. It’s segregated anyway.
So the upshot is that it takes a ridiculous amount of time to get out of Fort Wayne and then once you bust out of the city limits, you have to drive on state roads behind semis, stopping at a zillion lights to actually get anywhere else.
And don’t get me started on the airport. Okay, you already did – an airport that is continually whining and trying to guilt the good people of Fort Wayne to fly from the Fort Wayne International Airport and not, say Indy or even Columbus but somehow cannot attract a discount airline and hence competition to stay for longer than three months.
The point? The difficulty of leaving Fort Wayne always seemed to me to be expressive of some deep-seated fear that people would, indeed leave Fort Wayne, revealing, even more deeply, a fear and lack of understanding that a city’s life depends on risk. You risk opening the gate because you hope and trust that some of whom will leave will return with interesting ideas and also because you are not afraid of the new. You make it hard to leave a place, you’re also making it hard to come. And maybe that’s what you want, but it’s obvious to most people that what makes a city interesting is movement, diversity and change. A city, it seems to me, as a choice. You can make travel to and from your joint easy, or difficult. Fort Wayne, for some reason, chose B somewhere along the way, and that, to me, holds a powerful symbolism.
Personally, I blame it on the Amish.
Just kiding. Sort of.
There is a fairly substantial Amish population in Northern Indiana, and I finally came to wonder if the Germans who settled and shaped Fort Wayne, even if they were not actually Amish or Mennnonite, still bore a bit of that suspicious, stubborn, closed-in, parochial sensibility. There’s a fear of giving you too much access to the outside world – it might look too pretty, it might attract you, and you might want to escape. Can’t have that. So we will decline the direct interstate links, we will not develop the rivers that run right through the middle of town and that, in any other city, are a center of life and development, and we will resent the new.
Let me try to explain this another way.
In the area in which we lived, there was a school. A couple of schools with which we were acquainted, to which we were connected. Most of the adults connected to these schools had actually attended the schools as children and teens, and some of their parents had done the same.
The resultant culture was rather inbred and closed to the newcomer. As I explained to my (sometimes frustrated and hurt) daughter many times, I really believe that what we could see in this is that dynamic of how our greatest strength can be our greatest weakness, as well. A community needs continuity, stability and tradition. It is good for an institution like a school to have deep roots, to have a stadium filled on a Friday night with alumni watching their grandsons heave a football and their granddaughters play in the band or cheer. One of the most wonderful teachers any of my children have had was Joseph’s kindergarten teacher who had attended his school herself and sent her own children through it. She was deeply committed, faith-filled and a rock.
But. How easy it is for the “close-knit” community to settle. To come to believe that its reason for existence extends no further than the comfort and satisfaction of those Friday nights filled with familiar faces and rituals. For close-knit to evolve into clannishness, pure and simple.
No matter where you live, I bet you can see the temptation in some group in which you are involved- your parish, a spiritual movement in which you are involved…what have you. It’s the constant dynamic of human interaction and connection.
An odd place, that Fort Wayne. A nice zoo. Great park near my house. Fantastic library. Fr. Widmann – we miss you, definitely, with your pithy, to-the-point 6-minute homilies. But you’d be one of kind, anywhere.
In conclusion:
Phew.
(Wipes brow. And not just from the Alabama heat.)
And that whole thing about your greatest strength perhaps being your weakness, as well?
Something to think about, I’m thinking, for towns and people, both. And churches, as well, something we’ve discussed here often. The sacramental/ritual/hierarchical structure of Catholicism keeps it relatively steady, but tempts us to neglect the personal aspect of faith. The personal focus of evangelical Protestantism gives it energy, but can lead to mistaking emotional responses for faith, and so on.
It may have its pleasures...but...goodbye to all that.
Dear Amy: I read with interest your article on Fort Wayne. I remember reading some excerpts of your books and I also remember a presentation that you gave here in Fort Wayne for our Diocese. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but really wanted to because I was impressed with the excerpts I had read. How disappointing it is to now read this article, basically bashing Fort Wayne. I’m sorry you did not find our city so welcoming. We have lived here for 20 years now and have been welcomed since day one. There are plenty of wonderful things about our fair city, much more than just the zoo and the library. I won’t bore you with all that our city has to offer, and I’m sorry that you felt that the life here was parochial, but perhaps had you explored life here a bit more you would have found it to be very rewarding. My children attend Bishop Dwenger and the education and family life at BD is absolutely the best. And, before you respond by saying the tuition is too high, I can tell you that through the goodness of the principal and Sanits Alive!, my children are attending at a greatly reduced tuition, and I know of families who cannot afford a Catholic education that send their children to Catholic schools for practically nothing. And as for the “inbred” comment, I find that particularly insulting. In today’s society where many lament the fact that people are so spread out, that small town values are lost on families today, it’s refreshing to find places where those Friday nights bring a community together. Those very communities are the ones who bring you dinner when you have a baby, pick up your kids from school when you have a dead battery and do repairs around your home when your husband dies. I’m sorry you find that offensive. I pray that you find whatever it is you are looking for in your new home. I pray that you find the town welcoming and your children are happy. Blessings to you and your family.
