When home, I work at an ice skating rink in the city of Fishers, which is a city over from where I live. Fishers has changed drastically throughout my life and recently has been changing even more rapidly. When I was younger Fishers was a small town. It had a few neighborhoods and a quaint main street downtown. There was no traffic or construction. It was a tightknit small town that was mainly reliant on agriculture. It is fair to say these corn and soybean fields were not natural either, but they felt so much more natural than what is now standing in their place.
Over time more the construction of more neighborhoods lead to more businesses. Eventually, this tiny town became a very large one. One grocery store now competes with three others. A second high school was built to accommodate the growing population. Dozens of roundabouts were also put in the place of traffic lights (roundabouts have become a staple of progress and wealth in Indiana due to the city of Carmel’s obsession with them.) After a vote, this little town took the leap to become a full-fledged city, with a major and everything.
The city of Fishers is now a booming place to be, as long as you do not mind a five-minute drive taking somewhere around twenty-five minutes. All of the news lately has been, “did you hear Fishers is getting an Ikea”, “did you hear Fishers is getting a Portillos” and so on. Now I cannot complain about having an Ikea or a Portillos in the least. I am glad I can now get cheap furniture without driving to Cincinnati and that I can finally get a decent hot dog and a piece of chocolate cake, to die over, without driving to Chicago. Both of these businesses brought jobs to the area, but what about the farmers whose livelihood was the fields where these businesses now stand? What about the small town that has been engulfed by commerce?
Farms may not be the most natural or always environmentally conscious places, but there is something to be said about working with your hands and working on a farm. This has been lost in Fishers. Not only are there no longer farms, backyards are not even big enough for gardens. A whole way of life has been lost in the need for “progress”.
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