Where Have You Gone South Buffalo?

What has happened to the good, honest, hard-working class and hard-working middle class neighborhoods of our youth, places where you felt safe and secure, places where you may not have known all your neighbors but at least you knew some of them, places where you didn't need to shell out your hard earned cash to some anonymous homeowners association to ensure that you could live in a place where people took pride in keeping up appearances. Places where the kids could roam the streets without worrying about being abducted, and without worrying the neighbors that trouble was a-brewin', save for the one grumpy old guy on the corner that hated kids, that guy has always been there in every neighborhood probably since the beginning of time. Streets where you could play in the summer until the street lights went on, and even then you'd keep on going until you couldn't see the ball coming out of the pitcher's hand, or you could barely make out the silhouette of the hoop you were trying to shoot at. I grew up in such a middle class neighborhood in the 1970's and 80's, in suburban Los Angeles, in the city of Torrance, which as my dad liked to point out, was the third largest city in L.A. County behind only L.A. and Long Beach. The title of the column comes from the working class neighborhood that Tim Russert, whose book I recently read, grew up in during the 1950's and 60's, and one thing that struck me as I was reading was how similar our childhoods were, despite being separated by a continent and a generation. And how different in many respects that lifestyle is from what my own kids experience today.

Not that my neighborhood is anything to sneeze at mind you. I am fortunate to live in a nice, clean, safe middle class neighborhood in suburban North Phoenix, in a roomy and at least for the time being, air conditioned house. My unit is nearly 18 years old and showing some troubling signs of frailty, but knock on wood is still holding up, just one more summer please! We have a school smack dab in the middle of our neighborhood, which also doubles as the park, a place where like my own dad did with me growing up, I've spent countless hours with my son playing ball, throwing batting practice, hitting grounders, and chasing my daughter around on the playground and pushing her on the swings, all the good stuff associated with having little kids that still like to hang out with dad at the park. The local high school is only a mile or so up the road, walking distance in my day, although my son seems to think you need a ride just to go down the street, and being the ever accommodating parents of the modern age we generally oblige. The neighbors are all modestly friendly, but I don't know them really beyond a friendly hello or a wave when we see each other out front. We are, and have been for quite some time a backyard society, which in Arizona mostly includes the backyard swimming pool. Sitting out on the front porch and spending time in public is mostly a relic of a bygone era. Throw in the oppressive heat in the desert, which coincides with vacation for the kids, and you have a much different picture than the one I grew up with. It's understandable mostly, but nonetheless I pine for the days of yesteryear and wonder if they can ever return.

If you drove through my childhood neighborhood any summer afternoon you would see people, and lots of them. You would see little kids and their parents on the playground, which could always be found by locating the giant rocket ship that towered over the landscape. You would probably see someone playing tennis, and usually someone else waiting to get on the courts. You would see hoops being shot on the outdoor asphalt courts, which produced some of the dirtiest blackest hands you could imagine and balls that didn't stay bright orange for long. You would see over the line baseball games being played, always over the line on any vacant stretch of grass that allowed enough room for a batter, an infielder, the line, and the deep guy. The park and the school were lined with houses on all sides, and most likely you would see neighbors out and about, tending to their nicely manicured lawns or washing their mid-sized sedans, kids playing in the front yards or shooting hoops in driveways, cars parked up and down the streets. It was a scene that as a kid you just took for granted, never thinking about how lucky you were to have what you did, or that one day this way of life might not be so prevalent.

Maybe it is still prevalent, I certainly am not an expert on the matter, I only have my own experience to go by. Perhaps there are still many neighborhoods like Marble Estates in Torrance, or the Caz Park area of South Buffalo and West Seneca. Maybe kids today are still out and about during summer vacation, staying away from home as long as their parents and the law will allow. Or perhaps what I have come to know is more the norm, kids still congregate, but now they do it online via the Internet and Xbox 360. They still play ball, except in place of the impromptu pick up games that gave us our athletic and competitive fix, they do it in planned practices and organized leagues, always under some sort of adult supervision. Yards are still mostly well cared for, at least in middle class neighborhoods like mine, but there is the constant threat of the dreaded HOA if a stray weed is unattended too long, a garbage bin is left out, a car gets parked in the street overnight, or a house gets painted an unapproved color. In addition to being a backyard and online society, we have also become a society stifled by rules, regulations, dues, and fines. I'll be that Paulville, the new community of Ron Paul supporters springing up in Texas doesn't have an HOA.

Times change, attitudes change, sometimes for the better sometimes not. That's life, and as a progressive I not only accept this change but generally embrace it. But I am also certifiably old-school, and I don't like change for the sake of change, and I think that many things are better left alone or returned to the way they were. I don't know if that's possible, but it's worth considering. Maybe if enough people feel the way I do we can return certain things to the way they were back in the day. Or perhaps I'm just a silly old man who longs for something that is gone and ain't comin' back. If so, then I'm sad for the current and future generations that won't know South Buffalo or Central Torrance, but happy for the memories and the times I've had.