Mary: I’m sorry you’re offended, but I think that you’ll find that my comments echo the conversations that are constant among people who live in and discuss life in Fort Wayne both in person and on the Internet. I am not nearly as harsh as some are about Fort Wayne believe me. There is a continual exploration of why Fort Wayne doesn’t seem to have the same life and buzz that other midwestern cities have – what’s missing. The conversations, for example, about downtown revitalization echo these same themes. I don’t bring up anything new.
And if you read what I say about the community closely, you’ll see that I point out that it is a strength, but that closeness can easily tip over into clannishness. Just as an openness to change can tip over into dislocation and unconnectedness.
I just think it’s worth considering on a more general level – and a hook for self-examination. How do my strengths lay the groundwork for my weaknesses, also?
No argument from me. I think you nailed it, or part of it. I think it’s significant that the one true, as-the-crow-flies fast route to a larger city is to…Indianapolis.
Paul Helmke — former three-term mayor, lifelong resident, now a lobbyist in Washington — said much the same thing when I interviewed him this spring for a piece on the primary. He said, paraphrasing, “My neighborhood is full of people who grew up around the corner, whose parents still live nearby, whose kids will do the same. And that’s great. That gives the place a stability that’s wonderful. But the flip side is, they’ve never been anywhere else. They can’t conceive of a different way to handle a problem.”
Which is pretty much what you said.
But let’s wallow in the smelly trough of stereotype for a moment, too: FW is a place with a wide ruling class of Germans, specifically German Lutherans, specifically Missouri Synod German Lutherans, and never in my life have I dealt with a more stubborn, smug, dismissive-of-outsiders group of people. I mean, in my life. Of course there were wonderful exceptions, but to paint with a broad brush, these folks not only think they have it figured out, they have it nailed. They believe trying a different way is not only unnecessary, but wrong. And even dangerous. And they’ve defined the face of the city for generations.
I could go on for about 3,000 words on this subject, and maybe by the end of this comment thread I will, but for now let me just say to someone who will appreciate it, you know what the best thing about living in the Detroit area is? For me, at least this week? A major airport in one’s back yard. All the ugliness and decay and high taxes and economic death spirals somehow seems a small price to pay for not having to drive 120 miles at the end of a trip, home from Indy.
You’ll adjust fine. Indiana is actually the northernmost reach of the south in many ways. My family had a similar experience trying to live in Rockford. IL. If it takes ten years to be accepted and finally begin to feel at home, a place ought to be WONDERFUL, instead of merely not awful.
You’ve just described my Iowa city to a T.
“the Germans who settled and shaped Fort Wayne, even if they were not actually Amish, still bore a bit of that suspicious, stubborn, closed-in, parochial sensibility.”
Tja, das ist leider haeufig uns. Besonders die Lutheraner.
Not FW born, but FW raised. I went away to school, I lived in western KS, Lafayette IN and Columbus OH. And then I came back. I would go back to Cols in a heartbeat. Western Kansas (west of Dodge City, for goodness sake!) was more diverse and interesting. There IS a life and vitality that’s missing. A desire to explore something different. There are people who are hoping and praying for Harrison Square to fail SPECTACULARLY, so they can say “I told you” and then continue to complain about how dead and dangerous downtown is. I knew someone who used to say Fort Wayne is so proud of the past because that’s where so many people live. It’s a place where my parents were here 30 years and still “not from here”. And it’s a place that gets defensive when people point out ways they are dissatisfied. Instead of “huh, how could we make things more welcoming/diverse/interesting,” it’s more an attitude of “well, don’t let the door hit ya…”
It IS a great place to raise childen (which we don’t have). I live in a GREAT neighborhood. (where I can see Amy’s old house from the porch) I have a wonderful church (which is far more welcoming to my Missouri Synod Lutheran husband than the LCMS church EVER was to me). But I share the frustrations of both Amy and Nancy. Can I please go somewhere from my home airport for less than 700 dollars and without a connecting flight through O’Hare?
I could go on and on. And already did.
In my experience, what you describe is one of the differences, in general, between Americans and Europeans. Most Americans are somewhat more transient in residence than Europeans, so the argument that “This is the way we’ve always done it” is just one argument……..it is not an argument-ender.
I have heard that this is becoming the trend in Europe now, too………….now that people are free to live anywhere in the EU.
This wonderful essay describes some of the greatest weaknesses of small town life: insularity, stagnation, and a lack of openess. You could just as easily be describing many small towns in Pennsylvania, where I’ve seen the same resistance to outsiders and newness.
