RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,367
Elmira, in the early/mid 1970's
was filled with a just starting
to be run-down housing stock
that remained amazing to me.
These gigantic, tiered wedding
cakes of homes, still standing
but yet just beginning their
neglect and demise. Some,
a few anyway, by 1978 were
already gone. Now, when I
get back there, those that
still remain - and many do -
are amazingly rancid looking,
wrecks, ruins or abandonments.
That doesn't always mean a
lot, because as I walk around
them I can see the evidences
that people still live in them,
or in some partially habitable
portion of them. Often with
old rickety vehicles hunched
over, and with broken, removed,
or sagging porches that I wouldn't
trust to put 50 pounds on but
which the current squatters or
inhabitants seem to have no
concern over, or as little interest
in as they have of a coat of
fresh paint ever hitting the
outside. And I've not seen
insides! Yet, they manage.
-
It's always been funny as to how
the ideal of an imagined and
still sought for 'America' yet
exists. It's myopic, in a way, to
stay focused like that on an old
ideal that now has no grounds,
nor bounds, to have ever been
considered real. Like a village
Fourth of July on the town's
center green; flags unfurled,
and village-inhabitants both
joyful and 'together as one.
That old world is long-ago
fragmented and broken up,
and only remembered as lost
ideals, or the shards of a now
broken mirror that used to
reflect the ideal.
-
The other day a friend of mine
posted a photo of an old white
house, in Rahway, NJ. Nothing
I actually remembered - that
home - but people were saying
it had been this or that - once
a doctor's office, and who had
lived there, and when. I'd guess
now it's multiple rental apartments,
or whatever. (see photo). But it
got me to thinking about all
that it means and all that's
now gone - a typical beat-up,
run out of purpose, NJ half
industrial town, with a few
fine rows of old homes from
when the early managerial
classes still liked living
proudly in their 'finer' parts
of these small urban areas,
and not running off to the
suburbs and developed
fields out of town. When
there was still a pride taken
in whatever 'personal'
achievements had brought
them to that station in life.
Proud of their small towns
and still-civil cities and urbs,
and where the respects and
ideals of were still honored
and abided by.
-
Think of this scenario in any
one of those towns: The big
old house (before its America
failed) where the doctor lived
and took patients. Like old
Dr. Abramson, also in Rahway,
next to the Elks Lodge, an office
and a waiting room with deeply
polished wood on the walls, a
serious picture or two, and a
WWII photo of the young,
emerging Doctor himself, in
his WWII Army uniform.
Medic-training and a
Diploma of Med. School
graduation.
-
Now think of that very town
itself; how the doctor visited
homes and made calls in person.
Think of the hardware store, the
local pharmacy, the charm of
the yards and the houses mixed
in with the storefronts and those
who sold groceries, fruits, pickles
in barrels : the car-sales places,
and the mechanics and even the
blacksmiths and the places for
stabling and shoeing horses.
-
Now jump ahead to today - the
doctors of old are gone; their old
houses are probably broken up
into rentals. A few pharmacy
conglomerates have rounded up
all the old shops; medicine has
deteriorated into group practices,
walk-in street clinics, and the
doctors know no names without a
reference to screen or computer.
The pharmaceutical industry has
been heavy-handedly handed its
free-pass to peddle drugs and
concoctions to unwitting users
of medicines for syndromes and
disease more made-up than real.
The town squares and centers have
become 7-11's or convenience stores
rife with highway lighting and lots
for passing cars and loitering kids.
The bandshell is dismantled or
destroyed. It all makes on wonder
of the placid serenity that once
marauded as America, wherever
it was. Anywhere, USA.
Now long gone.
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