Today, I walked into 80 Allen Street in Johnson City, NY for the first time since I left there in my mother’s arms some 66-years ago.  A seven-family, three story walk-up with a basement apartment on the side, the standard flat-roof box of an apartment house sports a crumbling concrete front-staircase overwhelmed around the edges by grown-over weeds guarding a wide-open front door.

The place was no palace back-in-the-day, but at least it was clean, neat and occupied by modest-hard-working families like ours.  Two apartments on each floor, left and right, opposing doors on a small platform between stair flights, the same today, but in 1957 the soft tones of a radio or TV show, the smells of meals being cooked or the soft cry of a baby would be the norm.  Today the overwhelming odor of a wet dog and cat crap, a blaring TV, a barking dog, loud shouting and as I climbed the stairs, filthy walls probably painted while I was last there and that unmistakable smell of poverty, so familiar and so much the same no matter where you find it.

In 1957, my parents had been married only 6-years.  My dad worked in the local hospital laundry and mom stayed at home with me.  My sister was about to be born and we needed bigger and better digs.  My grand-mother made a deal with my dad and bought a single family home just up the street that had a mother-in-law apartment, the condition being that she had her home within ours into her old-age.  She died there.  The rest of the in-progress Kingsley family, eventually 6 of us, lived through our formative years at 40 Allen Street, 100-yards up the street but across that imaginary line that separated poverty from plenty.

We had occupied the third-floor apartment on the left side of 80 Allen and today, instead of driving by and wondering, as I had done 100 times before, I stopped and made my way up those squeaky dirty stairs.  As I made that last 180-degree turn between the second and third floors I could see that both apartment doors on the third floor were open.  I heard some noise from the apartment on the right and as I approached that open door, I said, “Hello?” just as he came into view.  “He” turned out to be Alan, the tenant and who would have been my neighbor across the hall had he been there 66-years ago.  But Alan was there today, a slightly build black man, introducing himself as “A-L-A-N” as he paused the video game I had interrupted.  I wondered why he thought it important to spell it for me, maybe because we were on A-L-L-E-N Street I guess.  He had been sitting on a square plastic milk crate while playing his game and at his feet was a tin-foil ashtray with maybe 50 filtered cigarette butts competing with the other odors of the place.

Alan got up and we began to talk.  I told him that I used to live across the hall and seeing the door wide open and the place vacant, I asked if he thought it would be ok if I took a quick look inside.  He told me that the place was not only vacant but condemned and with that, he proceeded to give me, completely unsolicited, a tour of his own apartment before I could say thank-you and good-bye.

As Alan began the tour he warned me about the infestation of the bed-bugs.  Our first stop was one inwardly facing-windowless room just off the hallway that made the lack of light seem like twilight no matter the time of day.  Inside and on the floor of this door-less room Alan declared this his “shoe-closet.”  Perhaps as many as 50 or so pairs of sneakers were strewn and unmatched all over the floor.  As he began to tell me about his, “collection worth $5,000.00,” he snagged two multi-colored Nike shoes from the pile, holding them up while telling me they were worth $150.00 but stating that he got them for $50 bucks.

The next stop was the other bedroom, this time instead it was clothes strewn in a semi-circle on the floor in just the same fashion as the shoes, again, self-described as the mans closet.

As we moved into the kitchen, Alan demonstrated how none of the 4-burners on the gas stove would light, never mind there were no grates over the functionless burners showing nothing but the igniter sparks as Alan proved his point by turning on the burner knob only to hear the staccato tick-tick-tick-tick of the false promise of a flame.

Alan must have been saving the worst for last because the small bathroom off the kitchen was truly wretched with ripped off jagged layers of yellowed linoleum exposing a soaked wooden sub-floor dark with 100 years of stains and what must have been the original tub, crammed into a 5-by-5 closet.

As we made our way to the back porch, this was a place I remembered as a child.  The wooden and open porch stretched across the width of the building linking the back doors of the apartments.  A stair case zigged and zagged its way down to the parking lot, now mostly grown-over with trees and weeds gradually besting the beaten and cracked tarmac and pushing the surface back into dirt and reminding me of how 66-years can change things.  As I looked over the single, three-foot-high wooden railing, I wondered what miracle of miracles kept any number of toddlers from falling to their deaths during the past 100-years.

