Monday Musings...
Whenever I speak about my part of "da hood", I can't help but wonder what is going through YOUR minds.
Most (if not all) of you probably cannot fathom the daily grind those of us who remain here have to endure. And that's OK with me. I don't expect a lot of you to fully comprehend what we are privy to.
Many times I've been asked why I don't just leave the area, and that's a fair question.
There are THREE main reasons, but let me preface this by showing you a bit of our "slice of paradise" as one recent visitor noted.
We have a nice garden that we enjoy regularly, and it's populated with assorted birds and butterflies. It's not the RAIN FOREST exhibit at the zoo, but we do OK.
We can harvest the fruits of our labors there as well. take THAT, Taco Bell. We have tomatoes and jalapenos...how about YOU?
The best time to enjoy it is early in the morning, before the locals get out of the sack.
And there are many nights we can go out, and grab a few minutes of reverie before some boomcar (that the FWPD hasn't managed to catch in YEARS) thumps by, or some loud mouth kids from a neighbor's house shouts to someone a damn block away. Then, there are the gunshots. What we try to do is play a game to guess WHERE it came from, and how far away it was. You do that to minimize any angst. It's a survival skill.
But let's get back to "why we fight"...I mean why we stay here.
-One, it's about MONEY (isn't it always?).
In today's economy it doesn't make that much sense to willingly climb into bed with the devil when it comes to getting into debt. And let's face it, buying a house is the LARGEST SINGLE DEBT you will ever incur in a lifetime (unless you buy TWO houses, or a NASCAR race team).
-Two, it's about PRIDE.
We bust our asses to maintain this place, and we do pretty well considering the surrounding environs. We enjoy what we have, and recall a time when we HAD NOT. We are GOOD STEWARDS of what we are fortunate enough to receive. Sorry, that's just the way we were brought up. Be nice if more people felt that way these days.
-Three, it's about PRINCIPLE.
WE are the "good guys" around here. We are NOT the drug-dealing refuse that preys on others. We are NOT of the welfare-entitlement-the world owes US a living mindset. We don't believe that "What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own". We don't subscribe to abhorrent behavior, and will not tolerate it from others. We do not administer disrespect or disregard to others because of their ethnicity.
Basically, all "we" ask is to be left the hell ALONE.
Do whatever you want BEHIND a closed door, and no one will be the wiser.
But such is not the case in an area like ours.
This USED to be a nice neighborhood. It really was. But as the good one moved away, the bad ones moved in (chased from further north down south to US). And no one that has moved in over the last 10 years has done ANYTHING to better this area at all, with the exception of one couple, and even they have slacked off. They all do nothing (and do it quite well, I might add). In that they truly EXCEL. Talk about an UNTAPPED source of labor!
We, as the last vestige of reason around here, must remain vigilant for those that will take a mile if you so much as give them an inch. We are the checks and balances to an otherwise bad neighborhood. And we do all this because to NOT do it is anathema to our upbringing. We could just as easily cave in, be like the others around here, but we believe in Evolution. We like to think we can be more than the sum of our parts every day that we are allowed to draw another breath.
Now, taking all this into consideration, and given the prospect of the potential for a true renaissance or "regentrification" of this area, what is the alternative?
Sure, we can just BUG OUT, and call it quits, but that makes us no better than others before us that have done just that. Those that can't take the heat (or can't even cook) should never spend time in a kitchen. it's that simple.
Then again, others should not have to spend all their waking hours in a damn "combat zone".
It's a conundrum that is played out around here every day. Some days we are victorious, others...not so much. But we will not bend to "popular opinion" in this regard. We wont "cut and run" because of the color of OUR skin. We DO have a vested interest in THIS area (and apparently a LOT more so that the city itself), and will remain as long as is possible. And by some quirk of fate, we DO leave, it will be on OUR terms, not anyone else's.
Can't ask for anything better than that, can you?