Manteca is not the Bay Area.

Believe it or not, that is not a bad thing, contrary to the trash talkers.

New homes in detached single family housing neighborhoods being built here aren’t so close they could be props for a revival of the Grey Poupon commercials.

And you also don’t have to have a household income equivalent to the gross national product of a Third World country to buy one.

And speaking of Third World, if that is your view of Manteca, you might want to guess again.

If homeless popping up in a downtown park, walking along commercial districts, panhandling and pitching encampments along freeway right-of-way makes Manteca a Third World country then what are San Jose and San Francisco?

Say what you want about Manteca allegedly coddling the homeless but on the Richter Scale of homeless issues we’re more like a 1.8 while much of the Bay Area is a 7.2

That said, Manteca has its warts.

But then what city doesn’t in the Greater Bay Area except for perhaps Atherton?

Of course, the rejoinder of those convinced Manteca is barely a notch or two above a hell hole will be “what about the dead grass, the weeds in yards, cars parked on lawns”, and other such issues that do exist?

They’re right, of course.

But what we have here is blight light compared to more than a few parts of East Palo Alto, South San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, Marin City, Richmond, and San Francisco to drop a few Bay Area names.

There are only a few places in the Bay Area that can claim to be purer than New York snow when it comes to hitting every target from minimal or no homeless, blight that you’d have to spend some time looking for, or people that are in the same social-economic circles so their behavior somehow doesn’t affront those passing judgment on a community.

We’re talking places like Woodside, Atherton, Blackhawk, Orinda, and Los Gatos.

This might come as a shock to some, but not everyone can pull down a six figure paycheck. That doesn’t mean what they do for a living isn’t valuable to society or honest labor with meaning.

Then there is the obvious difference. If Mantecans relied on food grown in the Bay Area to survive, we’d all be starving.

Manteca is part of a farm county that, if it stood alone as a separate state, would rank 37th in the nation. That involves getting dirty and sometime smelly.

And for those that rely on Amazon to keep them in everything from toilet paper and other household products to virtually anything they could desire for day-to-day living, don’t pooh-pooh this area and the people who work here.

There are eight major Amazon distribution centers between Patterson, Tracy, Manteca, and Stockton that keeps goods flowing to the Bay Area.

Not only would the Bay Area be in a world of hurt for food and goods as well as affordable housing for all the people filling jobs that help generate massive high tech wealth that are in the hands of a relatively few but they’d be unable to take a bath, wash clothes or cars, water their lawns, or even flush their toilets if they didn’t import water from outside of their basin.

Yes, the numerous freight trains that sound whistles and go through Manteca don’t Lolly-gag along as they do on Bay Area lines.

That’s because the lines through Manteca do the heavy lifting when it comes to movement of goods and making sure people have what they want when they want it.

As for the trucks, if you believe they should be banished from the face of the earth then go “truck free” for a year, eschewing anything a truck had to do with delivering including your house.

No one is saying of Manteca is perfect and doesn’t need to continue stepping up its game. But it is a balancing act.

Make Manteca a cookie-cutter rip-off of Pleasanton and easily two thirds of the 70,000 people who moved here from the Bay Area over the last 40 years would have to pack up the truck and move farther down or up the valley, if not out of state.

The funny thing is those that are doing the slamming aren’t really slamming those Mantecans whose families either predate the start of serious commuting in the 1960s.

The vast majority of Manteca residents are Bay Area expatriates.

None of this is intended to silence criticism as if that would ever happen in today’s world of belittle first, trash second, and marginalize third.

But it would be nice, if you want to change the world, to use milk instead on your Wheaties.