If you think Fort Wayne is insular, try living anywhere in Ohio, especially around Columbus or Steubenville.
I live in a totally different place and but see and experience some of this, too. I did a search of top videos from each town (renting more than other towns) on Netflix for fun for you:
Top rented videos from FW
1. Save the Last Dance
2. Behind Enemy Lines II
3. Dane Cook: Vicious Circle
4. Sweet November
5. The Comebacks
Top rented videos from Birmingham
1. Tyler Perry
2. Grey’s Anatomy
3. Madea’s Class Reunion
4. A good man is hard to find
5. Honeydripper
Amy,
I am sorry that you don’t have fonder memories of your time in Fort Wayne.
I do feel like I need to defend Fort Wayne a little bit since I am a lifelong resident of Fort Wayne. In fact, I am the forth generation of my family to live here. I have had numerous opportunities to leave for larger cities but have always chosen to stay here.
Why do I stay here? Why is Fort Wayne my home?
Family:
- It is where my father is buried not far from my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather.
- It is a place where my family can learn about their history and actually see where that history took place.
- It is where my children can visit with their grandparents every weekend in person and not on the phone. I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for the fond memories I have of laughing with my grandparents.
- It is comforting that when my kids talk to me at dinner about their day at school, that I will know the parents or grandparents of their schoolmates.
Faith:
- Our beautiful Cathedral, not to mention St. Peters.
- Our Priests are a special blessing for our diocese. By living in the same place for so long, we, my family, view our priests as not some guy we see once a week but as members of the family who bring us Christ.
- Father Widman has done an excellent job with the Catholic Museum.
Activities:
- Fort Wayne has one of the oldest Minor League hockey teams in professional sports. It costs less to take two of my sons to a Komet game, with parking, drinks and a souvenir than a single ticket to any major league team.
http://komets.com/
- For anybody that is interested in the formation of our country, there is a rich US history from post revolution (Josiah Harmer), civil war (Mother George), the industrialization period (Bass Foundry, Magnetic Wire, etc.) and the World Wars.
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~inmpwcd/markers.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/7029/civilwar.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/7029/riseofindustry.html
http://www.museumofthesoldier.com/baer_field.htm
I, too, could go on and on.
Perhaps all cities and towns have such offerings. (I hope that they do.) But when I visit with my sisters that have left Fort Wayne for larger cities (Indy, Minneapolis, Dayton and Atlanta), I always become anxious to return back to the flat land of Allen County. I can’t explain your experience, or the experience of the bloggers that you reference.
I am not mad about what you wrote. I only wish I knew before you left.
Ora pro nobis!!!
Tom Centlivre
I have to say out of the places I’ve lived Fort Wayne is definitely the best. Well, I liked Indianapolis too but I only got to see a small part of it while I was there. I’m so grateful to HAVE an airport. And to be able to get to Indy so easily and to 80 so easily. So grateful not to get picked on all the time about being Catholic or for not acting quite like everyone else. I’m shocked that Birmingham could be so much better than what I have found here. I don’t even have kids.
Although I do remember the Catholicism Revealed lecture you gave last year where someone stood up and told you there was no excuse for you not sending your kids to Catholic school. I was livid. Still, narrow mindedness can happen anywhere. FYI, since your lecture they have made everyone write their questions down so that sort of thing won’t happen again.
I’ve looked and looked to find out why you moved to Birmingham but haven’t found anything.
Theca – well that comment was about the Catholic high school. My grammar-school aged kids attended Catholic schools the whole time we were in FW.
I/we encountered plenty of anti-Catholicism in Fort Wayne and a staggering number of inactive Catholics as well.
Birmingham is friendly, lively and the Catholic community here is thriving and growing by leaps and bounds, with a very evangelistic (as in…spread the Word) energy, for the most part, that was absent in much of the FW Catholic community, the exceptions being SVDP and Redeemer Radio and a few other places.
Oh, and Why we’re here.
Amy,
You have described my small western Ohio town to a T also. It is full of German families whose families have been here from generation to generation. When we moved here I knew not a soul. A gentleman at church told me, “These people don’t need new friends.” After a year of crying about how lonely I was, I joined church groups galore and kept reminding myself that I was a good person and people did want to be my friends. Thank God I am an extrovert. It is the hardest thing I have ever done to become part of this community. My running joke is that school people look at the last name and decide whether or not you can play football or be a cheerleader. But it has been a great place to raise my 5 children. They have been able to try everything and its given them the confidence to spread their wings. I am sure none of them will come back here to live, but I am now a part of this town. Still hate snow though!
I’m cheered by Colleen’s mention of going back to Cols “in a heartbeat”, though I’m also envious of your living where it never snows!
