The Future – And Omaha
In the heat of the summer, the distant cold of the winter seems a smudged dream: hazy, and far off. Unlike a normal dream, it comes with the perfect assurance that the pallid cold will come regardless of how well one does or how many mistakes are made. The slowly arriving, but ever-impending winter may come with a gentle kiss of cool winds, or as a tyrannical father, it should punish all unending – but the winter will come.
It is always so far off, so many don’t bother to prepare until the cold is biting in surprise like a hound waiting just outside the door, and as such jacket and coat companies can charge more money for those who rush to buy when it is nearly too late. The winter – nay, the future, is always coming, and those who ignore the portents glimpsed through the fog or a lens on the past, are doomed to rush to try and prepare for it when it suddenly falls upon them from the heights as a landslide would.
Omaha and the surrounding satellite towns and cities have seen rapid growth lately – from beyond 200th Street all the way to Gretna, housing districts are going up as far as the eye can see, and on Leavenworth among many others, the old buildings are being torn down or repurposed, and replaced with chic apartments with sleek exteriors; more license plates from out-of-state can be seen on cars making rush-hour even more damnable than it ever was before.
As an Omaha native I recall that while on camping trips to other states as a child, other people would ask me and my siblings, “You guys still use horses in Nebraska, right?”
It’s two decades later and finally the secret is out: Omaha is a great, modern, and safe place to live. People are moving in and redeveloping many areas of the metro, as well as buying up those empty acreages that one used to find between the odd neighborhoods to put in more faceless houses and eighteen miles of concrete driveways.
The hazy, distant dream of a future is like a single wave cascading between buildings, looking to leave behind in its wake the room to set the foundations for more people to live. It should not be disparaged, though: to rage against the tide of people is as fruitless as raging against the tyranny of winter.
The sin, however, isn't more people, but realized by singer and songwriter Joni Mitchell when she took a trip to Hawaii and looked out of her hotel window and saw the, “beautiful green mountains in the distance, then (she) looked down and (saw) a parking lot as far as the eye could see,” adding, "It broke my heart.” Joni Mitchel went on to write the lyrics,
"They paved paradise to put up a parking lot."
I urge that we, as Omahans, encourage immutable protections on our parks now before they are sold for development. Also, perhaps those occasional and scattered fields that have yet to be scooped up by ever-starving developers be made into parks themselves before the ever-sundering, ever-looming, and perpetually rolling procession of the earth hammers them flat with the force of impending need for new foundations.
Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to me to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.
Opinions expressed by columnists in The Daily Record are not necessarily those of its management or staff, and do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. Any errors or omissions should be called to our attention so that they may be corrected. Contact us at news@omahadailyrecord.com.
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