9(ish) Gary Drive

I was reflecting this morning on my time in Hyde Park, and things I did as a young boy.  It got me to thinking about a massive tree we used to hang out under near my yard. I went to Google Map® and looked up my old home on Madison Avenue and then moved down the street until I could look in the direction of where the tree was.

It’s not there, but the spot remains, with young trees now filling in for what had once been a wonderful alcove to gather and plan the day's great adventures for a couple of 8-year old boys.

I wonder where today’s neighborhood kids hang out as they plan their days, or are those plans now made for them as parents fill their time with sports, dancing, and other organized group events?

Ghost Towns

Communities seem to have lives, just like the people who make them.  Some towns seem to rise up out of nowhere, flourish with a vibrancy and life that is both robust and exuberant, and then just as fast as they came into being they disappear.  The west is filled with these “ghost towns” that grew up from some industry, like mining, and when the industry died out so did the towns.

In reading the posts about Hyde Park I am struck by the similarities of the western mining towns to my hometown.  At its height it was filled with the rich and famous, growing from its farming roots, it became a summer playground for rich, then an international political center as the home, and summer residence, of the President. 

It saw Kings and Queens come for visits.  It had its own train stop on the tracks along the Hudson.  It was inevitable that would end at some point.  The President died, and his wife Eleanor retired to her cottage at Val-Kill, but because of her fame and influence, the town continued to thrive.

In the 1950s through probably 1990 the life of the town ebbed and flowed as farms flourished, and the county’s number one business, International Business Machines, grew to employ thousands of people in the towns surrounding its headquarters, plants, and research centers scattered around Dutchess and the adjacent counties.  The service industries like restaurants, drug stores, supermarkets, gas stations, and retail stores all flourished.  In the 1960s, the city center in Poughkeepsie was alive with shoppers going to the department stores and retail shops that made up the main street.

In the latter half of 60’s and early 70’s, we saw the advent of the shopping centers and malls, with most of that going to the lands south of Poughkeepsie, for that was where the big employer was located, and it made financial sense to be convenient to your customers.  It was then that Hyde Park seemed to begin its transition to the bedroom community it is today.  A place where people come to sleep, but work is somewhere else, perhaps somewhere far away like the New York City.

In the 90’s IBM began its fall from greatness.  Its failure to understand the radical shift in office automation, the changing landscape of computing, and the enormous management bureaucracy it had built, doomed its ability to respond quickly to the exploding advancement of circuit technology as foretold by Gordon Moore, and they gave way to the more agile companies of what is now known as Silicon Valley.

I left the town in the early 70s to join the Air Force.  So I wonder, what will change the Hyde Park of today to bring back the town it once was or is its continued decline to a shadow of glories past inevitable?

Life and Times

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These are interesting times, but then I suspect all people say that at some point in their life.  But as I watch from afar it seems to me that a town like Hyde Park is reflective of the lives of those who make up that town.

There are the young with their energy, zest and supreme confidence that they know more than the older generations.  They want so much from the town yet can’t understand why it is the way it is.  For the kids in High School seeking escape, or the recently returned looking for work, where is the nightlife, the social scene, and the place to be?

The middle-aged 30 and 40 something parents struggling to make ends meet, raising children, wanting more, but not wanting to see more of their income demanded from the town.  They see the decay, decry the ineptitude, and condemn the old for their resistance to change.  This group controls the future, but do they have the time or desire to do so?

Then we come to the elderly, they have seen it all and want to be done with the mess.  Let someone else worry about things, I have what I have and want to be left alone.  They remember the shining town of the past, the “remember when” or the “we had it great” times.

Clearly these stereotypes do not represent all.  There are vibrant members of all groups, people committed to change, people with desires for a better common good, and people wishing for a different future. 

The strength of a town is also drawn from its economic health, just as a family is.  If the family struggles to make end meet, is always on the verge of financial ruin, or uncertain that the future offers hope, they close in, they shrink away from the future, unless they have something greater to believe in.  I’ve seen men and woman who despite illness, poverty, or tragedy rise up to show the best of the human spirit.  Why is that? 

