Petersburg vs Itself

I’m not an investigative reporter, nor am I cut out to be a journalist. You may not know this about me, but I have strong opinions and it’s very hard for me to not express them. My strong opinions, though, do come with some amount of self-awareness and a desire for perspective. Though I might resist, I’m not afraid to be wrong. After some grumbling, I even embrace or at least acknowledge whatever it is I was wrong about. At the very least, I want to learn.

I’ve been in Petersburg for a little over three years now. (Since I’m writing about my thoughts and opinions, I will largely just refer to my experience and not fold in my partner who has different opinions anyway.) In the three years since I’ve been here, I’ve done my best to learn about the city, its history, its people, and its way of life, i.e.; its culture.

Here’s my general question: What does it take to change part of a culture? Not the entire culture, but part of it.

I realize it’s a bold question to ask coming from a white woman, a Yankee no less, who - as stated - has only been in this place for three years. And yet, I ask it nonetheless.

The question doesn’t come out of nowhere.

Shortly after we moved here, we joined the High Street Association. It’s a community group made up of people who live…on High Street. It had the usual in-fighting and drama, desire to improve, and social gatherings. The people involved were folks who were born here, had lived here for decades enough to say they were “from here”, relatively new folks, and brandy-new types like us. For all the high-school-like tit-for-tats, it was beneficial to be a part of in that I learned more about the city, its governance, some of its bullshit, and also some of its people.

Being new to a place is tough because without a group like this, it’s hard to learn the things you don’t even know enough about to realize you don’t know. For me, I like to dig in deep so I know more about the things I bitch about. I don’t bitch for the sake of bitching. I want to know the cause of the issues. Or, at least, I think I want to know the cause.

I’m a bitcher, but I’m a doer. But also, be careful what you wish for. You can’t unknow a thing once you’ve learned it.

One thing I learned while at Association gatherings is that the city had turned down requests for speed bumps on our street citing something having to do with the route for emergency vehicles.

If you’ve ever lived in any other city in the United States, you know there are speed bumps in just about every neighborhood and that has never stopped the firetrucks from getting through.

Several months ago, rumble strips were installed on Sycamore, the main street of downtown Petersburg, which runs right in front of my wine shop. Every day, no less than three emergency vehicles of some size from EMT to firetruck go past to get to the Carriage House - the poorly managed housing for low-income and elderly people - just around the corner. Trucks have to drive over two sets of rumblestrips to get there. And Sycamore isn’t even a street that has people driving 60 MPH. People have gotten hit at those crosswalks because it isn’t in the culture of this place for pedestrians to have the right-of-way. I’ve learned that many times walking through the 4-way-stop on my way to work. If it’s the next person’s turn to go, they’ll drive within inches of the front of me just to not miss their turn.

This week, though, I’ve noticed VDOT speed cables on our street and around the corner. It seems someone’s voice caught the attention of the city enough for them to try to capture proof of what residents have been saying for a while - as if the motorcycle cops they posted on the street last year didn’t give them enough data (and cash from tickets) to prove it.

Perhaps this, like other things going on in the city, are related to the new casino. They want more people with money walking the streets. To be sure, it would look bad for them to get hit trying to spend all their winnings downtown.

Clearly I’m cynical.

But how can I not be?

It’s been part of my daily routine for years, well before even moving to Missoula from Columbus, to take a morning walk around the neighborhood. For a while, I took a certain route along Grove/Old but the speeding and trash along that street, along with the memories of hours spent looking for my cat Sera, had tarnished that walk. It all became too emotionally damaging and borderline toxic for me.

If that sounds melodramatic, it is. That doesn’t make it any less true.

I want a morning walk that starts my day with beauty, some peace, flowers blooming, birds chirping. Not the same literal trash I saw yesterday, last week, and even last month.

Several months ago, I decided to take a different morning route that didn’t always remind me of Sera and that seemed to have less trash. The truth is that it still reminds me of Sera because I wonder if I missed finding her in the waterway over there, and it isn’t less, it’s just different trash.

As a doer, I know I could walk with a trash bag to do my part for the “solution”, but I’ve long since lost the opinion that just picking up the trash solves anything. To begin with, my walk is over a mile long. I would need several trash bags and it would take way more time than I’m willing to give every morning to sweep up the broken bottles, beer cans, and bags of half-eaten food tossed into the road. I’m nobody’s mother.

