Reply #38: When I was very, very young, my Grandmother lived in Paterson NJ

[DainBramaged]

And it was still relatively safe during the day to go shopping downtown. I remember my Grandmother pointing out areas we passed on the bus which she referred to as "the ghetto" without explanation, only a look. She was a naturalized citizen from Switzerland, having arrived in the early part of the 20th Century. She had watched her beloved city become transformed from an industrial powerhouse to a shell of itself. And she was always looking for someone to blame, not the politicians who created them.

I also remember the days when the local papers showed pictures of the "Government Trucks" with politicians handing out "the free cheese" from the back as if they had a right to diminish the lives of those they "doled" it out to.

Now, "gentrification" displaces the poor who have no other place to live, and the "Government Trucks" no longer come to help. White or Black.

Thanks for the response. It brought back the smell of my Grandmother's house, stoking the coal stove, cutting the lawn with the wood framed pusher lawn mower (which I still have), and the wonderment of childhood without the prejudice of age.