As a society we have voiced our concern for those living on the verge of financial collapse.  We’ve elected people who provide our money, or borrow more, to help those people to feel less threatened by the lack of work, or the cost of living.   Those elected officials will spend those funds on helping the people and helping the town but at the end of the day will it be sustainable.  When all the jobs dry up, when all the banks are drained, when all the rich are gone what will be left?

What keeps a town vibrant and rich?  Is it the largess of the multitude of governments and their programs, or is it the industry of the people?  History seems to suggest it is the latter.  In the last half of the 20^th century we saw the garment mills that lined our east coast from Maine to Carolina close and move away.  Were those closures caused solely by the greed of the owners, or by the economic realities of competition?  Each of us will have an opinion, but at the end of the day the reality is something changed, or perhaps it is a natural evolution.  Regardless the causes, in each case when the work leaves - the towns become hollow reminders of a time past.

Just as with the human spirit, some pick themselves up and find a new future, others seem trapped in the past.  For those trapped in the past, it seems no matter what they do each new project is doomed for failure.  Cities seem especially ripe for this problem.  If there is not manufacturing industry, nothing to create the wealth upon which service industries and governments draw their revenue than they will struggle to face each day.

From afar this seems to be the basic issue for my hometown.  How does it encourage an industry to start?   Something that will turn raw materials into products to build jobs that offers a future, a career, and a potential for growth?  Economists talk of America becoming a service nation, where we deal with ideas, and advanced technology that will set mankind free.  Are we all prepared to live in a state where the individuals’ purpose is defined solely by the technology around us?

If we are, I wonder what becomes of the town?

Recollections

This evening is warm and quiet; the labors of the day have worn me out.  I sit here watching letters leave my fingers and find their way to the white screen in front, as if there is a story in my hands and it needs to escape.

When I was a boy I was fascinated by so many things, the world was there before me and all I had to do was reach out and take hold of a passing adventure.  My father did not seem to share this fascination; he saw life only as a chore that was without end, or without promise.  I have always felt sorry for that, but it did not alter how I chose to look at the world, and my role in it.

How different this world has become from what I had when I was young.  Today parents have to protect their children to a far greater degree than my parents ever thought about.  For example, when I was 14 they gave me a .22 caliber rifle, and trusted that I would not misuse it.  Of course back then Boy Scouts had taught us about gun safety and how to properly handle firearms.  I had taken another class to get a hunting permit so I could go with my uncle as he hunted for deer; the rifle was given as a gift to sharpen my skills.  I wonder if they ever knew I would come home from school and head off into the woods near my home to practice shooting at an abandoned car?  Can you imagine the uproar that would happen today if a 14 year old was found wandering around with a rifle?  I went hunting with my uncle two years and never shot a thing, but to this day I have an appreciation for those who love to hunt.  To be out, in the mountains, watching the sun as it crosses the sky, maintaining your silence as the does lead a buck your way.

Music was changing during these years.  It was moving from the orchestration of a Big Band to small groups playing amplified guitars.  There was a dramatic shift from what was to what is.  I can remember my parents loved the Big Band singers and country music.  I came to appreciate that music, but it has never been as special as the groups we heard.  I wonder if all of us can trace back to what our favorite songs were?  With my fascination of the military I can remember clearly listening to Johnny Horton as he sang, “Sink the Bismarck” and “Battle of New Orleans.”  I was attending Violet Avenue Elementary School at the time and still remember running around the play ground during recess – singing for all I was worth, “Hit the decks a running boys, and spin those guns around, for when we find the Bismarck we’ve got to cut ‘er down.”  There is one phrase in this song that has never made a lick of sense to me.  Horton sings “on her decks were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees.”  The mental image of these words can be quite disturbing, with giant steers shitting out trees.  Maybe he just couldn’t get anything to rime with trees?

I wonder what musical memories today’s kids will form to recall fondly in their future?  I’m having a hard time seeing any songs from 50 cent, or Justin Bieber as the examples that will be remembered 50 years later.

