Terry Flanagan: This Town Would Be Great Except for You

Despite what you may have heard about Geneva being a charming, pleasant little town, where everyone lives in perfect harmony, there are some grumblings about town. No, I’m not talking about Jeff Ward, although he does seem to do much of the grumbling about our beloved little hamlet. Despite his acerbic attacks, though, Jeff really has a soft spot in his two-sizes-too-small, Grinch-like little heart for Whoville, I mean Geneva.

Lest you think Jeff is the only one in town with the complaint department on speed dial, we do have others who feel it is their civic duty to complain about the things that other people barely notice or perhaps even enjoy. There are people who complain about the music at Claddagh. If you’ve ever taken a walk in the vicinity of Claddagh, you would be hard-pressed to detect a single note above the virtually impenetrable barrier of traffic noise from Randall Road. And yet, to use another Dr. Seuss analogy, we apparently have some people whose hearing rivals that of Horton.

Train whistles are another thing that some people complain about incessantly. The FRA views this as a safety issue, whereas people who don’t like train whistles feel that other crossing-safety measures render the train whistle obsolete. I wonder if they would consider buying a car without a horn given all of the other safety features cars have.

I have to admit, though, that train whistles don’t really bother me. And, yes, I can hear them from where I live. But they always remind me of the scene in It’s A Wonderful Life where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) is waiting at the train station for his brother when he says to his Uncle Billy that the three most exciting sounds in the world are, “anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles.” For some people a train whistle is a nuisance, while for others it's the siren’s call to faraway places and adventures.

Most any new development in town brings out its share of villagers with pitch forks and torches. The furor over bike trails was beginning to die down about the time we arrived in town, so we didn’t really hear much about that. But I have been told that a number of people who opposed any kind of bike trail later wound up using them and acknowledging that they were not such a bad idea after all.

We worked on getting a skate park built in the fields near Public Works for almost three years. We met with a number of groups and heard a lot of concerns about noise, drugs, lights, gangs, etc. Almost 10 years later, the skate park has proven to be a valuable asset for the Park District and the perceived problems never materialized.

Recently, there were issues with a proposed bed-and-breakfast in the downtown area. Some people acted as if it were a cross between a fraternity house and a bordello. Having stayed in a number of bed and breakfasts, I can safely say that they are not hotbeds of nighttime activity. Anyone who asks about room service or what the lounge hours are at a bed-and-breakfast is going to be greatly disappointed with his choice of lodging facilities.

And I guess my favorite complaint was from a woman living in Eagle Brook at the time Home Depot was being proposed. She was afraid that the traffic from delivery trucks would keep her and her children prisoners in their own home. Following that meeting with the residents, Acting Mayor Paul DesCoteaux, a master of understatement, described the meeting in a brief note to the aldermen. “Met with Eagle Brook residents. Disaster. See Chronicle.”

I’m not aware of any Genevans living in captivity in Eagle Brook. So I’m pretty sure those fears were groundless. It seems to me that many of the concerns and complaints we have are often not based upon any factual consideration, but arise from our personal likes and dislikes, fear, ignorance, and possibly just plain old spite. Sometimes we try to hide our real reasons for opposing something in arguments that sound legitimate and perhaps even altruistic. Often we just end up sounding ridiculous. We need to be honest with ourselves and admit why we really don’t like something, even if it makes us sound mean and petty. Only when we are willing to discuss what really bothers us can we begin to solve our problems.

And in the process we might even discover things are not as bad as we thought.