One of the thing that fascinates me is how cities with, as you say, a quarter million people can take on a certain character despite, well, a quarter million people. You’d think that for a “personality” to take shape it would have to be only in small cities. Yet even Ohio cities Cincy & Cols seem very different to me. How much more different are small towns from each other?
Anyway, look forward to future posts like this one, especially concerning Birmingham, which seems like a foreign country to me at least in terms of where I’ve been/visited. You’ve lived in so many parts of the south now – very “southern cosmopolitan”.
Of course, it’s killin’ me that you’ve not blogged about politics though I do admire your discipline in the face of so much immersion.
Welcome to Alabama, Amy. I apparently wasn’t reading at the point where you announced the transition and only gradually realized that all these references to B’ham are not connected with a trip to appear on EWTN or something. I grew up in north AL, up near the Tennessee line, but never spent much time in Birmingham. Until I was in my 20s or so it was a grimy industrial city which nobody who didn’t live in Mountain Brook seemed to love very much, then when the steel mills closed it sort of stagnated for a while before being reborn on the money surrounding UAB’s medical complex and other non-grimy enterprises.
I got several chuckles out of your description of Fort Wayne because some of it applies to Mobile, near which I live and in which I work. The syndrome has a very different flavor here because it’s older, Southern, and partly Catholic, but everyone who moves here seems to remark eventually on how often they hear the words “but we’ve always done it this way.”
Mobile is a bit of a mini-New Orleans, in both good and bad ways (my wife once said, apropos some local politician being hauled off to jail, “They love a crook in Mobile.” You should visit down this way sometime. In many ways I don’t really *like* Mobile all that much, but I think it’s a more interesting city and region than Birmingham.
The insularity described here was verified by me within a few months of moving to Ft. Wayne with a phrase I’ve taken as a classic example of “reverse snobbery.” While talking about something, the sneeringly contemptuous rejoinder from a native to my innocent question was “Well, maybe that’s how they do things on the East coast, but not here.” The words “East coast” were spat out with all the horror of “child abusers” or “Nazi henchmen.”
I grew up in Kokomo; it’s hard to describe “Fort Wayne People” but you did it fairly well, and were nicer than most. Most people from Indiana seem to realize that Indiana is a nice place to raise kids, but we have a self-deprecating humor about how it really isn’t an exciting place. (The best cantaloupes though, and I miss Brook’s Tangy Ketchup) Fort Wayners are, I don’t know, placidly satisfied? And did you ever meet someone from the small towns nearby? They don’t visit Ft Wayne; it’s like a pilgrimage, practically. Not awful, just odd.
Amy, my family and I had the same experience early last year, when we left our “native” Louisville and now love life in Oklahoma City. The insularity, backwardness and resistance to most kinds of progress you mention are all present in Louisville – in spades, despite some noble efforts to the contrary. Also, it’s a mish-mashed ecclesiastical backwater, being the only one of four dioceses that just turned two centuries old without anything resembling a “red hat.” And that, to me, is very telling.
Meanwhile, OKC has cleaned itself up and bypassed Tulsa as the “gem city” of the Sooner State, has low taxes and even lower fuel prices, and just gained an NBA team. What a difference a few hundred miles makes! And just like Alabama, Oklahoma has a solid, proud and thriving Catholicism…and a bumper crop of this, well, red dirt.
Amy,
If I might ask, why were you not satisfied with the secondary education options in town? My wife graduated from BD and though it was an excellent option. However, as her husband and coming from a similarly sized town that is much more vibrant, I definitely understand the weird vibe you got for Fort Wayne. It’s very hard for me to explain as well.
Thanks,
Mike
BD was on the opposite end of town from where we were. Too far for a daily treck. The other Catholic high school did not, at the time we were there, seem to value academics as much as sports and social connections. My HS-aged kids did the IB at South Side. It was good for the first one, who graduated in ‘03, but by the time the other went through, it seemed to be in sharp decline. I blame block scheduling, myself. The teachers were never adequately trained how to transition. Canterbury wasn’t an option for cost and other reasons. Homestead and Snider are supposed to be good though.
Welcome to Birmingham! Great city…hope you enjoy it.
This all sounds too familiar, but in several different ways. I was born & raised in Ft. Wayne and my parents still live in Amy’s (former) part of town, so I get the insularity, lack of a good grocery, etc. I now live in Tallahassee, FL, which is about the same size (we’re TV market 105 by size, FWA is 107) and similar in some ways, not so in others. An earlier commenter mentioned the Fort Wayne reaction to “east coast” ways. Here it’s the same reaction, but substitute “up north” or “South Florida.” We do have two universities, one substantial, so that helps diversity immensely. But I’ve also experienced similar insularity in larger places. My wife and I lived for a number of years in St. Paul, MN. The whole time we lived there our friends were virtually all people who moved there from elsewhere. My wife and I used to say that native Minnesotans made all the friends they needed in kindergarten.
