There Goes the Neighborhood

“The Street” in North Providence is a place that holds all of my holiday and vacation memories from childhood, and all of my early professional memories as well. It is a place where arriving at six or seven or eight PM on Christmas eve was still not too late to see Santa and to get some of “Ma’s” fried dough. It is a place that when the doorbell rang in the middle of the night you jumped up, not concerned over who might be at the door, but knowing that it was someone close to you and something was wrong. This is a place that when someone on the street was hungry they automatically went straight to “Aunt Dollies,” and never left without that feeling of “man I couldn’t eat another thing,” and that was just leftovers.

The “Hill” in downtown Providence, the “North End” in Boston, “North Beach” in San Francisco, anywhere in Europe. These are all places, and there are many more, where you grew up sitting outside in the summer heat, watching kids play stick ball, or “telephone pole” football, I will probably write a thousand words on that one alone someday, where folks said hello to anyone they passed on “the stoop,” where somebody’s mom, or grandmother, or aunt, sister, or occasionally younger brother would periodically make sure that everyone in the “neighborhood” had what they needed, another lemonade, iced tea, cream puff, cannoli. Where you could leave your car open so it would not be too hot when you got back in it, where no one ever felt unwelcome, unless they were truly unwelcome, where if anyone, anyone had a problem, everyone had a problem, and everyone solved it.

I have not even come close to mentioning all of the places like this across this country, and across the world, all of NY, NY is like this, as is Chicago, and so on, but the problem is, not so much that these places aren’t still like this, although some of them have changed quite a bit, rather that so many other places, and so many people around not only don’t have a clue about this way of life, but they find this behavior somehow inappropriate, like everyone should stay inside and keep to themselves, and not “bother” people. Bother people??!!

I realize that much of what I write is about things that have changed, that are different, that no longer happen or exist, but this is not because I want people to feel bad about these things being gone, or depressed, but because I still believe that the we can in fact “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,” my favorite all time commercial, Coca Cola 1970 something holiday add, which they still pull out every year.

I stopped in just after lunch today to visit one of my favorite people, a good friend, a “little old Italian,” he hates when I say that, to check in on him, see how he was doing. One of his oldest friends was there, a gentleman, and I use the term very loosely, that he was roommates with in college almost exactly 40 years ago, and then another friend of theirs came in, someone they have only known for about 30 years, and one of his customers stuck around, and so there we were, “the board or directors,” hanging out, telling, and listening to, old “war” stories, and “new” war stories. We had some food, some consumed a little alcohol, and sat and talked, yelled, and laughed for an hour and a half. No one there was having the greatest day when we started, but everyone left happy. I was sitting there one, wishing that I had this on video, and two, thinking back to when my father would occasionally take me into the barber shop, and then one day he brought a cassette recorder, and recorded some of the funniest material ever recorded, and not made for general consumption, but not mean, just really, really funny.

Again, I go back to what one of my “hippie” friends would say, “it is not about you,” and I now know, at least I think I know, that what he is saying is that all we can be is be ourselves, and how people react, see us, view us, judge us is on them, not us. My point is that I feel bad for these people, and for all people, as “the neighborhood” goes bye bye. If this happens, if we allow this to happen, what we have lost, is a way of life, a way to “raise the child,” a way to be a society that has the ability to make everything better over time. We go to a society where “look out for number one” wins out over all other ways of life, all other ways of living with each other, and that is sad.

I am not an observer of life, I am observant. I am not just a people watcher, but I see people, and acknowledge them, help them, am there for them, but the neighborhood, and the neighborhood way of life is still in me, and I would like it to be in everyone, for better or worse, but I think much more for the better.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.