Word: movallers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...call these people Y-CHOPs -- Young Commuting Home-Owning Parents -- a new version of an old ideal of the American nuclear family. They have come to Moreno Valley because a home in more established California cities can cost as much as a space shuttle. In "MoVal" a typical four-bedroom house on a 7,500- sq.-ft. lot costs $140,000. The affordable homes and quality of life have made Moreno Valley the fastest growing city in America...
Today three out of four working "MoVallers" merge with thousands of other competitive freeway high achievers driving on gas, caffeine, ambition, ozone depletion and sleep deprivation for the two hours of freewaying to Los Angeles or the 1 1/2-hour drive to Orange County. This mass evacuation leaves MoVal half empty during the day. But the American urge for home ownership and its coveted symbols -- a swing in the yard, idyllic neighborhoods and progressive public schools -- is so powerful that the commute is accepted as part of the natural price of the Dream, a bearable surcharge on happiness, part of being...
Most Y-CHOPs are white. The evolving MoVal family has one parent commuting to work and one staying home with two children in a single-family dwelling, in a safe neighborhood with church and grandparents nearby. You can almost see Ward, June, Wally and Beaver Cleaver in the house across the street and hear the rush of a tail-finned T-Bird cruising by, with Elvis and Buddy Holly blasting from the radio through tinny pre-Dolby speakers. Many of the streets are laid out in that cookie-cutter pattern of curves and cul-de-sacs familiar from Steven Spielberg...
| 1 |