My Old Neighborhood

I grew up in the projects. I didn’t think I could say that until last week.

Mom’s house in 2012.

My family moved into our house on Pine Acre Road in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1971, ending my mother’s three year forced hiatus as a homeowner. After her divorce in 1967, she couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments, so the bank foreclosed on our her house bought only seven years earlier. We moved out and into a run-down duplex in Three Rivers, a village of Palmer, Massachusetts.

Mom would eventually learn of a new program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for low-income families wanting to buy a house in a brand new development then under construction in the Sixteen Acres neighborhood of Springfield. She purchased the small, ranch-style, all-electric home for $20,000 with a downpayment of $300. She carried a monthly mortgage of about $140 — which she still struggled to pay. (For today’s dollars, multiply everything by seven.)

Mom would end up living almost exactly half her life in that little house. After her death in 2012, my sisters and I sold it for $125,000. In real dollars, after those 41 years, she barely broke even on the sale. 

I present this bit of personal history to preface a larger story in the works about my old neighborhood. After years away from it, I find myself thinking about it in the context of the society that we live in today. Aside from income level, the buyer had to have children. To qualify for the mortgage subsidy, owners had to file an income statement every year. Mom got the full subsidy — about 50%. 

She treasured that little house. Only as an adult would I later understand why she nearly chewed off my idiot teenage head after making a disparaging remark about it. For most of her childhood, she never had a steady home. While not divorced (they were devout Catholics), her parents’ hopelessly broken marriage left her and her brother in the care of other family members during their extended separation.

My grandparents were not poor, even through the Depression. My grandfather was a jack of all trades and a master of few, while my grandmother had steady jobs and owned a small apartment block in Three Rivers.

Up until 1971, the longest my mother lived in any one place — all in Palmer or close by — was maybe seven years during her fifteen year marriage. Once in this new home, she would cling to it hell or high water, and she succeeded. She would die in it as I sat by her bedside holding her hand. 

Because of the child requirement, I spent the second half of my childhood in a neighborhood full of kids of all ages, while my older sisters became babysitting tycoons. Meanwhile, I had plenty of friends at or around my age, and one could always find at least one kid to play catch or ride bikes. Over the years, we would all drift apart. Some went to college. Some went into the military. Some went jail. Some did all three.

Most of the houses in this development were variations on the ranch style with the occasional Cape Cod.

I lately began to wonder about the kids from my neighborhood. After leaving it for good in 1984, I saw or heard little of them. Then along comes Facebook and they became daily fixtures again. During the political season, especially in 2016, many made their politics crystal clear. I wondered how my fellow kids-from-the-projects developed their views. How, for instance, did our devout Christian neighbors come to support Donald Trump, who no one would call a paragon of piety? 

I also wonder if the federal money was well-spent. As I drove around the old ’hood, I saw that the housing stock has held up well. Some homes look positively adorable. A few look like Appalachian dioramas. 

Did the government build similar projects elsewhere? When most hear “housing project”, it probably conjures an image of mega-blocks that warehoused people only to become crime infested and later piles of rubble. In this case, we benefitted from a program that allowed my mother to own property, which she cared for with the zeal of a national monument superintendent. 

I don’t know how the experiment panned out in the broad sense. Among us kids — now approaching retirement — my gut tells me to expect mixed results. 

This is all to say that I’m not done with this story. The more I look into it, the bigger it gets, and the more people I hope to meet to discuss this more. 

Meanwhile at the Sunshine Cafe

In the Flyover Commonwealth article, I mentioned my experience at the Sunshine Cafe in Limerick, Pennsylvania, where I had one fine Reuben and a fun chat with my new best friend Ian. I vowed to return for breakfast, and I made good on that last Sunday.

Yes, that’s our own real maple syrup in the glass jar.

Almost forty minutes away from our home, we made a beeline there to avoid the Sunday rush, which typically peaks at about ten o’clock in most places. We beat that by almost an hour, but still found the place packed — but not so much that we had to wait in line. 

I’ve always said that you know you’re in a good diner when everyone there looks like they want to be there, staff, customers, and owner. This breakfast experience brought us at least as much joy and fulfillment as that previous lunch. I ordered two banana pancakes and a side of bacon (six perfectly grilled slices!), washed down with a perfectly balanced brew of fresh hot coffee some four-star restaurants can’t serve. Louise had the eggs Benedict and left behind an uncharacteristically empty plate. 

To cap off the experience, they turned over our table in about 40 minutes, the sweet spot in the short order space — and we never felt rushed. We were late for an appointment with a realtor, so we felt grateful for their fine-tuned efficiency.

We’ll be talking about this stop for a while now. Can’t recommend the Sunshine Cafe enough. Next time, dinner! 

---

If you’ve read along with RBN by now, I hope you have a good idea of the type of story I’m looking to write. If you have an idea or know of someone or some business working to make their community a better place, I want to know about them.

Meanwhile, tell me how I’m doing in the comments!