I have been a lazy blogger lately…

But I have been thinking about this question I was asked.

“Just curious–FF–why do you like living in GF and how can we continue to attract people who want to move here?”

I have many memories of good times in Great Falls. Visiting the shops and stores downtown as a child, a cold soda at Woolworths (spinning around on the barstools!) after shopping. Cruising Central on beautiful summer nights, and hanging out at Broadwater Bay on hot summer days. Running through peaceful family neighborhoods for Cross Country, the excitement of the Fair when it got here.

I remember leaving town after I graduated, to be on my own, somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere more fun. I remember a short time later returning here to raise my family, because I realized this was better.

I like Great Falls because it feels like home. I like little family diners, and breakfast by the Missouri. I like 3D’s because they have good food, and because they have generations invested in this community. I like old buildings, and old trees, and running into people I know, that I have known for many years. I like knowing most every street in my town, and knowing what business was in that building 15 years ago. I like looking out my window, and seeing all the neighborhood kids playing in the yard, safe and happy.

The second part of the question is more difficult. “how can we continue to attract people who want to move here?”

If people want to move here, they can. Why do we need to attract them? What do they do, and what do they expect from a fairly small city in Montana? Why do they want to move here. You see, I don’t really agree with the whole “Great Falls needs to grow” mentality.

I read people saying they have to leave because they can’t support a family here, and I think it is the person, not the place. They are blaming someone else for their own failure, or they want more than the wages and lifestyle here will support, and that’s fine. I don’t care. I can support my family here. The only time I have been unemployed in Great Falls, it was by my choice. I have no college education, and no formal training in any trade. Yet I can get, and hold, a decent job in this town. I don’t make a lot of money, my other half does much better, but we get by. We could make a much better income, somewhere else, but we choose to live here. More money will not make it easier to go walleye fishing today, if there is no place to go walleye fishing.

Great Falls has architects and engineers, doctors and lawyers, businesses that have thrived for decades, and new business popping up all the time. Some make it, some don’t. We have million dollar houses, and trailer houses. Fox Farm, and Parkdale, Jakers and the Resue Mission, but you have that in every town.

We have restaurants and casino’s and many people knock the wages at places like them, but you have that in every town.  We have a pretty decent economy, many say slow, but it keeps going. It keeps the people who chose to live here going.

The people who move here can keep it going, but they need to want this town, not expect the town to change to what they want. I personally know many thirty-forty something men and women, who grew up here, went away to college, but eventually moved back here, and now work hard every day to make a place for themselves here. Most of them make less money than they would for the same job in a different city or state. But they chose, and still choose, to take that tradeoff, because this is where they want to be.

Could Great Falls be better? Sure it can, and it will be. But it doesn’t need to happen today, or tomorrow. Everything changes, and I am quite happy with a slow, quiet growth, where the change in our town is based on a continuation and improvement on what we have built in the last hundred years.

21 June 2008 | Life | Comments