The back door to my old apartment was open and I entered the kitchen and looked around.  There was a vague familiarity but mostly I was surprised by how small the rooms were.  My recollection had them twice their real size in my minds eye.  As I made my way into the front of the apartment, Alan pointed out the pile of dead bumble bees in the corner of the living room.  The darkness and dinginess made for a somber and sad tone that seemed to define this space now, but it wasn’t always that way.

I don’t think we knew we were poor back then, just like Alan sees himself today, the heir to his valuable sneaker collection today.  No, 66-years ago, the Johnson City Fire Chief and his wife lived right next door.  Next door to them was Miss Cuttings little apartment, my later-to-be high school English teacher and the woman I credit with teaching me how to write.

 We were blue-collar but moving up, learning to appreciate what we would have later in life, as my father became a police officer and we finally moved up the street into 40-Allen with my grand-mother.

At 13, I became the streets paper-boy, giving me a passport into the living room of everyone on the street.  Even as a young teen, the compare and contrast of what we once had versus what we now were was conspicuously obvious and now here I am back at 80 Allen standing with my new friend Alan, after a lifetime lived.

 This is what it seems to me.  66-years ago, life was defined by work, family, faith, friends and community.  People were on their way up; the country was on its way up.  We had shared goals, shared dreams and shared interactions regardless of financial stations.  It wasn’t unacceptable to start from the bottom and work your way up, it was honorable and expected.

Today, it seems that the many who are defined by the 80-Allen Streets of the world are stalled out at best, and more likely on their way down.  The country is on its way down.  A culture of excuses, excesses and expectations without effort has gutted what used to be a common work-ethic.  We are divided like never before, have as many nightmares as dreams and wall-off each other according to financial status.  The 80 Allen Streets throughout our country are crumbling and along with them those they house.

Simple observation tells the not-so-obvious story and holds the key to why.  With churches on every other corner, 66-years ago most of them were well attended on Sunday’s and families, mostly spanning at least three generations went out of their way to have meals together.  Today, those same churches are teetering on bankruptcy, are sparsely attended, and during the week, after the remaining few Sunday faithful have gone home, church halls quietly replace the traditional family meal for the poor and down-trodden that have nowhere else to go and no one to turn to.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s our floundering relationship with God that holds the answers.

I tell people all the time that I am so happy to be 70 instead of 30 and that is because I don’t see a happy landing for our future.  I for one ply the memory of the 80 Allen Street that forged the future of our family as we passed through that station on our lives with dignity, humility and grace, earning what we eventually accomplished and buoyed by the experience that then allowed us to fully appreciate our new lives by comparison.  So much of that is gone today and other than my telling others about it, I fear mightily that building a sentiment for recreating that system of maturity and growth my soon exist only as a short story as told by some old guy that has faint and fading memories of a better time.

When is enough enough?  Apparently never with you.  In spite of driving mostly empty buses up and down and back and forth on routes that could be easily serviced with a motorcycle and a side-car, you are happy to take your check and the taxpayers be damned.  As long as you’re getting yours, those of us who pay the freight can go to hell, is that it?

What happened to the good old-fashioned concept of letting your conscience be your guide, remember, before you traded in your sense of right-and-wrong for a paycheck?

How in good faith can you burn through thousands of gallons of diesel fuel in land-yachts capable of carrying scores of people and do so, happily, without a care in the world, knowing that your efforts are a make-work-joke?  If this were a private business, it would have been shuttered years ago.  Properly managed, smaller vans would be put into use but no; the grand masters at the almighty union would rather waste taxpayer dollars then use common sense.

Over the past 50-years or so, many in our country have tried to retire the concepts of shame, embarrassment and honorable behavior in the name of preserving self-esteem and not being “judgmental” or critical.  In doing so, we have created a climate of comfort for slackers, the lazy and those that believe someone, anyone, owes them something.

Driving mostly empty buses, day after day in silence clearly demonstrates your acquiescence in accepting those terrible alternatives instead of proud, honorable and productive life’s work.

Ending by saying “shame on you” is sadly wasted breath because you apparently buried the concept of shame some time ago when you decided to shut-up and drive your bus, even when it makes no sense, except to your bank account.  You my friends offer no solutions but are a core part of the problem.  Complain no more about government or social justice issues when you clearly have no concern about them when the rubber meets the road.