Beware Old Habits

(Published in Lagniappe as a letter to the editor on August 14, 2007.)

Beware Old Habits

Dear Editor:

I think the redevelopment of downtown Mobile is a worthy endeavor. However, I see one glaring, fatal and overshadowing flaw with all the community excitement. This construction activity is like taking an old inhabited building, gutting it, and then renovating it, giving it a new façade only to then allow the former residents with their old chronic ways and old attitudes to move back in. At the end of the day, has anything really changed?

The real community leaders should acknowledge and address this long overdue, underlying and rotting condition about Mobile, now or watch this town surely go-bust once more after this current economic wave comes to a crashing end. Look no further than to our last major boom during the Second World War, the build up in this port city with Brookley Air Base and then its untimely closing, while serving as the city’s largest employer, in the early sixties, etc.

The base closing left profound psychological scars on this town and its people for many decades.

"It is all fun and games, until somebody gets hurt."

Ted Burnett
Daphne, AL