My Hometown

Over the past several days I’ve watched acquaintances discuss the fiscal difficulties of my hometown in upstate New York.  This is an area rich in history, and strong in its Liberal traditions of promising great changes in society, then funding them with other peoples money.  When the area had a strong industrial base, corporate taxes probably made up the lion’s share of income for the townships, county and perhaps the state.

Val Kill

At one point in time, during the 1970’s, International Business Machines (IBM) accounted for over 60 percent of the employment in Dutchess County, those incomes trickled down to fund the car dealerships, shopping centers, grocery stores and pizza shops.  There are two mid-size cities, but the majority of the county is divided into large townships, each with a corresponding town center.  The rural areas have, or had, a healthy farming basis with corn and dairy being what I remember.  The towns are, for all practical purposes, small bedroom communities with native residents being augmented with middle class and upper middle class workers from NYC who have migrated north because the cost of a home in this area was significantly less then it was closer to the city.  As they moved north they brought home prices up, because they increased demand and had the income to pay the higher prices.  With the higher property prices, assessed values continued to climb.  With the rapid escalation of home values I have to believe speculation began to work its way into the homeowner mindset.  Buy this house, stay in it a few years, and sell for a big profit, buying an even more expensive home, until one day the bubble burst.

Vanderbilt Estate

Hudson River State Hospital

Hyde Park was one of those bedroom communities, but for a small township it has an incredible amount of land that cannot be developed, or has been removed from its taxable base.  There are three National Park locations, a world renown cooking school on property that was once a seminary, a second seminary that is now some kind of new-age retreat, not to mention the churches, church camps, and state properties like, the portions of Hudson River State Hospital (now shuddered).  Other townships have similar situations with the several colleges, like Vassar, or Marist, and a number of smaller schools like Bard taking property off the tax rolls.

So this community moves along, struggling to find the dollars necessary to provide a viable infrastructure.   In the 1950’s and 60’s it was a pretty thriving little town.  There were new school buildings going up, new infrastructure being built, and the town board and school board running merrily along.  

But things are not always as they seem.  I can remember my first experience with failed urban planning when the City of Poughkeepsie, in an effort to compete with those new strip malls being build in the townships, closed its main street and turned it into a pedestrian only “mall” so shoppers could move freely from store to store.  Only all the shoppers had moved to the new stores in the strip malls and then the covered mall.  What was left became a haven for the homeless and drug addicts.

Culinary Institute of America

But year after year there was state and federal money, and of course IBM to pay the bills for the promises the politician’s made to get elected.  Then one day everyone woke up and IBM was not there.  Its leadership had failed to see the change brought by Apple and Microsoft and it went from being the dominant force to something akin to a Packard automobile.  The best of breed in its day, but now just a memory.  I would note that as I write this IBM appears again on the verge of another bankruptcy because its leadership cannot keep up with the speed of business.

So, where does this leave us?  The school board, in an effort to save funding to pay their teachers and I assume keep the school district solvent is looking to close some of the older schools.  Those affected by this are, of course, distraught and can’t imagine why this should be allowed.  Others are less than sympathetic as they consider the amount of taxes they pay on their property each year.  For example, look at these two moderately priced homes (for the area) 4 Dana Place and 261 S Quaker Lane and you will see property taxes range from $6,000 to $10,000.  Perhaps I am spoiled but I live in an area where my property tax is a fraction of that, but then teacher salaries here don’t average $57, 354 per year either.

The town infrastructure appears to be in a state of decay, as they can no longer afford improvements, as the bills come due from the promises they have made in years past.  There is no industry to provide jobs for the young, or to fuel an aging economy.  The expectations remain and I would guess the politicians will continue to promise a bright future where other peoples money will make everything okay, because no one wants to elect someone who tells them the truth, they will elect someone who says what they want to hear.  

I am saddened as I watch this unfold, but as long as we believe larger government is the answer to our problems towns like Hyde Park will continue to decline.  As the President has said, governments exist to do things we can't do for ourselves.  Unfortunately in this case I am not sure my hometown benefits from that bigger government largess.