Comments by "Itinerant Patriot" (@itinerantpatriot1196) on "ReasonTV"
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Seeing videos like this are heartbreaking for me. My family immigrated to the States in 1965. We moved to Detroit and for a time it was wonderful. I was a kid and the neighborhood had everything, clean parks to play in within walking or bike riding distance, several grocery stores to choose from, a nice little shopping district with a drug store and a five and dime, each of which had a lunch counter, a great little hamburger joint, a clean greasy spoon with great food, a theater, banks, a police precinct and firehouse centrally located, good schools within walking distance that focused on teaching kids properly and they had annual fairs where people could meet and mingle, churches of different denominations within walking distance, I could go on and on. And as he said, people looked out for one another. If you got stupid a neighbor could correct you on the spot (not violently of course) and you stopped doing what you were doing because respect for adults and law enforcement was a given.
That was how it was then. I drove through the neighborhood for the first time in decades a couple years back. I really wish I hadn't. Not only were many of the houses gone (mine included) the shopping district was no more, businesses were shuddered, burnt out buildings and houses and piles of trash were all over, the schools were closed or torn down, the library was closed and boarded up, the fire and police houses were gone, the parks we once played in were now empty fields covered in weeds ranging from knee to waist high, no swings or slides, and most disturbing, no people. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday in June, a time when I was a kid that the streets would be teeming with life, kids riding bikes, people mowing grass, neighbors chatting, shoppers roaming around. None of that was happening. My friend and I drove for several miles and saw maybe 10 people total and they were all walking along alone with their heads down minding their own business. That was the largest heartbreak of all.
After that experience I decided I would never return. I would rather remember things as they once were, when people cared for the neighborhood and each other. RIP Old Friend.
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