He, Peter Paul Markin, had spent his early childhood in an all-white public housing project, an unremarkable feat in those days and maybe today too although he did not think so unless you went to deep hill country in some Appalachia coal patch. That fact, that hard desperate white working poor fact in 1950s golden age America drives this sketch, although only partially explains it. His later childhood, the time of his time, of his coming of age time, of his will he turn right or left, good or bad, up or down, or just get caught up in things like a lot of corner boy guys did was spent in a poor all-white working class neighborhood filled with small, cramped single-family homes packed in closely together with little yards and few amenities. Places where one could almost hear one neighbor snoring in the night or another screaming, usually at anyone, or no one, at any time. And those were the good days. Jesus.
In adulthood time he had lived in poor white neighborhoods, mixed student neighborhoods, the black enclaves of Oakland, Detroit and Washington, D.C., and, back in the days, in an integrated urban commune (for those who do not know, that is a bunch of unrelated people living on the same premises by design). He had even, during the few times that he had had rich girlfriends, lived in the leafy suburbs. He now lives in a middling working class neighborhood. In short, he has have been all around the housing question. This story from the ‘hood (okay, okay “the projects” just to keep a little literary consistency deals with the relationship between where you live and crime. More particularly the tolerance for the culture of crime, really, the 'romance' of crime, if you will, that is inherent in living down at the bottom of society. Make no mistake, my friends, that is indeed a dangerous place.
More than one sociological survey has noted the correlation between low income and high crime rates, although I note that they tend to come up short, very short on what to do about it. That is, however, a point for another time. More importantly now is this question-where, dear reader, is that correlation closer than in the housing projects- down there in the mean streets of America, the streets of busted dreams, or no dreams? Peter Paul’s housing project did not start out as a haven for hoodlums. As I have explained before after he explained it to me initially the place was a way station, due to the extreme housing shortage, for returning World War II veteran like his father (and mine too if there had been such a thing up in proud poor Olde Saco in Maine in those days). But, in the nature of things, as those who were going to make it in post-war society moved on and the rest of us (yes, my family too) were left behind that is the reputation that it started to develop well before it was converted to a subsidized low-income housing project in the 1960's. His family had left by that point, but not without the scars.
In conversation with Sherry (his late invaluable ‘hood historian mentioned in an earlier sketch and an elementary school classmate) Peter Paul had asked about the fate of a number of his classmates, mainly boys that he had hung around with. Without exaggerating their numbers to buttress my point here, it appears to me, from her very detailed knowledge of their fates that an extraordinary number of boyhood friends wound up serving prison sentences for aggravated crimes, or died from unnatural causes early as a result of that life. Sherry related a number of such cases in her own family, including one younger brother still imprisoned, through several generations, not without a sense of embarrassment. Down among the desperate working poor the line between respectability and the lure of the lumpen lifestyle is, indeed, a very, very close thing.
Peter Paul, one dark time barroom night when he was in an expansive mood noted that this sociological fact was true, if a little less so, for the neighborhood where he came of age. He shocked me , moreover, when he confess to me that one of his own brothers spent considerable time in state prison for a laundry list of offenses, and another was in and out the county jails for many years for a host of petty crimes (mainly against property). I did not know that he even had brothers as he had never spoken of them and I had known him for many years then going back to yellow brick road summer of love San Francisco 1960s days. His own brushes with the law have been for political offenses (except for one silly hitchhiking offense in Connecticut way back when, but you know how that state is on hitchhikers, or was) so those do not count. I guess that made Peter Paul the ‘good’ son just like Sherry was the good survivor. What gives here?
Part of the headline of this piece is titled “Romance of the Gun.” and with reason. The gun, whether I am using this term here as a metaphor for toughness and a lumpen existence or actual guns, was central to ‘the projects’ culture. Not that he and the other younger boys ever had one (as far as he knew) but he knew older boys and men who did and did things with them. Things like gas station stickups, robbing taxis or the like. Those who were capable of that or, at least, had that reputation were looked up to, if not idolized (with a little fear thrown in). These things did not occur every day nor did they include police shoot-outs, drive-bys or anything dramatic but the thrill of learning about such exploits was palpable. It was like the air he breathed he said.
If imitation is a form of flattery then the lumpen existence of the older boys and men set the standard. The main thing was that they seemed to always have money in contrast to, let us say, his poor father who lived from check to check with hungry young mouths to feed and who constantly feared been laid off from the little work that he was able to obtain. No hero there for young boys, right? His brothers could not resist the draw of the lumpen life style and eventually were drawn into that life, as a way of life. But that is not where lumpen influence ended.
Even for a ‘good’ boy like Peter and some of the boys that he hung around with there were certain rituals to prove ‘manhood’. This inevitably entailed stealing things, at first from grocery stores, then department stores, and ultimately jewelry stores. He did it for a while but the glamour wore off soon enough and he retreated to the library and adventures of the mind. Some others, however, took it seriously and form part of the statistic of the ‘hood mentioned above but for him it was just too much work. But he was in the minority and took more than one physical beating for his nerdishness from the ‘boyos’. Still, he said those ‘hard boys’ were something to wonder at.
Well, I can end this story by trying to draw a few conclusions. One of the things that drew me to working to defend the Black Panthers (at the times when they would cooperate with white leftists) and later the Irish Republican Army (Provos) in the old days were the simple facts that they, as least the street cadre, were from their own ‘hoods like mine, knew the busted dream scheme of life by heart just as I did, and were not afraid to pick up the gun to defend themselves, if necessary. I did not need to glorify the lumpen proletariat as the vanguard. I did not need to read Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth to theorize about the purifying nature of violence against the oppressor. I did not need to justify every idiotic criminal act as a revolutionary act. All I needed to do was remember those ‘hard boys’ Peter described, including his brothers, from his youth and what happened to them without a political perspective. So much for the “romance of the gun.” And Peter Paul Markin agrees.
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