TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=91TT2575> <title> Nov. 18, 1991: Close-Up -- Two Boom Towns </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991 Nov. 18, 1991 California:The Endangered Dream </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> CITIES, Page 99 CALIFORNIA Close-Up: Two Boom Towns </hdr><body> FRESNO--The Last Real California By Garry Wills [Garry Wills' latest book is Under God.] To the astonishment of its citizens, who have maintained a hangdog pride in being off the beaten path, Fresno has become one of the fastest-growing major cities in America. In Fresno people had always felt that they were in California but not of it--a little bit of Iowa under the palm trees. Now their sleepy farm town is growing nearly as fast as crops planted in the dull, rich land of the surrounding San Joaquin Valley. Why the great influx? Fresno, so proudly un-Californian in the past, is one of the few places in the state that have not already reached a choke-off point for high prices, pollution, crime or the fear of those things. The city is growing by fleeing itself--in developments rising, tier on tier, northward toward the banks of the San Joaquin River. A local columnist calls those living in the posh new homes "branch and chain people"; executives for the local branch of whatever banks, credit companies, insurance firms are represented here. Yet even less affluent people are selling medium-size homes on expensive property elsewhere to build bigger places for less money in Fresno. Over and over one hears that the land and home bargains are still here--though one hears just as often an apprehension that they are about to run out. People repeat, almost like a mantra, that this is a peaceful community, a good place to raise kids. Mayor Karen Humphrey says, "The city is like the Midwest, very family oriented, very friendly." Friendly it surely is. At the huge People's Church, presided over by a local celebrity, G.L. Johnson, and his 16 assistant pastors, I run a gauntlet of "greeters" using all their skills for instant intimacy. Opening the service, Pastor Johnson says, "Turn to your neighbor and smile, turn all around and smile. I like fellowshipping. I like to see people hug a lot." As one leaves the huge parking lot, a sign proclaims, YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE MISSION FIELD, and people drive out smiling the gospel of Fresno. A prosperous-looking dentist's office has on its sign: DR. SO-AND-SO, D.D.S., DENTISTRY FOR SMILES. Those smiles draw some people here, but others wonder how long the small-town feeling, or the friendliness, can last. The metropolitan area has a population of 477,400 (it was 358,800 a decade ago), and the number is expected to double in the next 10 years. The U.S. government used Fresno as a dumping ground for refugees created by its actions in Indochina, particularly the mountain Laotians called Hmong. There are 31,000 Hmong in the area, many clustered in a neighborhood known as Ban Vinai--for the refugee camp some of them came from. The ethnic mix has placed heavy burdens on the school system, and gangs are forming among the young. One of the more endearing things about Fresno is its combination of optimism and self-deprecation: when it turned up at the bottom of a list of cities ranked according to "livability" during the 1980s, it went along with CBS's spoof of Dallas, the mini-series Fresno, starring Carol Burnett. Citizens, including the former mayor, took parts. But city government is no laughing matter as Fresno faces new problems like pollution, which has been added to the seasonal scourges--droughts and freezes--that always imperil Fresno's huge yields of cotton, grapes, nuts and cantaloupes. The struggle for water is perennial here, as elsewhere in California. Russell Fey, a former city planner in Modesto who now teaches urban studies at California State University, Fresno, thinks the city should prevent "leapfrog" growth by instituting zoning regulations. But the electorate resents regulation; residential water meters are only now being installed in older Fresno homes, in part because voters have been so resistant. The city council currently sits in a small chamber, where Mayor Humphrey presides over the other six members with enthusiastic informality. Her council includes two Armenians, one Hispanic and one African American. Mayor Humphrey sees the new $33 million city hall being constructed as a riposte to those who write off the downtown or who cling to the image of Fresno as an agrarian market town. Despite her claim about the place's Midwestern qualities, she sides with those who believe the city can meet its challenges only if it thinks in terms as cosmopolitan as its new population. The city hall is the very model of a computerized managerial center. Its council chamber has a Big Brother-like screen on which blueprints and other exhibits can be projected. The building is meant to say that Fresno, off in its corner, is becoming a crossroads of the world. The mayor's critics say Fresno should not get too big for its britches. It remains a hick town in some ways, short on cultural resources. The main entertainment events are football games in the Fresno State Bulldogs' stadium, to which towns people flock, all wearing red shirts, and tailgate parties are the nearest thing to a town meeting. Is the flashy new city hall a space vehicle that has crashed in a deserted spot, or a civic control ship about to take off? The populace is divided on that. But even the gloomy ones are surprisingly good-natured as they grumble. For in Fresno even root-canal work can be dentistry for smiles. If loopy optimism and defiance of the odds are what made this state in the first place, then un-Californian Fresno may be the last real California left. MORENO VALLEY:Home of the Y-Chop By Gus Lee [Gus Lee is the author of China Boy.] What is the California Dream? And whatever it is, where can it be found? In the past seven years, 118,000 modern-day pathfinders have located a form of it in Moreno Valley, a new city 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles and 42 miles from Disneyland. Stand in the Lake Perris foothills and look north to the hard browns and purples of the Badland hills and the San Gorgonios Mountains: between the lake and the peaks, Moreno Valley sprawls across the desert floor. While dust devils dance on the shimmering sand, summer heat relentlessly fills all spaces. This is pioneer and pathfinder country, a desert that developers turned into the mother of all real estate opportunities by diverting water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the Oroville reservoir, far to the north. This is a place for hardworking parents, with wagon-train hearts, seeking picket-fenced yards, swing sets and quiet streets, for people who can endure temperatures in the 100s and can drive three hours a day to work and back. I call these people Y-CHOPs--Young Commuting Home-Owning Parents--a new version of an old ideal of the American nuclear family. They have come to Moreno Valley because a home in more established California cities can cost as much as a space shuttle. In "MoVal" a typical four-bedroom house on a 7,500-sq.-ft. lot costs $140,000. The affordable homes and quality of life have made Mo reno Valley the fastest growing city in America. Today three out of four working "MoVallers" merge with thousands of other competitive freeway high achievers driving on gas, caffeine, ambition, ozone depletion and sleep deprivation for the two hours of freewaying to Los Angeles or the 1 1/2-hour drive to Orange County. This mass evacuation leaves MoVal half empty during the day. But the American urge for home ownership and its coveted symbols--a swing in the yard, idyllic neighborhoods and progressive public schools--is so powerful that the commute is accepted as part of the natural price of the Dream, a bearable surcharge on happiness, part of being a Y-CHOP. Most Y-CHOPs are white. The evolving MoVal family has one parent commuting to work and one staying home with two children in a single-family dwelling, in a safe neighborhood with church and grandparents nearby. You can almost see Ward, June, Wally and Beaver Cleaver in the house across the street and hear the rush of a tail-finned T-Bird cruising by, with Elvis and Buddy Holly blasting from the radio through tinny pre-Dolby speakers. Many of the streets are laid out in that cookie-cutter pattern of curves and cul-de-sacs familiar from Steven Spielberg movies. You know the scene: a tract-house version of the Norman Rockwell family seated at the breakfast table, dog in the corner waiting breathlessly for some scraps. In the congestion of all these American icons, say hello to Moreno Valley in the 1990s. Kristin and Bo Knutson are Y-CHOPs who came to Moreno Valley in 1988. They were looking for a place for Kristin's parents to retire, but it was so beguilingly peaceful and appealingly inexpensive that they decided to stay. Now Kristin's parents provide a presence for Zak, 17, and help raise Alana, 1. Kristin believes that the combination of town and school is better for her children than that in their former home. She commutes three hours a day to her neonatal intensive-care nursing job at Childrens Hospital of Orange County. For the first time, the Knutsons have enough living space; at night they hear crickets. Kristin is articulate, insightful, responsible--though Y-CHOPs is an anagram for psycho, Y-CHOPs are anything but. "This is a new community," Kristin says. "We have an opportunity to influence the future, to shape it. Older cities are set and hard to change." The order of their home, the front-yard bougainvillea, the serenity of the neighborhood--all say, as emphatically as her words, that moving to MoVal was the right thing for her and her family. One reason is that MoVal is also a place for PY-CHOPs--the Parents of Young Commuting Home-Owning Parents. Ivy Crawford, a retired county senior-citizen outreach worker, moved from Los Angeles to MoVal in 1984 for "peace and quietness" and the pleasure of being near her two granddaughters. How would she feel if she were unable to spend as much time with a second generation of children? She smiles and says, "I'd go crazy if I couldn't see them every day." For MoVal's mayor, Judy Nieburger, and her staff of professional managers and energetic volunteers, the big challenge is protecting the quality of life while the population expands. Two-thirds of MoVal workers have some college education, and the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees is increasing. Three out of four workers are between the ages of 25 and 44. They are neatly distributed among blue collar, technical, professional and management, with the vast majority full-time workers. The city has attracted a business from Asia--Borneo International Furniture--but is still seeking major American companies that will help MoVal dedicate its human energy to work and home, rather than to work, home and the freeways. Having a big employer in the neighborhood would help eliminate the Y-CHOP dilemma: families need safety and community, but to attain them, one or both parents must spend a major portion of life on the road. It is self-evident that children need time with parents, that sons need the time of their fathers. The failure to universally fulfill these needs represents the high price Y-CHOPs pay to live like Ward, June, Wally and the Beave. So far the trade seems worth it, but they would much rather not have to make the choice. Until they can drop the c from their acronym, the Y-CHOPs' version of the California Dream will not be complete. </body></article> </text>