Whose town this is, I think I know

Although I agreed with most of his points, it was through gritted teeth that I read Harry W. Jell’s letter [“Where Did My Asheville Go?”, March 7]. I not only feel the need to respond but also the desire to be painfully blunt: Mr. Jell, this was never your Asheville.

You see, I’m part of a long-suffering and dying breed: I’m a native. Yes, it’s true! I was actually born here in a time before the multiple waves of outsiders washed into town like Louisiana floodwater. You may have discovered Asheville 64 years ago on vacation, but I discovered Asheville 35 years ago on a Mission Hospital bed. Yes, I’m a relative old-timer who remembers downtown feed-and-seed stores, eating in the Woolworth’s diner and waiting on buses when Pritchard Park still served a utilitarian function. (Oh, and as a side note to all of you newcomers: the Fine Arts Theatre used to be a porn theater, catering not to connoisseurs of fine cinema, but to lonely men with an idle hand. I still can’t believe they never changed the marquee!)

That said, I can say that I have a perspective on this town that people like you do not. I promise you that you are not the only person who breezed through town on vacation, “fell in love with the area” and decided to cast off their hectic lives of quiet desperation for a newer, slower kind of desperation here in Asheville. It’s a cliché. I’ve watched phalanx after phalanx of assorted retirees, pseudo-bohemians and yuppie scum strain an already piss-poor infrastructure with their numbers, whine that there isn’t a This Brand store or That Type service, and generally tell the rest of us what to do with ourselves. Then, when the developers come in to rescue them from their discomfort, they bemoan the fact that the mountains are being destroyed by rampant development and (gasp!) the sudden influx of people moving into their town.

Has the cognitive dissonance sunk in yet? It doesn’t matter what your reasons for coming here were. Every warm body that moves to the area feeds into the cycle of destruction, regardless of income or reason. The actions of these developers don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do yours, Mr. Jell. Without demand, there would be no development. It’s easy to blame faceless forces like out-of-state developers or the idle rich, yet much harder to see the enemy who peers at you from a mirror, or the one who writes a check to a real-estate agent using your name. I’m sure you meant well, but didn’t you think that everyone else wants to buy a slice of paradise without regard to the consequences?

Where did your Asheville go, Mr. Jell? More to the point: Why did you, and the thousands like you, take mine?