Dear Editor,
I read last week’s letter to the editor by Carol Boeddeker, of Seymour. Her letter was a critique of the homes within the Ava city limits and the final paragraph read:
“Even though I don’t have an Ava address, Ava is ‘my town,’ where I work, shop and where I go to church. I want to be proud of Ava but would never take guests on a street by street tour. Are any answers available?”
Here is my answer.
Carol, like you, I live outside the city limits. Unlike you, I am proud of Ava. Obviously, you and I are looking at different things. I can’t help wondering under what pretext you gained access to the interiors of so many homes that you were able to judge them to be substandard.
When I come to town, I see clean, well-maintained yards, kids playing and walking from one place to another, in as much safety as you can find anywhere these days, and much more safety than most places have.
I see a place where, if my truck breaks down, people I have never even met will stop to help. Maybe even more importantly, if I see someone in need of help, I’m not afraid to stop and help them.
Carol, where you don’t see large, imposing houses, I don’t see graffiti. I see minimal amounts of litter, but every place is gonna have a few litterbugs, don’t’cha know, and not all of them are local.
When I turn my dial to the local radio station I hear support for and promotion of the hometown teams and the locally-run businesses.
If I walk into a gas station, Town & Country, or MFA and look on their bulletin board I almost always see a flyer announcing a community event to help out a person with an illness or a family who’s lost everything in a fire…
Take a second look at these “substandard houses” and you might see people just doing with what they have, and doing just fine.
Quit looking at the houses if they offend your eyes – look at the people.
Proudly,
Jay Koshinski
Route 2, Ava
