Degrading the Neighborhood, One Train at a Time

Degrading the Neighborhood, One Train at a Time

Many years ago, the government was building highways, mammoth expressways, all over the country. It all began with the Pennsylvania Turnpike and morphed into the federal highway system. During the time of Dwight David Eisenhower this program exploded. Concrete ramps and long stretches of two and three lane highways connected the cities of the U.S. like so many pearls on a string. It became possible to travel at 55 or 65 miles per hour from Canada to Florida and California to Maine never touching down in local traffic, and bypassing most cities and towns entirely. America hailed the achievement and everybody hit the road. This was America dreaming big, building big and proud as hell about it.

What has this to do with trains you ask? A couple of things, but we’ll get back to that in a little bit.

Have you been having trouble hearing your TV lately as the Brightline trains come through? No biggie, just turn up the volume a little. How about sleeping? If you’re are near a Brightline crossing you might have noticed you are not sleeping as well as you used to. Maybe the blaring horns at 6:00am have shaken you out of a deep sleep, and you just couldn’t fall back to sleep. Maybe you went to work a little frazzled or realized you were getting “bent outta shape” with the wife or kids when you are usually so even tempered. Or, maybe you are the kind of person who accept what one cannot change but still…six trains at 7:00am all blasting the same four toot warning as they approach a crossing a quarter mile away? Is that something you want to live with? Do you have to?

This is where we go back to the highway system. Though it was almost universally accepted as a wonderful thing, there were some things that were not so great and some people who grew to dislike it. Here is why “progress” sometimes is not all it is cracked up to be. 

Traveling at 65 mph on one of the new ribbons of concrete and asphalt is great if you are in a hurry but not so great if you want to see things, learn about new places, meet local people in cities and towns. Small towns that once catered to travelers closed down. No one wanted to stop in the Mom and Pop motel or restaurant if they could cruise through the drive-through, grab a burger and get on their way again without touching the local traffic. New motel chains were built right next to the interstate. Pretty soon even the locals drove out to the highway and zipped over to the new Piggy Wiggly or K-Mart next to the off-ramp of I-95 and the old local, downtown grocery store closed up for good.

In many cases it was easier and cheaper to run the new interstate highways right through the heart of a city or town. Swaths of cities were condemned, homes and businesses demolished and the new highways were built, fenced in and unapproachable or up on pilings above the adjacent remaining buildings. The result was, you had a city or town divided. You had noise and smog and, usually, one side of the highway or the other became isolated and difficult to get to or live in. Blight set in. Crime and decay. Such was the case of the proposed construction of I-95 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A scar path was created all the way from the top of Philly down the state line. A huge undertaking the construction included an off ramp at South Street and a long, straight highway from the Delaware River out to West Philly. This road would have been a “no man’s land” isolating the vibrant homes and businesses of South Philly from the historical Center City. The plan was approved. The banks stopped lending money on mortgages or for repairs on any buildings along the route. The value of the properties plunged.

This where I will try to explain why this road building project has something to do with the noise and congestion of the Brightline construction and operation. Just like the construction of the I-95 off ramp in Philadelphia the governmental officials and corporate interests of Brightline knew there would be a lot of noise and congestion once it was built. They held their meetings and the public put its “two cents” in, the approvals were granted and the tracks were laid. Now the people have to live with it. Or do they?

In Philadelphia a motivated group calling themselves the “South Street Renaissance” pursued a goal to “stop the I-95 off ramp”. They passed petitions. They called the government officials. They protested right down to the time when bulldozers were at the head of South Street ready to raze the first building, and, miracle of miracle, they stopped the construction. Government finally came around! But the real miracle is what is there today. South street and all of South Philly is a vibrant neighborhood, alive and fun and a great place to live and work. The mayor of Philadelphia, recognizing the efforts of the “South Street Renaissance” and the resultant positive effect of stopping the off ramp issued a proclamation on the 50^th anniversary of the group the “South Street Renaissance”, that worked so hard to make Philly a greater, happier place.

If you have a problem with the Brightline signal horns there is a possible solution. There is a mechanism that allows a local governmental body (the Martin County Board?) to apply to create a “quiet zone” and stop the horn signals on the Brightline trains. It is a Federal application and must be submitted by a local governmental body, not an individual. No amount of signatures on a petition will do the trick. No letters or protests against the trains or the Fed’s. The petitions and phone calls should go to the county politicos. They must understand the import of stopping these bothersome, and, perhaps unhealthy, noisy signals. If the folks in Philly could stop I-95, we can stop a few horns. What do you say?

 

School Bus

 

Lilly is in the first grade. Rose is in the sixth. This means they are in different schools and take different buses in the morning. Today was “day one” and a small knot of observers-Oma, Mom, Sam from down the street, and Rose and me-gathered at the bottom of the driveway to await the arrival of Lilly’s bus. Dahlia would not be left behind up  at the house and was there as well. Only little Bee hung back and peeked sheepishly from high up on the deck overlooking the driveway. You could just see her nose poking through the balusters. I felt bad for her. She is a little bit cowed by much larger Dahlia and Dahlia has no qualms about pushing Bee to the side and assuming superior position all the time. So far I think Bee’s life has been the most affected by the North Carolina transplantation. 