Amy’s description of FWA’s air travel woe’s sound just like those of Florida’s capital–except out airport doesn’t even pretend to be international and we have to drive even further to a big airport.
I could go on, but this is too long already. I guess that my point is that Amy’s critique is accurate, but those problems are not, alas, unique to Ft. Wayne or, always, small cities.
Paul Stokell: Maybe Louisville just isn’t big enough for a cardinalate? Love them or hate them, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia are among the U.S.’s largest and most important cities, and always have been. Louisville, on the other hand, may be an old archdiocese, but I don’t think you could give it a cardinalate without giving ones to Atlanta, Nashville, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Minneapolis-St.Paul, St. Louis (which used to have one but lost it), and New Orleans, and that would just be far too many American cardinals. I don’t think it’s meant as a reaction to any kind of negative energy there; the city is just (by global standards) too small for a cardinal. Unlike all the other cities I mentioned, for example, it doesn’t have any MLB, NFL, or NBA team.
One final point (I’m commented on this enough already): Re-reading this, I was taken aback by the phrase “stupid towns.” As someone at Rod Dreher’s blog said, can you imagine the reaction if a liberal said that (about Wasilla, Alaska, say)? I’m not quite sure what you meant by the phrase, but taken literally it is far more insulting than Barack Obama’s infamous “bitter” remark. A decent person can be made bitter by bad circumstances and then possibly redeemed, but a stupid person (let alone an entire stupid town) is pretty much beyond hope.
I would have to see a debate between you and John Cougar Mellencamp on the subject “Indiana small towns: good or bad?”
Oh, James – they’re stupid when you’re just trying to get to Chicago or Cincinnati and you just want to get there and the minute you get past a semi, you’re in another town with three stoplights and you just want to get to Cincy or wherever in a decent time, and you’re cursing because you know if there was a straight line, it would take you 2/3 the time. I think you know what I meant. I hope. Does JCM live in a small town at present?
I mean, “I would LIKE to see.”
Amy,
I love my city and never in a million years would I be caught dead at a Wizards game, at the zoo, at Headwaters Park or any other Convention Bureau landmarks. I’ve learned that the only true way to love your city (any city) is to dig a little deeper and actually mix it up with the curious, the strange, the grotesque. It is impossible to get an accurate read of a city when it’s your viewpoint–and not the city–that’s insular.
I’ve argued too long with people who bemoan the lack of a first class bistro or an authentic bakery in Fort Wayne, as if that’s all there is to a city’s dimensions. Problematic highways? Really? That’s a big negative? I couldn’t imagine allowing myself to be tripped up by such a trivial matter. Especially if I wanted to make a go of it in the city, and not be looking to escape it constantly.
The main reason I stay here is because the city is too bizarre to miss. And as for the provinciality and the conservatism–well, not on my block. It used to be that the wooly and strange, the artists and the loudmouths were ostracized in the city, but that time has changed. I have no desire to trumpet the city like a foursquare public official, but the truth here is that cheap housing prices have kept some of the city’s most interesting artists in town, and they continue to work and get better and have their installations and films and plays and stories performed right here, in town.
Yes, I hate that I can’t walk anywhere. I hate that my daughter’s show choir participation puts me in contact with insane show choir parents. I hate the boring newspapers. But if you don’t know about the Brass Rail and King Gyros and the National Cigar Store (and I bet you don’t), you don’t know the city. And you probably didn’t try too hard.
The King Gyros – of course. But here’s the thing – where’s the rule that says a place can’t be discussed? I could start a thread on New York City and people who know it would talk about how they love it, how they hate it, how they couldn’t live without it, how they couldn’t wait to move out, how it killed their soul. Why is that not allowed here?
Secondly…well…I could walk in Fort Wayne. We lived in a very walkable neighborhood. It wasa good thing.
And why be judgmental of show choir parents? That’s offensive….!!!!
I don’t see any problem at all with what you said, Amy. We have lived in Knoxville 8 years and we have yet to maintain ties with anyone here. Funny enough, we’ve made friends with people who have moved here and after a couple of years they move back to the towns where their families and old friends lived. That speaks volumes to me. For those who are upset about you supposedly trashing Ft. Wayne, I think it best that they try to walk in your shoes for a while. I venture to guess they’ve never had to worry where they were going for the holidays or have a lack of activities to look forward to with family and friends. They’re fat and happy and don’t feel the need to let the “outsiders” in. Too risky.
We stay in Knoxville solely because my husband has a good job here which he enjoys. I absolutely agree that there is a clannishness to be found in just about every institution in this city and for someone who is not from here, it can be pretty painful. You see other families relax and bask in the warmth of friendship and closeness you wonder what’s wrong with you and your family because you are never invited to be a part of things. If you drop out of ministries at church because of family responsibilities, the silence is deafening. No one knows you exist anymore.
