Nothing Outweighs the Minuses of Fresno
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1/25/2007
We moved to Fresno for an excellent job. Tried to convince ourselves the pay, benefits, lower housing costs, year-round golf, Yosemite nearby, and a pool in the backyard would make it worth leaving a place we loved. We'd had a grand total of 3 car accidents in 65 combined years of our family driving in our hometown. Had a car totalled, and one nearly so, in our first 7 months in Fresno...neither accident our fault. The lack of traffic enforcement while cops sat in parking lots eating donuts and chatting w/ one another was laughable. Sorta. The most highly touted schools---Clovis---were mediocre at best. Entertainment was small-town, and although we're on the conservative side, the lack of any other voice or view than the extreme right-wing perspective was stifling. It got hot early in the morning and early in the spring, and stayed that way 'til after sundown and into the late fall. No amount of air conditioning made it worth staying inside in the dimness with all of the drapes closed. But 100-plus degrees for most of 6 months is a lot harder to take than snow, ice, rain, wind...or just about anything that you can put on more clothes for. I mean, how many clothes come off before you've reached the limit...and you're still sweltering. The pool was fine...We sat by it for Thanksgiving Dinner. In shirtsleeves. In truth, the strawberries were sensational, as were the oranges...and the garage sales. But the air was bad...just about all the time. I can't and won't take time to enumerate the things tumbling through my mind that we found so uninspiring about Fresno. But, the best thing even old-timers had to say was how close Fresno was to...a lot of better places. Like San Francisco,(3 hours) and L.A. (about 5 hours.) And we went to those better places--but---we LIVED in Fresno. By the end of 5 months we knew we'd made a big and expensive mistake. By 9 months, my husband was starting a new job in our old hometown, and when school ended, a month later, the rest of the family was driving up to our new home back in our old town. Never looked back.
Abhd | Bothell, WA