Celebrating the Stoplights

In my first-year seminar at Barnard, I was asked to describe myself in one word. My classmates said things like, “Jewish,” or “student,” or “me.” I said “rural.”

I’m from Winters, California, a town of 5,000 that has been fighting to stay the same as everything else changes. It’s a town built on apricot orchards and rice paddies, part of a county proudly billed as the “Tomato-Growing Capital of the World.” It’s a town that, until recently, had only one stoplight—a flashing red light, at that.

It’s also a town so confounding to outsiders and so frustrating to its young residents that its Facebook group is called, “Winters — Explaining It Is As Complicated As Explaining Why Time Goes Forward.” Starting in elementary school, my friends and I vowed that we would flee Winters as soon as possible and enter into the so-called real world. Of course, having lived in Winters our whole lives, we had no idea what this “real world” entailed, but it had to be more exciting than a town with no movie theatres, no fast food, and no malls.

I personally had settled on New York as my escape. This decision was based not on direct knowledge, but on hearsay from my father, a Long Island native, and a conviction that New York was as far from Winters as I could get. My sister and I would play games imagining our lives as New Yorkers—taking taxis to piano lessons instead of walking, eating pizza instead of peanut butter and jelly. I built up New York so much that when I finally visited at age 12, I was a little disappointed—not with the city itself, but rather with the fact that I didn’t feel an instant connection to it. Of course, it fascinated and awed me, kept me enthralled for the length of my visit. But it didn’t feel like home. Despite that disappointment, New York persisted as my dream college destination. My classmates forgot their vows to escape and applied to schools close to home, but my determination to get out grew stronger.

When I got into Barnard, I broke the news to my mother by telling her, “Guess where I’m not going to school? California!”
I couldn’t wait to pick up and leave, and I was determined to remove from myself all hints of rurality. I wanted to immerse myself in New York and become the typical city dweller. When friends from home asked how I was adjusting to New York (Isn’t it such a shock? So loud, so bustling?), I assured them, “No, actually, it feels natural. It’s like I’ve always been here.”
I believed those assurances, too. I was convinced that I had erased all traces of Winters and that I was fully acclimated to the city.

But when asked to give that one—word description of myself, I thought of Winters: of the almond orchards that surround my house, the fact that the smell of pesticides makes me feel at home. I thought of the people with whom I had grown up, whom I’d known since we were in diapers and who already had children in diapers of their own. I thought of the mix of Mexicans and Anglos who make up my town, working and living side by side. And I thought of all the times I had rolled my eyes at my parents, thinking: “Why would they ever choose to live here? Why do they force me to live here?”
So I chose the word “rural.”

In the midst of this first of many existential crises brought on by college life, I enrolled in an urban studies class. I signed up for the class because it entailed playing SimCity, but I found myself fascinated by the study of cities — the intricate social structures, the ordered chaos of urban formation, the relationships between ethnicity and class and race.

I initially viewed my interest in urban studies as another rejection of Winters. But as I took more classes, I began to turn the lens of urban studies on my hometown—to examine it logically, instead of emotionally.

My love for New York continues to grow, but in looking at Winters as an urbanist, I’ve recognized that it has positives too—like its mix of immigrants and natives, Spanish and English, its sense of community and connectedness, and the safety and freedom it provides for the children who grow up there.

By accepting and observing Winters, I gain a greater understanding and love of New York. Now, when I travel around the city, I see reminders of Winters in neighborhoods like Woodside in Queens—where languages mix on signs and in conversation and where regular people work hard to support their families and adjust to a new country—and in the playgrounds across the city where children play, worry—free, as their caregivers look on and gossip. Of course, I note the countless divergences between Winters and New York, and I appreciate the city for its unparalleled diversity: its museums and stores, its ever-changing scenery, and its multiple stoplights.

It may not be practical to cancel school and bring out the high school choir to honor the installation of each of these stoplights in New York. But in Winters, where new stoplights come once in a generation, maybe the ceremony is worthwhile—it does, after all, epitomize the Winters ethos. And for that reason, if another light ever goes up, I’ll be out there watching the ceremony with everyone else in town.

The author is a Barnard College junior majoring in urban studies. She is an associate copy editor.