I think part of the things you noticed in Ft. Wayne could also be the fact that folks are pretty absorbed in their own lives and “busyness” especially if these people have school-aged children. I venture to guess that happens everywhere and it’s just a characteristic of modern American culture.
Of course none of this is a tragedy of epic proportions or anything like that, but it certainly feels like one has a low level virus that you just can’t shake. We need other people and their kindness and when we don’t have it, we suffer. If you’re not fortunate enough to have a helpful, functional family close by, it’s infinitely more difficult.
I appreciate what you’re saying,but a feeling of belonging, etc.,wasn’t the issue for us (except for my teen-aged daughter, and that’s par for the course). It was that insular complacency that was generally unwelcoming to new ideas or new blood.
Amy’s update is dead-on. This discussion wouldn’t be taking place if she’d said farewell to Chicago in the same way, and it underlines the inferiority complex FW has long had about itself — even as it resists change and thumps its collective chest about its many virtues.
I lived there 20 years, and once you’ve been there that long, you can’t say you hate the place — that would make you the laziest fool in creation — but at the same time, natives think that amount of time within the city still makes you, in many ways, an outsider. Obviously, every place in the world has its strengths and weaknesses, and all Amy has done is point out a few of them. I miss the same things she misses (especially the library, and the mortgage payment), but at the same time, moving to a larger pond has made me feel I’ve reached critical mass.
One final thing, though: I simply do not understand why we credit small towns, smaller cities, etc., with so many virtues they don’t, in my view, even really have, just because they’re small/er. It’s so patronizing. We all live in communities, usually several of them simultaneously — our street, church, school, workplace — and whether it’s in some dusty little village or Manhattan, they all have their collection of good and bad people, smart and dumb, virtuous and otherwise. Whenever people repeated, for the millionth time, what a good place Fort Wayne was “to raise a family,” it always sounded like they thought this was the only place such a feat was ever successfully accomplished. (The flip side is true, too; you can find provincialism in any Good Building on the upper east side of Manhattan.)
Ultimately, however, I like the big towns. I read Rod Dreher’s thread on this, and I agree with the acquaintance he quotes who can’t get past the lack of curiosity he finds in tank towns. Again, you can find the dull and self-involved everywhere, but maybe, again, it’s just a matter of critical mass.
Probably Mellencamp does not currently live in a small town. That particular line was just a joke. I don’t particularly care for his music anyway, although my father is a fan.
The guy at Rod’s (”John from Indy” – probably not Mellencamp, but who knows?) did make some good points, however, of which his complaint about the “stupid towns” remark was only one. If I recall correctly, though your original settlement in Fort Wayne was somehow connected with Our Sunday Visitor, a fact of which he seemed to be unaware, viewing it as a more voluntary action.
I just thought the original post had a (doubtless unintentional) “Stuff White People Like” tone that I found atypical from you. It did have the odd SWPL overconcern with exotic food. On the other hand, it is considered uncool in such circles to like fast driving.
Not being from anywhere near Fort Wayne, I have no personal dog in the fight, despite my overly large number of posts.
I guess I’m confused as to why it’s not permissible to express likes and dislikes of a town and try to figure out why the town was that way. Why does it have to be dismissed by associating it with SWPL as if I were trying to fit in a trend or play a part? So I like to drive more than 50 miles an hour if all I want to do is go to Chicago for the day. Why is that an intolerant or snobbish statement? I’m honestly confused. Let me say – if I hadn’t spent the last five years or so perusing this conversation online, among other Fort Wayne residents, I wouldn’t even bother. But the questions I have/had are not unique to me, and they go a lot deeper than restaurant choices – to why a business or corporation would locate in this area, what would bring employees, what would keep them, what makes college graduates decide to stay or leave, etc. Fort Wayne is in an economic struggle – if the GM plant closes, that will just about do it at this point. Quality of life issues matter. Part of a quality of life involves neighborhoods, stability, a sense of appreciation of family life. But part of it involves things to do and places to go and the kinds of goods and services that are available. As I said, if I were the only one wondering about this, I wouldn’t keep talking about it. But there’s a lot of tension in Fort Wayne about this very subject, as it happens.
One final story, sort of OT, but funny and illustrative of your greater point:
One of the big events of the year for the downtown power structure in FW is the annual prayer breakfast, which is just what it sounds like. Associated Churches puts it on, and they spend a little money on an above-average speaker, most years — someone with a hot book out on a religious theme, or a senator, someone like that. However, the event is deeply conventional, and the prayers are led by some nice boring Protestant cleric or Catholic priest, everybody says amen and goes to work.
This one year, the job of securing the speaker went to a friend of a friend, who decided the event needed a little oxygen, and hired Deion Sanders, the former high-living football player who came to Jesus late in his career.
