Poor, proud, clean
I earn about $20,000 a year. For my family of three, this puts me far closer to the poverty level than the median income for my country, my age, my state. If you add in the weekly child support I receive mandated by state guidelines, I still don’t begin to approach the median income. I am telling you this because I am writing now about poor people. I am going to make some hideous generalizations based on my observations, but I am also reminding you that I fall into the same income bracket.
On the days that I am too lazy to go for a run, I justify the large lunch I ate by taking my dogs for a long walk through my neighborhood. I rationalize that an hour of walking must be as good as 35 minutes of running, plus I get to carry around bags of poop, which makes it all the more fun. I live in an old mill town that hasn’t been resurrected and gentrified. At least ¼ of the properties in my neighborhood (all built between 1830 and 1930 except for the odd ranch house that crops up here and there) are multi-family. They are usually not owner-occupied, but sometimes the owners live in another section of town, most usually the 1990s development up the hill that I refer to as Stepford. The single families are owned by working-class people who have lived here for 40 years, or people such as myself, who came in the last 15 years looking for the last bastion of affordable suburban housing.
I like walking through my neighborhood, especially at this time of year. Even though it hasn’t decided to be spring in earnest yet, everything is in bloom, the air smells good in the evening, people’s lawns are green. The dynamics of the neighborhood change from block to block. Here I live amongst multiple family homes, but a block away, there are mostly single family gambrel-style houses. A block to the west, you find a section of 1930s bungalows. In these houses live the families I see walking their dogs, whose children go to school with my children. They have barbeques, and go to church, and vote Republican. Sure, there’s the occasional orange flowered sofa on the porch, but mostly they have flowers along their front walks and smile and comment on my dogs when I walk by. They are not like me, and they almost assuredly earn more than I do, but they are generally good people.
On the third floor of the house behind me lives a woman with her boyfriend and her two kids. Her son was in Rabbit Junior’s class last year. She had Aaron when she was sixteen, and is proud of never having been on welfare. Because she earns more than I do by working at the casino, I am a little surprised that she considered welfare, but then I have apparently more pride than she and the other poor Joes in my town. Aaron is often left home alone (he is still a year too young for this to be legal) but he stays in the smoke-filled apartment, watching TV or playing X-Box. He used to invite Rabbit Junior over, but stopped after RJ kept offering to have him come over here to play outside or with legos.
When I walk down towards the river, two blocks east from my house, it gets worse. Here there are vacant lots so overgrown with poison ivy that you can’t actually walk on the sidewalk (isn’t someone responsible for that, like I have to shovel my sidewalk every time it snows?) and multi-family buildings that look like they are growing trash as a cash crop. How can people live like this? Rubbish pours out of the torn screens that don’t quite fit in the window sashes. Broken bottles and cigarette butts litter the walkways. Cars sit up on cement blocks with refuse coming out of their windows. Who told these people that being poor means you get to be dirty, and you get to inflict it on everyone else. Where are the slumlords for these buildings?
It is often said that poor is a state of mind, and to be sure, as trite a statement as that is, there is some truth to it. Because I often feel like my life is getting away from me, I like my house to be clean (though it will always be cluttered), my yard to be tidy, my gardens pretty. I can’t afford to get my porch fixed, and I don’t have the time to do it myself right now, but I try to make the rest of my environment as inviting as possible, not just for me and my children, but for anyone who is exposed to it. But on Mechanic Street, it is not just a question of being exposed, we are imposed upon.
Ironically, there is a new streetscape project for the first block of Mechanic Street. It ends just before what seem to be crack houses. Residents stand in their underwear, knee deep in garbage watching the earth moving equipment. It would probably require similar apparatus to clean their small area. The worst of the properties are for sale, and I entertain a small fantasy about buying them, fixing them up (right, since I haven’t fixed my porch) and teaching the occupants about hygiene, respect, and how poor doesn’t have to mean deprived or pitiable.
On the days that I am too lazy to go for a run, I justify the large lunch I ate by taking my dogs for a long walk through my neighborhood. I rationalize that an hour of walking must be as good as 35 minutes of running, plus I get to carry around bags of poop, which makes it all the more fun. I live in an old mill town that hasn’t been resurrected and gentrified. At least ¼ of the properties in my neighborhood (all built between 1830 and 1930 except for the odd ranch house that crops up here and there) are multi-family. They are usually not owner-occupied, but sometimes the owners live in another section of town, most usually the 1990s development up the hill that I refer to as Stepford. The single families are owned by working-class people who have lived here for 40 years, or people such as myself, who came in the last 15 years looking for the last bastion of affordable suburban housing.
I like walking through my neighborhood, especially at this time of year. Even though it hasn’t decided to be spring in earnest yet, everything is in bloom, the air smells good in the evening, people’s lawns are green. The dynamics of the neighborhood change from block to block. Here I live amongst multiple family homes, but a block away, there are mostly single family gambrel-style houses. A block to the west, you find a section of 1930s bungalows. In these houses live the families I see walking their dogs, whose children go to school with my children. They have barbeques, and go to church, and vote Republican. Sure, there’s the occasional orange flowered sofa on the porch, but mostly they have flowers along their front walks and smile and comment on my dogs when I walk by. They are not like me, and they almost assuredly earn more than I do, but they are generally good people.
On the third floor of the house behind me lives a woman with her boyfriend and her two kids. Her son was in Rabbit Junior’s class last year. She had Aaron when she was sixteen, and is proud of never having been on welfare. Because she earns more than I do by working at the casino, I am a little surprised that she considered welfare, but then I have apparently more pride than she and the other poor Joes in my town. Aaron is often left home alone (he is still a year too young for this to be legal) but he stays in the smoke-filled apartment, watching TV or playing X-Box. He used to invite Rabbit Junior over, but stopped after RJ kept offering to have him come over here to play outside or with legos.
When I walk down towards the river, two blocks east from my house, it gets worse. Here there are vacant lots so overgrown with poison ivy that you can’t actually walk on the sidewalk (isn’t someone responsible for that, like I have to shovel my sidewalk every time it snows?) and multi-family buildings that look like they are growing trash as a cash crop. How can people live like this? Rubbish pours out of the torn screens that don’t quite fit in the window sashes. Broken bottles and cigarette butts litter the walkways. Cars sit up on cement blocks with refuse coming out of their windows. Who told these people that being poor means you get to be dirty, and you get to inflict it on everyone else. Where are the slumlords for these buildings?
It is often said that poor is a state of mind, and to be sure, as trite a statement as that is, there is some truth to it. Because I often feel like my life is getting away from me, I like my house to be clean (though it will always be cluttered), my yard to be tidy, my gardens pretty. I can’t afford to get my porch fixed, and I don’t have the time to do it myself right now, but I try to make the rest of my environment as inviting as possible, not just for me and my children, but for anyone who is exposed to it. But on Mechanic Street, it is not just a question of being exposed, we are imposed upon.
Ironically, there is a new streetscape project for the first block of Mechanic Street. It ends just before what seem to be crack houses. Residents stand in their underwear, knee deep in garbage watching the earth moving equipment. It would probably require similar apparatus to clean their small area. The worst of the properties are for sale, and I entertain a small fantasy about buying them, fixing them up (right, since I haven’t fixed my porch) and teaching the occupants about hygiene, respect, and how poor doesn’t have to mean deprived or pitiable.
posted by kingoftherabbits at
7:53 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home