(5th in a series of posts on Wind Creek Bethlehem)
Gadfly needs help.
He feels a CAVE*** coming on.
He may need an intervention. Or an exorcism.
He felt the onset writing this post headline yesterday: “A step closer to the windfall from Wind Creek.”
He coo’d over the idea of a “windfall” there, and as he did he heard a faraway sound of nails or chalk screeching on a blackboard.
Windfall . . . dollar signs . . . big bucks . . . mucho dinero
“Windfall” temporarily blinded him.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Gadfly wants the money, but he doesn’t really want a waterpark.
Feels like a pact with the Devil.
Before he was struck from his horse like Paul on the road to Tarsis, Gadfly-to-be was just passively negative to the idea of a casino.
He thought of the Sesame Street game: “Which of these things doesn’t belong?” Religion, industry, gambling.
How does gambling fit with a lineage of piety and hard-work, of people fleeing from persecution and poverty, of contributions to spiritual and physical well-being?
What does gambling contribute to the good of mankind?
Rah, rah! Ok, Gadfly, get off the soapbox, get out of the pulpit.
So, something had to be done with that wreck of a site, and, frankly, the casino has been barely a blip on Gadfly’s radar. He accepted it, hardly even notices it, thinks not much about it. It’s become part of “us” to him. And we have not become Sodom and Gomorrah.
But — now struck by lightning and converted to Gadfly — he feels uneasy about Wind Creek’s plans.
He recognizes that they seem to be good people. The plan designed seems to “fit in” architecturally. They aren’t chopping heads of employees, and, in fact, are bringing jobs — lots of them. Yes, yes.
Gadfly hears Mayor Donchez’s affirmations that the Wind Creek plans are people-oriented, community-oriented (Gadfly’s aphrodisiac word!), fun-oriented. Yes, yes.
And there will be a windfall. Visions of firetrucks, pedestrian bridges, and Rose Gardens dance in his head. Yes. yes.
But yet something sticks in Gadfly’s thin throat.
A waterpark in Machine Shop #2. A waterpark in South Bethlehem.
It just doesn’t “feel” right. (CAVERS suffer from this a lot.)
Gadfly’s not sure that he wants Bethlehem to be “the No. 1 resort destination in the Northeast.”
There, he’s said it.
Southside Bethlehem — a community of Stacks, Steeples, and (Water) Slides.
Gadfly guesses a good PR person will make something out of that.
Gadfly guesses he should get over this feeling.
Especially since there’s nothing to be done.
And especially since he has no constructive alternative.
And especially since he hears no one else whimpering.
Gadfly, maybe a true, lone CAVER on this one.
***CAVE: “citizen against virtually everything,” famously attributed to Councilman Callahan, recently self-described as “a gentle teddy-bear,” in a moment of impatience with citizen criticism.
Gadfly wonders if his funk is triggered by Lou James’s letter on the Southside.
Feelings on the water park aside, I think having a plan for the Number 2 Machine Shop was seen as important for gaining State and City support for the sale. But as today’s article in The Morning Call mentions, they only have $150 million of the $250 million available to commit to the project. I have a feeling the plans for the site are likely to change before long, now that the sale has been approved… Unless there is someone sitting around with $100 million to invest in partial ownership of an indoor water park…
Ed, I hereby redefine CAVER as “citizen against virtually everything ridiculous”. Bill Scheirer