The Heartbeat Of Our City - Strong As Ever

As the city and school district return to life after the week-long slumber between Christmas and New Year, so too does the city itself seem to slowly rouse itself back to animation. You can almost see it stretch and yawn and slowly open its eyes, a little resentful to be dragged back into the daily routines, the rolling wheels of getting things done.

Main Street sports new lights, thanks to the good efforts of the Shell Refinery. Those lights will be up all year long, lending a festive atmosphere to our business thoroughfare. And it’s going to need some festive, because by all accounts this holiday season was not spectacular for our local stores and merchants. There are fewer dollars to go around, and those that are being spent are going for goods and services deemed essential to survival. The fun stuff is largely being put on hold until times get a little better.

What an odd time to be an American. It seems not so terribly long ago that we were rolling in dough, that the prosperity we enjoyed was here to stay. Our troubles were more internal and personal - most of us felt employed more or less permanently, safe in the knowledge that our jobs, and our employers (or our customers, if you ran your own business) were here to stay. Now, it what seems like the blink of an eye, our experience is far closer to that of the generation that grew up in the 1930s; financial disaster does not appear to be all that far off. As Europe continues to melt down, and our own financial systems seem intent on following formulas that led to our current troubles, the world appears downright scary sometimes.

It used to be that Martinez was somehow removed from all of that. It was a little island of sanity in an otherwise crazy world. Things that happened to the mainstream didn’t really come here. Martinez has always had its own way of doing things, and always seemed a little insulated from the rest of the planet.

But not this time -- this economic turmoil is so deep and wide it’s even managed to find its way to our fair city, and is manifesting itself in large numbers of foreclosures, short sales, and retail slumps. It is a tribute to our merchants and business owners that we are doing as well as we are in this environment. Scrappy doesn’t begin to describe the Martinez bloodstream.

But despite all of that, there is still a whiff of enthusiasm in the air, a patina of optimism, a bloom of hope that this will all pass away soon enough and things will settle back down to a semblance of normal. There were plenty of smiles this holiday season, plenty of people ready with a holiday greeting and a Happy New Year on their lips. We find a way in this town to somehow find a way. It can take a while, in some cases seemingly forever, but we are a city where you can always hear the heartbeat. All you have to do is listen.