The Neighborhood
I grew up in the Polish ghetto of Chester, Pennsylvania. I use the word "ghetto" in the sense that in those days neighborhoods were ethnically segregated. The Poles held the area between Front Street and Fourth Street. Beyond that other immigrant groups had staked out similar enclaves. It was never clear to me why I had to stay away from the Irish and Italian neighborhoods; the map in my child's mind said simply "there be monsters."
The Polish people of my grandparent's generation were known as the working poor. My grandfather had to quit school when his father died. George Czyszczon became the family breadwinner at age twelve. The custom at the time was to keep a seat open on the factory line for the eldest son. This practice was the only form of social security other than charity on offer at the time. Somehow the family of seven survived the Great Depression if only barely. Then came the war. The neighborhood sent its young men off to fight. My great uncle Joe had one leg three inches shorter than the other, but that didn't exempt him from service. He was sent to Puerto Rico as part of the American garrison. Most of the boys returned; a few did not.
My grandparents owned a modest row house on the 100 block of Thurlow St. Some people called it the wrong side of the tracks. Actually, we were on the tracks. We used to shoot cans off the rails with a BB gun from the neighbor's porch. I guess to the older folks the activity seemed far safer than the old practice of sending young boys up the side of a moving train to rob the coal cars of their precious fuel. Despite our "poverty" the neighborhood was thriving.
St. Hedwig's Catholic Church marked the center of our community. The parish was large enough to require five masses on Sunday. Joe Szpock and Handsome Harry were the only two exempt from attendance because Joe was a bum and Harry was mad. Joe lived in an abandoned car behind the hardware store and made his living doing odd jobs. Harry owned a row house next to my aunt. I guess he was harmless, but his sudden appearance always sent our gang scurrying for cover. The neighborhood monster was tall and oily with fingernails an inch long. When he got sick, the local women took him food and medicine. We looked after our own.
Life was simple and routine. We had work and church, kielbasa for dinner, and Phillies baseball on the AM radio. The streets were clean and free of crime. You painted your concrete porch and front steps every spring. They didn't need it every year, of course, but to neglect this duty might earn you a reputation as a slacker. Kids graduated from St. Hedwig's school, and wonder of wonders, they began to enroll in college. It didn't take long before the next generation joined the middle class and began migrating into the suburbs.
It was all a dream come true until the day that something dreadful happened. The government arrived . . . to help. You see, the G-men had been studying the demographics of the neighborhood. The row houses were never worth much. The G-men began to encourage realtors to buy them up. The government would supply tenants and guarantee the rents.
The new arrivals were nothing like us. By this I mean they didn't share our values and customs. They didn't work or attend church. Their children were wild and undisciplined. They didn't even paint their porch and steps every year! It didn't take long before the neighborhood began to go feral. Broken windows went unrepaired. Garbage began to pile up in the alleys. Stray animals skulked about in the shadows. The Polish people fought back with brooms and buckets of paint, but to no avail. The neighborhood was dominated now by retirees. The muscle that the next generation might have supplied had already moved to the suburbs.
The new class of folk moving in had no vested interest in our neighborhood. The government would take care of everything. At least that was their attitude. Then the drug dealers and prostitutes began to arrive. The police didn't bother to investigate break-ins and assaults. You could file a report at the station if you cared to. When tenants moved out, the landlords simply boarded up the wreckage. The Polish ghetto was dying. The remaining Poles secured their homes with locks and bars and hunkered down to await the death knell.
There is nothing unique in this story. You've heard it before, probably even have a first-hand experience of your own if you're over fifty. The story is repetitive because government thinks it can substitute its influence for civic virtue. But a republic can only survive as long as the citizenry retains values based on hard work and commensurate reward. Nothing is valued that is not earned. The citizenry must have a vested interest in community and nation. It can't be given; it can only be earned. There is no other way.
Chester, Pennsylvania didn't die. It was murdered.
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May '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Great writing Paules, and a salient reminder that Government cannot create wealth, but it sure as hell can create poverty.
(Congratulations on being bumped upwards to First Class, well deserved given your other posts here. Do try to remember your old friends here in steerage, as you swan around on NR cruises of the future :-) )
Edited on Nov 17, 2010 at 9:58pmJul '10
Re: The Neighborhood
And this is a true story: in talking to an active local First Nation leader, I suggested that perhaps Canada could just take 10 years' budget of the Federal Indian Department, and divide the money among every Native alive on a given date. I figured at the time that this would total some $100,000 per person. Underage people would receive their share upon reaching 21 years. And hey, the reserves could be surveyed and each family receive free and clear the house and lot on which they are living at the time. And then: they would be Citizens, of Canada. No more 'aboriginal status', no more special treatment.
The woman's response? "But who would look after the children?" Really.
May '10
Re: The Neighborhood
As others have said, well written. Thanks.
Houston took people out of the projects and set them up in homes in my area when I was young. Their crime became ours, of course. But the politicians didn't utterly ruin my area as they did yours.
Now that I look back on it, it was a test run for the federal mortgages program.
Jun '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Well, thank you, brothers and sisters, for the recognition. I hope my contributions continue to provide value to this site. I write for pleasure, so it's not like my efforts are a burden.
Aug '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Social engineering was a fail. How about the business engineering that was epidemic in the 60s across America's small towns ? For us it had a name : Urban Renewal . Any anecdotal thresds here ? Interesting response ,to the appearance of the mall out by the interstate highway away from downtown, to tear the downtown down first !
Sep '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Social engineering was a fail.
An Epic Fail.
Sep '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Not precisely on topic, but whenever I hear a talking head say that we can't cut existing programs, I am reminded of stories I know like this. The gov't has massive investments in social engineering that have not helped and have demonstrably harmed, yet we continue to fund them at higher and higher levels as if we want them to "keep it up:"
May '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Not to be argumentative, but I suspect that Chester's decline could also be attributed to the impact of a reduction in shipyard and auto manufacturing jobs in the region. Could the capitalists who moved jobs oversees and invested in technology be accessories to the "murder"? Seems like you are blaming gov't for keeping it on life support, when the free market would've just pulled the plug outright.
Edited on Nov 18, 2010 at 8:18amOct '10
Re: The Neighborhood
An old story. And I think we can be deeply pessimistic that the perpetrators will see the errors of their ways.
“In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments, and tools for all trades and manufactures; whereby, ... a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase a hundred fold more than they do at present; with innumerable other happy proposals. The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection; and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being discouraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair."
Of the results of another project: "the work miscarried, the projectors went off, laying the blame entirely upon him, railing at him ever since, and putting others upon the same experiment."
Gulliver’s Travels Part III (published 1726)
Edited on Nov 18, 2010 at 12:34pmMay '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Great post, Mark. There's something here that ought to be marked with roadside historical markers... places destroyed by government.
Saw a very similar story on the Maggies Farm site today. This town in CT make a fatal mistake and accepted Federal Urban Renewal dollars in the 1960's. The Fed's buldozed the place.
Jun '10
Re: The Neighborhood
Karen: Not to be argumentative, but I suspect that Chester's decline could also be attributed to the impact of a reduction in shipyard and auto manufacturing jobs in the region. Could the capitalists who moved jobs oversees and invested in technology be accessories to the "murder"? Seems like you are blaming gov't for keeping it on life support, when the free market would've just pulled the plug outright. · Nov 18 at 7:36am
Edited on Nov 18 at 08:18 am
Karen, what are you suggesting the "capitalists" should have done?