Development Can Exact Costs The Spirit Must Pay

I grew up in a pair of “twin cities,” two small towns seven miles apart in East-central Alabama. One was home to a major state university; the other was a manufacturing center.

The state highway that connected the towns was a two-lane road in those days. Roughly halfway between towns was my favorite spot, a low place in the road surrounded by a dense pine forest. One of the reasons I liked this area was that it was cool; my family did not have air conditioning when I was young and the summer heat and humidity in Central Alabama can be overwhelming. Whenever my family made the drive between towns, we passed through this cool, forested area. It was often the most refreshing experience of the day.

The only business in that area in those days was the Tollison Nursery, just in front of which stood half a dozen pines that were over 200 years old. To shop at the nursery, you had to park your car and walk through that stand of old trees.

The Tollisons never had anything but a small sign out on the road. My dad told me that no sign was necessary, that everyone knew about the Tollison Nursery. It was then that I began to suspect this favorite spot wasn’t mine alone.

As the cities grew, new businesses moved in - wanting to draw customers from both cities - and the highway became busier. Soon it was necessary to widen the road to four lanes.

I feared for my favorite spot, but my fear was unwarranted. The road was a bit wider but the bulk of the forest remained. And it stayed about as cool as ever.

Years passed and not much changed in our little town. I had graduated from high school and was attending the state university. Businesses had been established up and down the highway.

But my favorite spot still held its magic.

Then one fall, it was announced that the Tollison Nursery would close and a new mall would be built there.

Most citizens were pleased. We were going to have one of the conveniences that distant cities enjoyed - plus more commerce and jobs. All was well, until it was learned that the mall developers also planned to cut down the Tollison pines, the oldest stand of trees in the county.

Citizens organized and asked the developers to build around the trees, to save the natural treasure. The developers said no, that everything on the site had to be removed.

So, citizens organized again and got residents of both cities to sign petitions, asking that the trees be spared. The developers reluctantly agreed, saying that if so many people felt this way, the trees could stay.

Everyone was happy. Christmas was approaching and families turned their attention to holiday preparations, relieved that the trees would be preserved.

Sadly, the developers did not keep their word. The week after Christmas, passers-by found only the smooth, raw empty building site.

Fortunately, humans are adaptable. I still found pleasure passing the area because one corner of the pine forest remained; that green space continued to catch my eye and give me solace.

Then the county decided to route a bypass through the area.

Inevitably, another developer would find the last corner of the busy new intersection too lucrative to leave in its natural state. And thus, in an area that had once been the coolest, most wooded and most charming in the county, all the trees were gone, save the few small ones planted at the mall’s perimeter.

More years passed. Some days when I made the trip between the towns I would tun off the main highway just to drive through a 1920s neighborhood, admiring the trees that had had many years to mature and envying the people who were blessed to live beneath them.

Then the state made plans for a new highway next to the charming old neighborhood.

The developers did not wait for the highway to be built. Wal-Mart was coming to town and wanted to locate between the cities, preferably at the major intersection on the busiest highway.

So it was that the last wooded area in the seven miles between the two cities fell. There is no charm to the drive any longer, only more and more traffic coming and going from more and more businesses.

I did not mind the traffic and trouble that business development had caused as long as I had something natural to see on the drive. But that is gone now, so I no longer travel in that direction. The freeway is sterile, too, mind you, and the drive is farther. But it is quicker, and now that there is no charm, I would just as soon get it over with as fast as possible.

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