So Deion comes in, looks out at all these white folks, and proceeds to tell his story. In the rhythms of the black church, or course, and sparing no detail of his degradation. My friend says the knockout punch came after he told any children in the audience to cover their ears, and then said:
“You folks don’t know what it’s like to have one…two…three women! In the bed! And still not be…satisfied!”
My friend said he turned around and glanced out at the tables, and said the looks on the faces made it alllll worthwhile.
I grew up in Memphis, went to college in Knoxville.
I lived for a little while in Kinston, NC and now live in Lexington, KY. Both Kinston and Lexington were described to me, before I moved to each one of them as “clannish.”
Kinston was a town of about 30,000 and most people were born there and had a long family history there. Because DuPont was in Kinston, there were many people from other places. But, in general, if you weren’t originally from Kinston or one of the surrounding towns you pretty much felt like a bit of an outsider. It wasn’t an unfriendly place. I just felt a little out of it. In a town that size everybody knows everybody – except for those not “from” Kinston.
Lexington used to be the same way. We’ve grown quite a bit. Now Lexington is an example of a city desperately wanting to be a big, happening place. But, it has forgotten that a small town can be a vibrant, exciting place as well. An exciting city is not one with lots of new shopping centers.
Recently, a square block of downtown was torn down, including a building from the 1800’s to make way for a 40 story tall hotel/apartment building. The block of old buildings was in bad shape – you can still smell the must and mold from the little bit of rubble left. But, downtown Lexington KY does not need a 40 story hotel. We are pretending to be a big city. I wish we’d just be what we are (or were)… a nice small city.
Hahahahahaha . . . i’m suggesting Deion to our county prayer breakfast organizers, and i will accept a role this time (if they tap him) that forces me to sit up in the front. For the view.
That expression i gotta see.
Lack of curiosity is the norm, and any family systems therapist/counselor will tell you that systems tend to default to stasis, which is why weird stuff happens in a family when an addict starts to take steps to get clean. Yes, it’s what everyone kept saying had to happen, but everyone had a certain stability level propping up the addict, so getting healthy for one means everyone has to find a new stable.
The easiest way is to get the addict to start using again.
So stuck makes sense in communities large and small, but dynamic growth or dramatic change is always rooted in something irrational.
“Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” – Milton Friedman”
Thanks to Nancy Nall for referencing this. I enjoyed it.
I was born and raised in Fort Wayne. I attended Fort Wayne Community Schools and went for two years at IPFW. I worked in northern Indiana for the early part of my career. Since I left at the age of 31, I have lived in various parts of the country, including Birmingham (I still own a home in Alabaster). I have spent the last few years living and working in Washington and New York.
Fort Wayne was a good place to grow up. I still have friends there. But I would never want to live there again, for many of the reasons you described. It is a very insular place, filled with people who pine for the glory days of Fort Wayne in the 1940s and ’50s. My mother was born there, lived all but three of her 76 years there, was determined to die there — and did. I begged for her to come live with us, but she wouldn’t hear of leaving Fort Wayne. I never understood it and still don’t.
I find it interesting that so few Fort Wayne natives who go off to college ever return to the Summit City. I went to my 20th high school reunion there a few years ago and was disappointed by the attendance. The people I knew and hung out with never came back after college.
Fort Wayne still holds a place in my heart, which I guess is why I keep tabs on it through websites and blogs. But I was never one of those who would be content to spend the rest of my life there.
But I will say this: I’ve been all over this country and several countries around the world, and NOTHING beats a Coney Island hot dog! (A place in Providence, Rhode Island, came close, but not quite.)
Thanks again for writing this.
After leaving Fort Wayne for college and moving to a big city for 2 years afterward, I too felt similar to the way you felt about Fort Wayne.
Specifically there is too much resistance to change. As another commentor pointed out, some folks are even hoping for the downtown redevelopment projects to fail so they can say “i told you so.” How sad.
Downtown Fort Wayne is fairly nice as is, and with this project, and potential redevelopment of the rivers, it could be a very nice place to live, work, and play.
While I agree with most of what you say…. I’ve moved back to Fort Wayne, and I love it. I’ve never come across nicer people in any of my travels, and really enjoy the people I interact with via business, in my neighborhood, and out on the town. I hope for downtown to again be vibrant, and I think there is hope….but with all the naysayers hoping for failure, will there be enough optimists frequenting downtown? I sure hope so.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Fort Wayne… a place I love, but often question some of the “thinking” that goes on here.
Amy-
Having grown up in a small town (Silver Lake) in Indiana, for me going into Ft. Wayne was like someone living in Ft. Wayne going to Chicago. Ft. Wayne was the big city, granted I was born in 1969 so this would have been late 70’s and 80’s. I so looked forward to going there, but now, as I have lived in 5 different states (thank you, Army!!) I have to agree with so many of you, Ft. Wayne is not what it used to be.
