Quote:
Originally Posted by cry_havoc
Of course there are a few exceptions.
Doesnt change the fact that most suburbanites tend to be miserable and isolated. Stuck in a boring generic house, with increasing debt, and worse job prospects. Theyspend their life sitting in traffic to get to work and their free time is spent on buying material positions that TV tells them they need. Their situation gets worse and worse, and most watch hopelessly.
It is a good thing suburbs are now reversing, or making changes to make them more urban.
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Well, suburbs aren't for
everybody.
I grew up in a 'rural slum'. It was a 'community' organized around an intersection of rural 'highways' and a school district. Everybody
'knew everybody', and that was hardly a good thing. Plenty of people had nothing better to do than exchange and 'improve' vicious gossip. Some of that gossip went back a couple of generations.
Most people lived on gravel roads or dirt roads, in trailers, or in 'Jim Walter Homes'. My Mom dreamed of buying "...a nice used Doublewide...". But she never realized that dream. Until, at the end of her life, I bought her a "fine brick home", she lived in an abandoned Sharecropper's shack, at the back of a small plantation owned by a family of "Light-skinned Blacks", who were the Aristocrats of our 'community'.
Generally, there were two white families
(although a few white teachers and secretaries at the school would drive in from elsewhere). The School Superintendent's family was White, and the Bootlegger and his wife were white. Everyone else was Native American or some Elvis-like racial mixture which included Native American and
no-telling-what-else. The
what-else determined a person's IQ. There were few IQs there, I think, over 90. The many dumb people actively persecuted the few smart people.
It was a wretched place, and I jumped at my one chance of getting out of there. My status as a Native American was my ticket out of there, and into College.
I was pregnant and married by Christmas, Freshman Year. But the guy I'd picked was a good one, and we made an effective team. As soon as it was legally possible, we bought a derelict apartment building in an off-campus slum. We lived in one unit, and that was our first off-campus home. We cleaned it up, and got some fellow students to move in. That gave us money for paint and basics, and my fledgling Decorator gave us advice. Soon, we had Instructors at the U as tenants. Then, we bought a second building, and upgraded it more quickly. This, you will note, was an "urban" setting. We entertained, in our
decorated-on-a-shoestring apartments. Our guests included University officials and prominent alums, who were tickled to be included in the social lives of students.
Then, we moved to the State Capital, and bought a much bigger building, which also was our home. This was pretty "urban". I hadn't realized what a different dynamic ruled a big city, as opposed to that of a university town. We managed to fill the building with decent tenants, and to nail down the security aspects of the place. But it was harder. And frankly, it was frustrating and depressing. We narrowly escaped physical harm from the city's criminal element. Our ancient Volvos were broken into repeatedly, and would have been stolen had they not been....well...
Volvos.
Our social experience at the center of the Capital was sort of
2-track. On one track were the crazies, the morbidly depressed, the elderly who couldn't escape, the
familially retarded welfare dynasties, the drug dealers, the drug addicts...
On the other track were the artsy folk, the young attorneys, the young docs at the Medical Center, community 'boosters', health food co-op people, and prominent people who had downtown offices, who would drop by or come to our 'penthouse parties'
(we took half of the top floor for ourselves). But we had access to people on the 'good track', because we were young, with great jobs, part of the 'property-owning gentry', and were still working on our terminal degrees. Too, the connections we'd made in college carried over into our lives in the Capital. Anyway, people on the 'good track' treated us wonderfully.
We are both easily identified as
non-white. In the urban setting, we had serious problems with people on the
bad track, who were unable to
read us as being
people in charge. This was a big issue, because it was harder for us to get people to do what we asked them to do, or to cease doing what we were forbidding. And, there was the usual friction one has with the bitter, the insane, and the hopeless. All of that was made worse by the fact that we were not the usual white people these
(people of all races) were accustomed to acknowledging as authority figures.
Suddenly, though, an insider's deal landed us a distressed house in 'Leftover', a 1950s suburb adjacent 'Eastover', where the state's wealthiest residents lived
(and mostly still do). The Capital is mostly a collection of suburbs, and this one was about halfway out to the edge of town....a little more than thirty years old, at the time.
Our Decorator, by this time, really knew what he was doing. The house had a sad history, ending in repossession, and was a definite
fixer-upper. We were transforming the property
(a big, ugly, Fifties 'Ranch', on a quarter-acre). The place was swarming with workmen, and we were onsite, pitching-in. Beautiful blonde neighbors would jog by, singly or in pairs, curious as to what changes were being made (Jackson Mississippi is a
house-crazy metro). They'd see a woman on the jobsite, and figure it was safe for them to approach and maybe peek inside.
And here was this little Indian girl, proffering her hand to them, and introducing herself as the Owner. I could see them thinking
"Oh, my GOODNESS! I thought this was a Carpenter's Helper! Oh well, I'm going to be as nice as I can be, and see what happens!" And about that time, they were realizing that the top I was wearing under my Coveralls was Silk, or Sea Island Cotton, or Angora, or Cashmere
(the job lasted several months). And it was dawning on them that my speech was ultra-polished
(DH and I had coached each other...being one another's Speech Therapists...listening to recordings of William F. Buckley, and the British Royal Family, and emulating their pronunciations).