Some complain that the city should have people out that pick up trash. I don’t disagree. But I don’t think that’s the answer. It’s short term. Very short term. Everyday, I see new bags of food splattered across the street.

Who are the people that think it’s okay to toss trash out their car windows?

Last year, on my drive back along Crater Road from a run at the Battlefield, I watched a man who was walking on the sidewalk finish his Gatorade and then toss the bottle over his shoulder into the yard he passed.

A while back, we were sitting on our back porch enjoying the afternoon when a truck pulled up to the curb next to us. A woman opened the passenger-side door and dropped her to-go drink onto the ground. Then she saw us. She apologized, said it was rude of her to have done that, and picked it back up.

What’s the thought that goes through someone’s head when they decide to do that kind of thing?

Downtown, they’ve installed more trashcans. This I know for certain is because the city hopes to attract the tourists who might come from the casino. Clearly the city thinks putting up more trashcans is the answer. And yet, people still drop their used cans, cigar wrappers, and styrofoam take-out containers not only on the sidewalks, in the new planters, and in the gutters, but on the sidewalks, in the planters, and in the gutters right in front of the new trashcans.

This is why I ask what it takes to change part of the culture.

At one city meeting I attended, where casino people and city people tried to encourage business owners to clean up their own sidewalks and prepare for the tourists, a speaker emphasized the need for people to not throw trash on the ground and for others to pick it up.

I hardly think that the people that bother to attend city meetings are the people that need to be encouraged to not litter.

I’m beyond bitter and I hate that for me. I want my morning walk to fill me up, not fire me up.

When I walk past old piles and new piles of trash, it makes me not want to bother with my morning walk. But then I’d just be stuck in my house all day, angry that I’m too mad and sensitive to take a walk.

But it’s not just the trash, and that’s the point. If trash alone was the issue, then I would take a bag with me and pick it all up. But it’ll be back the next day. I know because I tried to hold city clean ups when I was on the board of Main Street Petersburg. All that work, ruined by the next day.

The point is that the culture needs to change. The mindset. I know I’m not the person for the job, but every day on my morning walk I wonder who is. What person or organization can tackle it? How far down do you have to dig into the issues of a place to start to heal this wound?

I know it’s deep. Very deep. There are decades of history here. Racism. Systemic racism. Poverty. Mismanagement. Corruption. Apathy. Exhaustion. The layers that have created what Petersburg is today are tightly woven and complicated. There isn’t just one thing. And there isn’t just one simple answer.

Nearly every day that I’m at the wine shop and talk to people who come in, I hear the word Potential. Now it makes me crazy. I want to just throw all the wine glasses against the wall and smash all the bottles.

Yes. There’s lots of potential. Petersburg is bursting with potential. But potential alone isn’t enough. Even one person working to use the potential isn’t enough. Not even one entire organization. It’s going to take an effort from the entire city. And by “city” I mean both the people who run the city and the people to live and work in the city. It’s going to take a majority of people all pushing in the same direction to create the momentum needed to get Petersburg over this damned hump of Potential and into the movement of Progress.

The way I see it, people need a reason to give a shit. And that’s where I know I have no more input. I don’t know what people give a shit about around here. I don’t know what they want to give a shit about. I’ve been trying to figure that out the whole time I’ve been here.

There are a lot of different people and groups trying to improve this place. I know that. I talk to them and see what they’re trying to accomplish. Perhaps it would help if all of these groups got together to at least collaborate and coordinate. I’m sure that would help. That is part of a cultural problem I see here, too. That’s for another rant on another day.

The biggest obstacle is The City. If the powers that be would do something to encourage these groups to coordinate and then leverage them to help, that would be a start. I’m just not sure The City wants to, for whatever reason. Also a rant for another day.

There’s a t-shirt I’ve seen and even purchased that says Petersburg vs Everyone. When I first moved here, that meant something different to me. Back then, I was on board with trying to help outsiders get over the stigma attached to this town. Crime, mostly. But the more I learned, the more I realized that outsiders are trying. They come here. I’d say the majority of my customers at the wine shop aren’t from Petersburg.

Now, based on what I’ve learned in my three years here, the t-shirt really should say Petersburg vs Itself.

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