As for the person who is a fourth generation to grow up and live in Ft. Wayne, believe me I have so much of that on my mom’s side, but in Kosciusko County, and you know what. It isn’t so great. My children have traveled this great country, seen things I had never seen until I married my husband. They have met and learned how to live with the diversity this country has to offer. We wouldn’t give up this life for anything!
Cities like Ft. Wayne will continue to be stagnant or just die if they don’t learn to reach out and quit looking at themselves.
A great post, Amy. I inspired thought about my personal strengths and weaknesses.
Terrific post – you could be writing about my home town.
But alas, I have lived here now for 44 years. I still feel like I moved here about 8 years ago.
It has been a fine place to raise kids. They got decent educations, and were exposed to everything kids are exposed to today. Our youngest (of 5) just turned 20.
I feel, each day, that it is a choice I make to stay here. Surely I am “free” to go anywhere in the world. But here is where I live.
It’s the only way I can still live here and not be consumed with a victim-mentality.
Like ndawg, your post inspired me to think.
you speak the truth:
I’m a life-long hoosier, and lived in many parts of our relatively great state. Only been to Ft. Wayne twice and it just didn’t “feel right” either time. My wife said it gave her the “heebie-jeebies”.
WOW! Insular IS the word to describe Fort Fun. Lived there for the longest three years of my life. I have a dear friend who still lives there, and she is a rare transplant to the area who likes it.
Who said I like it? LOL I am stuck here. LOL Ruth
Amy,
What an eye-opening article, although I am truly concerned now! I just moved here from the West Coast, where I can now be able to afford a great home…home prices out west are unreal. I am single, 39, and Jewish, and I have a feeling, I may have made a mistake. I do not have family here, however I have great friends whom I have known for several years. I have already gotten a sense of the very judgmental, conservative thinking that is so pervasive here. I am NOT opposd to any religion or thought, but I feel as though people in Fort Wayne are…if you are not extremely religious, and attend their church.
Is there more to Fort Wayne than this? Where can I go to find educated, like minded people, who don’t judge??? Please let me know!
I was a transplant to Fort Wayne and lived there about 9 years. I also lived on the South Side. What my family found was that *where* you chose to live in the area made a big difference in your experience. We came to realize not everyone who cautioned us against living on the South Side were talking about race or income (some were). What they were gently cautioning us about is that the South Side has far fewer options for entertainment or education, and that it has more insular people who’ve always lived there. Amy even rightly points out that BD is too far a drive from the South Side. It indeed is. However, people who live on the North Side have easy access to BD or other schools (Concordia L.H.S.), as well as to the local public University, IPFW. Also, the North and SouthWest sides are where most of the other newcomers/transplants tend to live, so you find more college educated people who *do* have experience living elsewhere are there. You also find that since the newer and younger people in the “suburbs” tend to populate the churches in those areas, our decision to go to the congregation near our house kept us with an older, less open-minded group than we would have found in some other congregation — again on the North or Southwest sides (we met people from these other churches and started to think we needed to change locations). My wife and I came to realize that as much as we liked our South Side neighborhood after seven years there, we needed to move to another corner of the city to be around more professional people and have access to the schools and entertainment options we were interested in for ourselves and our kids. It was just one of those realizations – the light went on gradually but consistently. Now that I’ve lived in other, much larger cities, I know that places like Chicago have whole bedroom community CITIES that have insular thinking and that don’t tend to welcome outsiders … Fort Wayne has similar areas within its city limits that are less open to newcomers. It’s not fair to blame “the city” or “the people there” or “the Lutherans” — there is a variety of kinds of people in Fort Wayne, and certain areas tend to draw certain kinds of mindsets… and there are far more Methodists and Catholics in Fort Wayne than there are Lutherans. Final note, the second-largest “city” in Indiana more truthfully is the Gary/Munster/Portage/Merillville/Hammond area in the northwest corner of the state — it’s one continuous metropolitan area despite being broken into a series of little suburbs, and dwarfs Fort Wayne for population and infrastructure.
Great assessment of the Fort –
Your blog write up was noted in the local FW Reader as a bright spot, or one of the “best” interesting blog entries of 2009.
Lots and lots of gray to comb through when one is trying to put a finger on Fort Wayne. Heeps of Applebees, mullets, camaros with T-tops, and god-fearing people watching American Idol on the TV set. Mowing grass and having a well manicured lawn are the mainstay. As some of the previous posts stated, your description of FW could serve for many towns all across America.
We’ve heard all the reasons to stay put before. Cheap living, good place to raise a family, no steep hills to walk up, etc…
So, for you to break free of the fierce magnetic pull the Fort emits out is commendable.
Best of luck in Alabama.