Great new structures, efficient but ugly, rose on every side. New highways looped and slashed in every direction. In bewilderment I
frequently retreated to the still unseized central Common, or Green as
it is called. (I understood, however, that even this last leafy refuge
was under siege; various interests were agitating to cover the grass
with cement in order to create a gigantic pay-toll parking lot.) One afternoon in late October when a threat of rain hung in the air, I
started out on a walk. The lack of sun rested my eyes; the chill air
somehow soothed me. For an hour or so I strolled aimlessly. On a sudden
whim I decided to visit a city area which I had so far neglected. I
had lived in this section as a very young child--over forty years
ago. Although I was scarcely more than three when the family moved, I
retained vivid memories of the neighborhood and of the specific house
itself. The house was a two-story, red-brick structure, solidly built, located
at 1248 State Street. When I lived there, a big elm tree stood in
front of the house. In the rear, a large empty lot which stretched
to the adjacent street, Cedar Hill Avenue, made an ideal playground. Subsequently the elm tree was cut down, the lot was nearly filled by a
cheap tenement-type building and the entire neighborhood declined. As I approached the old area, I was appalled at the appearance of
things. Some houses had been torn down; others stood vacant, displaying
smashed windows, broken doors and collapsed verandas. On one block
every house was empty and partially wrecked. I was amazed and
disconcerted. I had not seen such desolation since war days. Under those grey October skies, with a thin mist already starting to
fall, it was the bleakest scene imaginable. I experienced an intense
oppression of spirits, and as I continued to walk along those strangely
deserted streets, my mood of dejection only deepened. I finally met a pedestrian, muffled already in a winter overcoat. He
squinted at me suspiciously when I asked him why so many of the houses
stood smashed and empty. "Route 91," he muttered, hurrying away. Although I had learned there was indeed a rational explanation for the
devastation, I felt no better. I was firmly convinced that a slight
alteration on the highway blueprints could have carried the new road
across empty marsh flats, only a few miles away. The cost of fill
would have been a fraction of that expended on extensive condemnation
proceedings. I fully expected that the brick house of my early childhood lay already
in ruins. I felt a thin exultation at finding it still standing. I say
"thin" because of course I knew it was doomed. Already its windows were
broken, its door sagged in and part of its front hedge had been ground
away by truck or bulldozer. As I stood regarding it, remembering clearly episodes of over forty
years past, I reflected on the rootlessness which marks the average
city denizen. By choice, or more likely necessity, he moves from one
house to another. He has no anchor, nothing of continuity. When he
visits his old neighborhood, he may find that his former house has
vanished. The site of it may be occupied by a city-supported "project"
for permanent welfare cases, or by a cinder-block garage, or by a
barren parking lot. The house, the trees, the back yard, the very
curbstones and sidewalks may be gone. The returner will experience a haunting sense of loss, a sense of
bewilderment, of chaos. He may finally begin to feel that he is even
losing his own identity, that, in fact, he has no identity. He will
feel lost in time, without either a future or a past. There will be
nothing he can go back to and nothing of permanence that he can foresee
in an uncertain future. Isolated, fugacious, essentially a drifter, he will experience a
loneliness of spirit which nothing can assuage. Thousands of his kind
inhabit the modern city, gnawed by a sense of their own rootlessness,
hungering in vain for a home, a habitation which partakes of the flavor
of time, a continuing and cherished spot of earth which links their own
past with some kind of hopeful future. With these depressing thoughts in mind, I stood before the lost red
brick house of my childhood. I had an impulse to enter, but I supposed
it was unsafe and very probably forbidden. Dusk fell; the mist grew heavier; and still I lingered in that area. Moving away from the doomed house I had known, I wandered along those
desolate streets, peering through cracked windows, through sagging
doors which never again would open to a friendly hand. In some windows, frayed, blackened curtains, left hanging in the
confusion of forced removal, fluttered in the cold October wind. Odd
bits of broken furniture, dishes and ornaments lay scattered about. Entire lifetimes had been passed in some of these houses; now they
stood as empty shells, awaiting absolute and final destruction. The entire area seemed deserted, silent, drained of all life. Even the
usual city noises were strangely muffled and distant. I roamed restlessly, numbed by the desolation which surrounded me, yet
perversely unwilling to leave. The mist thickened and full darkness
fell and I remained. In spite of the darkness I could see remarkably well. I linked this
abnormal ability with my eyes' unusual sensitivity to strong light; I
felt that both conditions stemmed from the inflamed state of the optic
nerves, an affliction I have already mentioned. I passed an alley, glittering strangely with bits of scattered window
glass, and stood surveying an adjacent house which leaned crazily with
a collapsed roof. It was a small white frame house, inexpensively
built, and yet I saw that someone had once tended it carefully. The
paint was bright; the little mailbox looked as if it had been scrubbed;
and the trampled remains of a once-neat garden surrounded the place. As, musing, I stared at this wrecked house through the growing mist,
I saw a face at one of the two front ground-floor windows. It was
the face of an old man, white, mournful, filled with an ineffable
desolation. I gazed at it in astonishment. My first thought was that an elderly
vagrant had crept into the wreckage of the white house in order to pass
the night. The dampness, probably, made his old bones ache. The face continued to look out at me; I walked away with some
uneasiness. I shivered, blaming it on the cold mist. I had gone less than a half block when I saw the woman. Enormously fat,
she sat in a wicker chair on the half-demolished veranda of a two-story
house. She wore very thick-lensed glasses which seemed to reflect light
from some hidden source. There was no moon, certainly, and I saw no
artificial lights nearby. I was startled, but I supposed that a few people must still be clinging
illegally to old homes in the area, pending final arrangements for the
occupancy of a new residence. Some impulse urged me to hurry past, to move straight ahead without
looking aside.