Spring Creek Thoughts

When I went to Emmaus High School in the 1960s our school bus ride was the longest of all the bus rides. On the way home the bus drove out Mertztown Road to the Berks County line, where it dropped off the Seidel kids and turned around at their farm. It then came back through Brookdale and then to Spring Creek where the Trexler, Gould, Wetzel and Bieber kids got off.  

Fifty years ago our community was almost all farm fields as far as you could see, but I didn’t mind because that’s all I knew. Only later did I realize I missed out on school activities and organized sports and more girls by not living in town. But we didn’t know we were the hicks. We thought we were normal and that the kids who lived farther out in Topton were the hicks.

Anyway, I loved where I lived because we had two streams to fish and play in and big yards to play baseball, and lots of fields where we could shoot guns and go hunting. We had a train track through the neighborhood with a train and sometimes two trains every day. And most every family had at least one girl, so we had a balance.

My brother Guy and I were pretty good shots because our dad was a gun nut and taught us how to shoot at an early age. But Alton Wetzel, a year older than me, was the best shot in our neighborhood. We used to walk out the railroad plinking with our 22 rifles and Al could hit just about anything he aimed at. His best shot, as far as I know, was when he nailed a barn swallow in flight with a BB gun. 

During winter our dad fed the pheasant and it was normal to see more than a hundred birds at the corn feeders each morning, flocking in from the surrounding fields. Back then pheasants were plentiful and we all hunted them, and why they have disappeared is a mystery. Some say it was too many hawks or foxes, or too many family cats let out to stray from the burgeoning housing developments. Others say it was too many deadly farm chemicals and farming methods that reduced pheasant cover. It’s probably some combination of all these, but the sight and sound of a ring-necked cockbird is a rare joy nowadays.

The first invasion into our serene existence were the new kids from the Ancient Oaks housing project that was starting down on Spring Creek Road. One day a few of them just showed up on our school bus. They were like aliens. And then more kept showing up on the bus. But of course some of them eventually became friends.

But little did I know that these new houses were just the beginning of the onslaught on the beautiful wide open fields of Lower Macungie. The blitzkrieg of development has not slowed to this day, with its worsening traffic congestion, litter, stream degradation, hideous commercial architecture and total lack of adequate commercial and industrial landscaping.

I have tried to accept this fate. I realize that we have become a thriving community with a high quality of life and lots of good things. But we are also in danger of losing what we have and becoming just another ordinary overcrowded community. Public opinion surveys consistently express concern about rampant development and loss of open space.

Two years ago when township officials -- some say secretly -- decided to rezone the last great tract of township farmland along Spring Creek Road and Mertztown Road to allow even more warehouses and apartments, I blew my cool. I decided to fight the 600 acre abomination, and I and other concerned residents launched the zoning lawsuit to try to stop it.

The almost complete transformation of Lower Macungie from a rural township into a suburban, almost urban community has taken less than 50 years. Just imagine what it will look like in the next 50 years. Time moves fast and local officials and residents had better start taking the long view, instead of the short-sighted look that has dominated Lower Macungie and most of the other Lehigh Valley townships for the past four decades.

We only get one chance to develop or preserve our precious land the right way.