Op-Ed Columns

First impressions and stereotypes are hard to shake.

That’s an unfair reality for people, unshakable even. For towns, everything’s revved up a notch — people believe what they want to believe, they see what they want to see, their ideas cemented and often impossible to dislodge. You can’t remake a city’s image overnight; it’s not that easy.

Chicago’s windy, New York never sleeps, and L.A. has movie stars sipping mocha lattes in every Starbucks. Head South: New Orleans is unsafe after dark, Atlanta’s traffic is horrible — that’s no stereotype; that’s the truth, man — and everyone in Huntsville has an engineering master’s, an I.Q. more impressive than the Dow and works for NASA. Tuscaloosa’s a great college town; Auburn’s better than Opelika, since it has the U.; and Mountain Brook is full of the snotty rich.

Where does truth meet fiction?

Where do first impressions and stereotypes end and reality begin?

Closer to home, how do first-time visitors view Anniston?

Do they see the historic downtown sliver of Quintard Avenue and its tree-lined beauty? The quaintness of Noble Street’s niche shops? Or do they see the shuttered storefronts and big boxes along Quintard and the rusted, scalded façade of the Watermark Tower that so many years later remains an embarrassing 10-story edifice amid Anniston’s downtown?

How do first-time visitors view Oxford? Do they see the suburban growth at Oxford Exchange? Do they see the residential opulence of Meadow Lakes and Cider Ridge? Are they impressed by the expanse of the ever-expanding Oxford High campus? Or do they see gas stations and unruly signage around Interstate 20 and U.S. 78?

And Jacksonville with its university? And Weaver with its opening to the Chief Ladiga Trail? And Piedmont? On and on we could go, weaving our example through Alexandria and Ohatchee and Heflin and Hobson City and all the other towns and communities that make up our home on this side of the state.

First impressions, and the unfairness that’s often packaged with them, are critical for cities whose leadership believes they can usher in a different reality during the next four years.

It’s an intriguing time, regardless of your zip code. There are four Calhoun County cities about to swear in new mayors: Anniston (the incumbent lost), Weaver (the incumbent didn’t run), Piedmont (the incumbent lost) and Ohatchee (a trend: the incumbent lost). That’s an amazing, compelling fact.

There are at least two incoming city councils — Anniston’s and Oxford’s — whose membership and voting patterns may determine those cities’ progress, perhaps more so than any of the decisions made by the mayors that lead them.

And re-elected mayors in Oxford and Jacksonville and Heflin hold differing degrees of power and authority in their respective towns. For some, it’s ultimate and omnipotent; for others, it’s regal and statesmanlike.

Collectively, these people — mayors and council members — and the non-elected activists can twist arms and open doors. They can convince people what’s right and can alter the reputations of our towns in the next four years. For the better, that is.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Some towns are worse off than others; there is no universal template for improvement. Oxford residents can bicker about debt service all they want, but there’s money in the bank in Leon Smith’s town. Can’t build stuff without cash; just ask Anniston, which has more issues than a magazine stand: the city’s suing the county, and the county’s ticked off at the city, and McClellan’s ownership is in some surreal, suspended state of animation, and development is always couched in a destructive us-vs.-them, East side vs. West side tone. And … well … you get the tired, overanalyzed point.

I’m a firm believer that we can be better than we are, and that we are better collectively than we are as a fractionalized cluster of communities. Oxford needs Anniston to quit being so problematic and get its act together; Anniston needs Oxford to think outside its borders; Calhoun County needs Jacksonville and its Friendliest Campus in the South to become more than what they are today, which they certainly can.

If that happens — if our new leaders learn quickly, if our returning leaders show real guidance, if our communities work together — then the first impressions and stereotypes that taint civic reputations can be rehabilitated, rewritten, recast.

Then, what will people say about Anniston? About Oxford? About all of us?

Let ’em say what they want. Then, the truth will be better than the fiction.