Solving the world's problems

“Look at Randy over there putting clothes on the line. He’s been trained good. Hey, Randy, man, you are trained.”

From across the backyards: “Heh, heh.” Randy’s loud even chuckling to himself. He’s wearing shorts, a yellow tank top and leather high-top work boots. He’s a builder. Don’t know how much building he’s doing these days. Which might explain why he’s hanging wash.

It’s Suze’s birthday. It’s also 70 degrees in the sun this afternoon. Such is March. I had to get outside, so I went to bust up twigs and shove them into Home Depot bags. The branches, accumulated winter debris, are nested in and piled up above our cinder block fireplace, what remains of it, which sits alone in our half-acre backyard. We live atop what once was a pig farm and has been known for decades as “Birdland” (Owl Road, Lark Lane, Pheasant, Thrush, Sparrow… it is part of Audubon, Pennsylvania, after all, with John James’s first home in America, 1762, a mile down Pawlings Road). In 1955, a developer built 1,000-square foot stucco Cape Cod and ranch houses with carports and large living room picture windows on half-acre lots; each had a fireplace on a cement pad in the back. Ours is the only one left. We were also the last to enclose the carport. Now a developer would put 2,400-square-foot boxy moving cartons, no windows on the sides, on lots half our size. Actually, with no buyers, no lending and no construction these days, the pigs would still rule.

“Hey Dominic.”

“Hi Dave.”

Dom ambles over from his driveway. (Two things I’ve always liked about Birdland: few fences and no sidewalks.) Appears he neeed to get out of the house as much as I did. We’ve been neighbors for a quarter century, 26 years this Labor Day. Dom and Loretta, his wife, are one of a handful of neighbors who have lived in Birdland since the beginning. Tina and Allen across the street. Helen next door on the other side from Dom. He’s been retired as long as I’ve known him, permanent disability after a heart attack almost finished him in his early 50s.

“How was Kentucky?”

“You know what, it’s boring down there.”

I haven’t talked with Dom up close all winter. Haven’t talked with him at any length in several years. He’s older, frailer, voice huskier, skin whiter, slower walk, a kind of hunched shuffle. He’s been put through it. Close calls with his ticker, clogged arteries, emergency trips to hospitals. Rode a helivac to a downtown hospital once. Lost his first wife to cancer, and his first son Donald only a day old. His sweet daughter Lori lives not far in a home for the mentally disabled. Dom must be pushing 80 now. He’s the dapper little Italian today, with black slacks, black and gray shirt, and black sports coat. A slight man with thinning hair, large ears, and a large, crooked nose. Big heart, glint in the eye, wide grin. Tough. Carries old-time Norristown prejudices he voices without giving them a thought. Excellent cook. Hard worker around the house. Always pushing it, worrying Loretta. He’s not pushing it like he used to, nowadays.

“What’da people do down there, anyway?”

“You know old ma and pa on the front porch? Just sittin’. That’s about what they do. My sister-in-law hates it down there. Her husband wanted to move out of Orlando because, you know, it was getting too crowded. So they moved to the wilds. They like it. Or he likes it.”

“Can’t imagine a lot of jobs there.”

“No. There’s a Corvette plant near. But not much. It’s mostly farming.”

He says “Corvette plant,” something hard for me to picture. They still roll out ‘vettes in the states? I think of Dodge Chargers, Gran Torinos, Mustangs, eight-cylinder, 351-cubic-inch engines, muscle cars to go with a pumped-up mid-century America, Ali in his prime, Gunsmoke, Mercury and Apollo programs, steel mills, the Big Three networks, the Big Three car companies, union rule, cheap gas. My kids call it the black and white days, before color came to TV.

“So, what’da think, Dom, we gonna come out of this recession?”

Dom frowns, shifts his feet, looks down at the grass clumps starting to sprout, and shakes his head.

“I don’t think so. This guy (Barack Obama) is just throwing our money away. It’s bad. And our kids, like your Kate or my grandkids, what are they going to do?”

“Dante (his son) has three boys, right?”

“That’s right. Dominic is getting out this year. Wants to teach fourth grade. But he fooled around beginning of this year and has to go to summer school to get credentialed. Benny is two years behind him at Del Valley up in Doylestown, taking turf building.” Dom pauses. Smiles. “Then there’s Chris. He’s 12. He wants to go to Yale,” Dom says with emphasis.

“A brain, huh?”

“Oh yeah, he’s smart. But his dad’s going to pay for Yale?” Dom shakes his head, looks up at the rich blue sky and cloud puffs, and laughs.