Sometimes the invitations would come from them. Sometimes, I'd be first:
"We're having a little get-together at our house Friday night, whatever you want to wear, just Borscht, Salads, and Toast... We have the penthouse at The ___. We'd love it if you could drop by!"
Or a Towncar would pull into the drive while we were chatting, and I'd introduce them to a former Governor or Senator or Dean or his wife. Or, maybe I'd be 'wearing' one of our kids
(on my back) while I raked leaves or swept the drive. So, suddenly, I had offers in the area of cooperative childcare. These new neighbors were in the best sororities, from good private schools, had lots of friends and family, were
ultranormal, and were as nice to us as could be.
There were a few people in the
Old Jackson crowd, who were sarcastic, amused, and condescending. If you've seen
The Help, you've seen a fictionalized portrayal of that group
(with the names 'Waspicized'). They're the decidedly
non-Anglo-Saxon descendants of the Carpetbaggers who descended upon Jackson following the Civil War. They have much to hide, and viciously guard a facade of Southern gentility, masking family origins in the slums of Odessa, Marseilles, Athens, Beirut, Berlin, and Palermo. But that was a generation older than mine, mostly, and they would depart, after a veiled insult or two, and a
"never heard of that Little Boy, before" (an insulting way of calling my Decorator a 'little F#g' and a nobody). Funny thing: our 'unknown' Decorator's input meant we nearly tripled our money, when we sold that house.
But the gist of our first suburban experience was that people were lovely. Our kids would run toward the street, and there always seemed to be some sweet blonde scooping them up and bringing them back to us. We still are in contact with some of those neighbors.
Then, we discovered Madison, where our kids would be able to go to excellent public schools. We bought a
big-n-cheap McMansion in an 'also-ran' subdivision. The trashy people who didn't really belong in that town of achievers kind of looked at us funny
(you know, the kind who have the big, puffy upholstery, who cut down the shrubbery, who are 'middle class' only in that they have good jobs and good incomes...but who are otherwise ignorant and uncultivated). The nice people, who
did belong, were lovely.
We sold that house for a big enough profit. Our Decorator had again worked wonders. On, to a bigger, uglier 'Builder Nightmare', in a better subdivision. People were nicer. Sold that house, after building our "Forever Dream Home", in a very fine gated enclave.
This house was a 'Creole Compound', Surrounded by a brick wall and with tall Wrought Iron gates. We'd have neighbors peering into the Courtyard. We'd invite them in for a walk through the gardens and the house. I'd notice young moms with strollers, pausing at the gates to drink in the aroma from potted Lemons, or whatever else we had blooming. We'd invite them in. We were sweet to nosy Realtors, too. One of those Realtors kept bringing us sky-high offers on our
(never-listed) house.
So, when a building we loved was defaced by a mob of angry Rednecks
(who forced the developers to remove the finials on the roof), we took the best of those offers, and moved out here to Oregon.
(We'd had it with the South)
Our Decorator found the house, in a legendary part of the State's richest
'burb. The former owner had made it big in Biotech, and the place was a shambles, as a result of a girlfriend's ineptitude. The place had sat on the market, because, badly-decorated, it was not showing well. They call that a 'Valuable Defect'. Bargain time! Otherwise, we could not have afforded a true estate, with Inner and Outer Perimeter fencing. Our Decorator changed our style, totally, in order that we would be perceived positively by the new (and dauntingly prominent) neighbors. We went from
Mississippi Rothschild to
Pacific Rim Zen, basically overnight. I left an interior of Marble, velvet, satin, bullion fringe, Scagliola columns, and Rosewood. I drove cross-country, alone, rather than flying, because I knew I had to 'feel' the journey, to make it real. I arrived to a new home of glass walls and Travertine walls. Instead of black marble floors, I had to become accustomed to bleached, cushioned, Maple. It was so stark and so minimalist.
But it worked. The new neighbors greeted us as equals. They could have perceived us as stupid, clueless, Southern idiots. But they did not, because our Decorator had surrounded us with the visual cues which would serve to tell strangers who we were. It helped, too, that I was willing to shuck off my jewels, jump into my Carhartts and Duck Shoes, grab a shovel and some pruning shears, and join the local gardening grandes dames. The fact that I'm an accomplished horticulturist helped establish us as "the genuine article", in a community where greenery is a high priority. In income, IQ, education, position, and accomplishments, we
do belong here. But we had to let people know who we were, without coming out and saying it. That's where visual cues and superficialities come in handy. Our life out here has been a dream.
Mostly, I've just given my impressions of life in 'The Country', in 'The Inner City', and in various suburbs. If there is any point here, it's that you have to
belong in a place, to be happy and well-received there. And belonging, usually, involves taking a proactive stance.
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