"Nine Months"

"Jimmy Dunne Says"

Ride through town right now, and you’ll see exactly what everybody sees.

Chain link. Plywood. Dirt.

Green mesh fencing with a contractor’s banner zip-tied to it, flapping a little. A blue porta-potty. A dumpster for junk on the street. A sign that says, “Closed to the Public.”

Weeds where somebody’s roses were.

But there’s a trick to it.

I’ve been practicing.

Look at those lots with lumber sprouting out of the ground—and see something else.

See nine months from now.

I rode my bike around today with my phone, and took pictures. Of homes starting to rise. Some pics of empty lots. A street where stores will be again.

Then I handed them to a computer, and asked it a simple question.

Show me tomorrow.

Here’s what came back.

_{Now… In the Alphabet Streets.}

_Tomorrow.

_{Now… A couple of Huntington homes in construction.}

_Tomorrow.

_{Now… Where we lived for 37 years on Bollinger in Lower Marquez…}

_Tomorrow!

_{Now… Alma Real in the Huntington.}

_Tomorrow!

_{Now… Antioch Street today. Nice telephone poles and wires.}

_Tomorrow!

I’m not promising it’ll look just like that. It’s just a dream.

But it’s not a crazy one.

Because that’s what people are pouring their savings and their nerve into right now—behind every one of those fences.

Then there’s the clock.

Those houses with lumber already standing? They’ll have people sitting on the front porches in nine months. The bare lots have farther to go. And our commercial streets have their journey ahead.

But they’re coming.

All over town, they’re coming.

Look close at this last one.

There’s the same streetlight. And over there on the left, that big old tree is still there, leaning the way it has always leaned.

The tree already made it.

It stood there through the worst night this town has ever known, and is still standing there today, waiting for the rest of us to join the block party.

But here’s what the pictures can’t show you.

They can’t show a kid pedaling too fast down the middle of the street because he just figured out he can.

They can’t show a dad in the driveway on a Saturday with a hose and no particular plan.

They can’t show a mom walking three doors down at sunset holding a dish, because the new family moved in and that’s what we do here.

They can’t show you a dog losing his mind at the front window because everybody’s finally home.

Because it was never really about the houses. A house is lumber, and stucco, and a roof, and permits.

It’s about who ends up inside it.

Some of them will be Palisadians who lived here before—who lost everything and came back anyway, which is the bravest thing I know.

And some of them will be people who never set foot here until now. New families. Young ones. Who’ll walk into a town they didn’t grow up in and, before long, be standing on the curb at the Fourth of July race screaming their heads off for somebody else’s kid.

They’ll ask why we do things the way we do around here.

And one of us will get to tell them.

Nine months.

A lot’s going to happen by then.

It also happens to be how long it takes to make a person. Which has always struck me as the right amount of time to wait for something worth having.

So when you drive through town tomorrow and see the dirt, the plywood, the fences and the weeds—look at it.

And then look again.

And see tomorrow.

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Jimmy Dunne is a modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter with songs on 28 million hit records; songs, scores, and themes in over a thousand television episodes and many hit films; a screenwriter and producer of hit television shows; an award-winning book author; an entrepreneur—and his town’s “Citizen of the Year.” Reach out to him at j@jimmydunne.com.