“I don’t see things getting back to where they were,” I say. “I’m as bad as anybody, just spent and spent, never thought about it. Took a lot great vacations. Now… it’s something how fast you can turnaround and look at thing so differently.”

“I think it’s going to get worse,” says Dom. “People aren’t going to be able to get jobs. Some may be able to buy a house, but are you going to be able to meet the monthly mortgage? There are going to be people out on the street.”

“Watch out. Then you hear people talking about riots and marches.”

“I remember coming out of the depression, in ’36 and ’37. It was bad. People trying to sell you all kinds of stuff. Everything. Just to make a little. Come dinner time people’d come over and try to get something to eat. I mean, a lot people were barely making it.”

“In Norristown?”

“Yeah.”

Norristown is a half-empty, dangerously poor shell of its former self, a lively county seat in the first half of the 1900s. A mural on a brick wall in town says, “History reborn,” but it’s faded and peeling.

“How’d your family make out?”

“My dad, he managed to keep food on the table for us. We did alright.”

“He’d have to hustle? Different jobs?”

“He worked for Lee Mills. He was a machine operator. He did alright. Then, you know, they moved. To North Carolina. He lost his pension.”

“How’s that?”

“They said they were moving and he had to move or lose his pension. He was 61. You know Helen moved down there until she retired.”

Helen’s husband Louie, who was disable by a stroke before we moved in, spent those days in Carolina watching Braves’ games and walking the dog. A real gentle man, Louis was.

“Suze heard somebody on the radio yesterday say fairness has been thrown out the window.”

“Was a long time ago. Happened to my dad 50, 60 years ago. Happened to me, too. I was working in a sweater mill in Lansdale. I was ready to leave. It was a good business, they were selling sweaters all over the country. Jewish family owned it. But I could see it ending. Then they said, ‘Oh, Dom, we’ve got plans for you. You can’t leave.’ So stupid me, I stayed. Then two months later my supervisor comes to me, ‘Dom, I got something to tell you.’ I said, ‘Don’t even tell me. You’re doing me a favor.’ He was crying, feeling bad he had to let me go. I wanted to leave. I wasn’t going anywhere there. Mill’s been gone a long time.”

“There aren’t even mills down south anymore.”

“No, they’re in Mexico.”

“A lot of people are getting screwed.”

“It’s not right for our kids. We’re leaving a mess.”

“Where’s Dante work?”

“He works for the sewer authority.”

“That sounds safe.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty good. It’s like at the courthouse. Once you’re in, you’re in. How’s your business?”

“Publishing, it’s like you at the mill. It’s not going anyplace. It’s going down. Advertising will never be like it used to. You know, it’s all going to the Internet. I was talking to an advertiser this morning. Sales manager asked me, ‘You talk to a lot of people. Do you see anybody who’s… doing normal?’ I said, ‘In a word, no.’ President of this company, they make gloves, says, ‘I know the recession will be over when we get back to sales levels what they were before the first two weeks of last October. That’s when we started to go off the cliff.’ We’re not gonna get back to those old times, I don’t think.”

“You gotta be worried,” Dom says, looking straight at me. “Newspapers are folding all the time. I used to get the Times-Herald four or five times a week. Now, I’m not going to pay seventy-five cents for something this thin.” He holds his thumb and forefinger together. “All I get it for is the obituaries.”

“Well I’m in too long to get out. I would if I was younger and didn’t have this.” I motion back to our rancher, with the enclosed carport that turned into my office and in addition in the back to give us more breathing room from the kids.

“Yeah, you got too much time…”

“It’s something how publishing’s changed. I did a job on a newsletter on the side not long ago. This company, down in Virginia Beach that’s doing the newsletter, they used to have their own designers. Well, they laid ‘em all off.”

“Sure, they didn’t want to spend the money.”

“So they shipped out the design to the Philippines. They sent me the first draft of the newsletter, I looked at it. It was all wrong. Like they did it backwards. I said, ‘This looks like it was done by someone who never saw a newsletter before.’ They said, ‘You’re probably right’.”

“Yeah, they don’t have proofreaders anymore. Don’t want to pay for them either,” says Dom. He’s evidently given more thought to publishing than I ever would have given him credit for.

“You’re right. I got the final newsletter emailed to me today. There was a typo right on the first page.”

“People won’t notice. They’ll go right by.”

“You’re right. It’s like everyone’s ADD or something. Nobody concentrates on anything. Driving around with cell phones stuck in their ear all day.”

Dom smiles. “Well, I guess I better be getting back.”

“Yeah, I gotta take these bags out front. See you, Dom.”

“See you.”