Make-Do

 

Stopping in front of a neighbor’s house on a snowy evening, we discovered that it had been completely gutted and there was a sign out front with a picture of a completely new house.  ‘What was wrong with the old house’ we wondered.  Well, the kitchen counter was granite and they wanted slate, they wanted a truly great Great-Room with 30 foot ceilings, the master bedroom was not a suite with a bathroom the size of a gymnasium and they wanted radiant heat and air conditioning with a heated three car garage and driveway.   The nice house across the street had sold for over 2 million dollars but had been completely razed and now was being rebuilt as a glass cube with a flat roof.   

‘What’s wrong with our house’, we pondered.  The rooms are small and dated, the microwave is on the Formica counter, the mud room is Linoleum, the bathrooms get crowded and claustrophobic during our daily five-minute visit and the windows are foggy and cold.  The roof is still cedar shakes, and the original furnace and refrigerator are only 80% efficient but the trees have grown tall, the lawn is greenish and most of the sprinkler system works.  We Make-Do.

‘Should we update it’ we considered.  Nah, we could throw our kitchen in the land fill and rebuild it but in 5-10 years when we sell the house, they will throw the new kitchen in the land fill and build their dream kitchen.  Besides, we are Make-Do people.  We have gotten used to the way it is, it is our home, and we make the best of it, we do not want what we do not have.  This seems to be a lost art in Park City where every house is in a constant state of redo, rehab, and rebuild.  Why buy a house that you don’t want or like?  Build your own dream home on your own dream lot.  Everybody wants what they want and will not compromise or capitulate.  Everyone wants it perfect and the hell with the costs or the carbon footprint.  But perfection is a journey and not a destination, with Heisenberg uncertainty, and ultimately unobtainable.  As Ms. Fields might have said - perfect is the enemy of good.  Make-Do.

It’s the same with the roads around here where there are three to seven lanes coming and going to town and we only use half of them.  We have huge shoulders for buses we never see and bikers who prefer the bike paths on either side to getting run over.  Use the shoulders for peak traffic, at least through the big intersections.  Don’t zipper down four lane roads for a mile in front of the High School or for 100 yards on the road to Kamas.  Admit it, it’s a four lane road.  Use what we have and Make-Do instead of building tunnels and billion-dollar bypasses.  We have Park-and-Ride lots no one can get to or that are full of buses and tents.  Consolidate that crap where it won’t get in the way (Richardsons?) and incentivize tourists and workers to use the lots we have.  Make-Do. 

It goes for recreation as well.  Dozens of people sit around, in the hot sun or cold gym every day, to play Pickleball while tennis courts and basketball courts sit empty waiting for someone to play.  Adjust your schedules and priorities to maximize the resources we have instead of building more ten million dollar  courts.  Use what we have.  Put temporary nets on the unused courts and if someone comes to play hoops or tennis, let the Pickleball fanatics respectfully step aside.  Make-Do.

Park City has money, so we have water.  But that doesn’t mean we should not conserve this precious resource for things like wildlife, rivers, the Great Salt Lake and other people.  Our water bills are high to encourage us to conserve and to pay for what our water is really worth.  None-the-less there are trophy, second homes watering the Aspens daily because no one is here to adjust the timer, and they just pay the bill.  The rest of us consider brown-is-beautiful so we pay attention, and we use only what we need.  We Make-Do.  It’s not about money or entitlement or prerogative, it is about wisely using limited resources efficiently.  Consider the difference between what we need and what we want.  Make-Do. 

Finally let’s mention the stickers, the stayers, or the people that have lived here through thick and thin.  Miners, Hippies, Latinos and Ski Bums – rich and poor. The Alaskan Inuits consider theirs a subsistence culture with just the basics.  That includes community and belonging, in a harsh environment, but they stay, they Make-Do.  We could all leave our homes in search of a better place, but we stay and make the best of this place and help make this place be the best. Because we stayed.  We Make-Do.

Snyderville, Utah 2023