The school bus was close to thirty minutes late.  Sam went home to get ready for work and said she would come back to see Rose catch her bus a little later. Elisabeth, Bailey and I and the scalped colie waited patiently on the driveway, sitting on the rock wall and peering out, into the distance, hoping to catch a glimpse of the big yellow bus rolling through the neighborhood. It pulled to a stop right at the foot of the driveway. The driver opened her window and Lilly crossed in front of the bus and climbed in like she had been doing it for years.  The driver and I recognized each other immediately. I had been waving at her, and she’d been greeting me with a toot on the horn for a couple of years. I passed her on the road while I walked the dogs both in the morning and evening and I recognized her in a flash. She was always smiling. That smile is a good sign that Lilly will have a good experience on the long ride too and from school each day. I worried about the length of the ride for the kids. Our neighborhood is the earliest pick-up in the morning and the last drop-off at night. The “commute” adds a lot of time to their school day and if it is uncomfortable or the driver is mean and nasty it could negatively impact the day for them. So, a happy, smiling driver is a good thing.

There was another half hour or so until Rose’s bus was scheduled to arrive. Of course, it was late as well. The afternoon buses were also a bit late but I guess the schedule will tighten up as the routine sets in. I could tell that Elisabeth was used to the whole bus thing because she was the one who went through it with our kids. I was in the city working all through the school bus experience and it feels very foreign to me. There should be a tradition or a law that has men share the children/school experience with the wives. Maybe that would tighten the bonds of the family even more firmly. And wouldn’t it be good if all the women out there who just went through the pregnancy and the birthing and the infant rearing got a chance to breath in the semi-clear air of the work-a-day world typically reserved for the male human animal? This is one part of the family experience that we’ve gotten wrong.

I am learning a lot from my new family experience. At least I think I am.

Blending a Family

No need to wonder. There is a new trend in America.

As the World War II generation disappears, and the huge “boomer” generation ages, there is a shift rolling over the population.  The old soldiers and the old soldiers’ wives sit in front of the TV in their managed care rooms. They come out for prepared meals a couple of times a day. They sit with other singles who are all approaching one hundred years old and can remember vividly collecting scrap for the war effort but cannot remember where they left their slippers. The rooms are overpriced but the aides are underpaid. The food is regular if not exceptional. In the dining room some of the residents are being fed by aids. Some of the more lucid folks have conversations with friends they have made in the “home” but most just stare at the same TV show that they left in their room, except the dining room has a big screen TV mounted on the wall.  There might be a brief period out in the sun after the lunchtime meal or before dinner. A gathering of wheelchairs. A parade of walkers. A shuffling of aged pedestrians dressed too warmly, baking in the sun.

Back “in the day” they had families and homes in the suburbs and jobs in the prosperous cities and towns of post-war America. Their lives were what we call “the American Dream”. Their families prospered and lived the life of Ozzy and Harriet and My Three Sons-school, church, boy scouts, cook-outs, drives in the family car. Eventually the kids went to college up state and came home only on holidays, or when Mom and Dad (who were paying the bills) insisted. Then the kids all graduated and never went “home” again. They found mates and had kids of their own and moved on to jobs and houses of their own, spread out across our huge nation. Grandmom and Grandpop retired, and like anchors, waited dependably just where they were when the kids left home. They waited for Christmas or Thanksgiving for their off-spring to return to the old homestead for a brief reunion.

It is said that “the sins of the Father will not be visited on the Son” but it is not true. Just as they had abandoned their folks, the boomer mothers and boomer fathers were abandoned by their off-spring. The boomers listen to the sound of the TV echoing off the walls of their empty houses just waiting for a visit or a phone call. Maybe they got a photograph of the dog their daughter’s family adopted attached to an email, or a group photo of them all at Chanukah, but mostly they were on their own. On their own waiting for the trip to the managed care facility that the “kids” insisted would be good for them.

Then came Covid.

Covid changed everything. Who you could hang out with. Who you could trust. How to protect oneself from an invisible enemy. It brought the lens of our society into stark focus. The loneliness and the dependency became unbearably clear. Covid specially made clear the dependency we all have on the Medical/Industrial Complex. Fighting the disease and finding new ways to earn a living and to live a life. Covid ushered in a new round of crushing inflation that sent rents and home prices soaring. Shortages in the grocery stores and back-orders of critical materials became common. The result was even more uncertainty and dis-ease within the world.

Then came the new trend I allude to. Family.

The “kids” started coming back to the old home place. The place Mom boomer and Pop boomer had been rattling around in with the empty bedrooms and the hollow playroom in the basement. Space abandoned since the kids left for college ten or fifteen years ago are full once again. The generations joining forces to conquer the high cost of a house got the bonus of having an extended family once again. The kitchen became warm as Grandmom cooked dishes she’d not bothered with for years, because how can one cook a roast or a turkey, or bake loaves of bread for two, lonely, old people. The kids get off the school bus and change clothes and help out in the garden. The dog gets a walk. The sound of Life echoes off the walls again. This is what is happening in my house right now. My beautiful daughter (in-law) is resurrecting the two bedrooms upstairs right now. Her daughter is “helping” shuffle the furniture around. The closets are full of little girl dresses and pre-teen posters of pop stars I have never heard of will be plastered on the walls by the end of the week. My prodigal family will energize and traumatize this old place. There will be awkward moments and situations while we meld but I am confident that, in the end, the Trend will be wonderful. We will have a family again.