A Slice of American Pie

A routine errand almost a decade ago gave me my ‘snapshot’ of Matthews. It’s image I recall whenever I’m asked to articulate the essence of the great town in which I reside.I couldn’t find a particular item I was looking for in my well-run, local hardware store, so I trekked up to one of the big box home centers off Independence. It’s nice, I thought to myself then, to have the best of both worlds: the big and the small, the new and the old. On my way home, I cut through the older part of Crestdale off Tank Town Road where I watched a little old woman flush a rooster out of her Ligustrum bushes with a wooden broom. As I continued through town, I passed a small, brick building that housed the Volunteer Fire Department. A couple of guys sat on wooden crates and old metal chairs shooting the breeze. Through the murky windows of the modest structure, I spotted a shiny red High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV or Hum-Vee). Further down the road, as I wound my way home, the traffic was backed up because they were doing construction on a neighborhood filled with half-million dollar homes. An author once wrote, "Growth demands a temporary surrender of security." She was talking about personal development in the late seventies. But, I’d say that pretty much sums up what we’ve got going on in the Town of Matthews right now. This week’s edition of The Record includes information on new development in our town. Within a few miles radius of downtown Matthews, we found at least ten parcels of land under some form of construction, earthmover and hard hats aplenty. Is that a good thing? Or do we prefer the good ol’ days? I’ve learned that it depends on who you talk to and what kind of day they’re having.. Part sleepy burgh, part big town. It’s hard to get a solid take on this growing place. Sometimes we want it to remain a small town detached from the world and unto ourselves. Other times, we want to embrace new development with our sight set on improvement. Over the next ten years, change is going to rock this place. I hope we’ll work together. Because, any way you slice it, change causes restlessness. It rocks our security. Whether that security comes in the form of a kudzu-shrouded hovel hidden at the dead end of a country road or a multi-story town home hell-bent on
urbanism, we all just want a piece of that American pie.