GOOD TIMES GOING FORWARD

The good times ahead aren’t for everybody.

They may not be for the people who voted for the good timing man.

Getting on toward seventy this year, I expect to hear all about it.

What’s it going to sound like going forward? You’ve heard it before:

“I had no idea it would be like this.”

Luckily for most of us, we do have an idea.

 

I lived in NYC in the seventies before everything got nice.

My neighborhood was called a ‘white flight’ section of Brooklyn, Sunset Park.

I was young and durable and had already had apartments in Philadelphia.

Big cities with stop lights didn’t cow me down.

The landlord offered cheap rent for the no-flight white boy, and I stepped right up.

Besides, I knew how to assimilate, having had the all America experience of serving in the U.S. Army.

 

All-American On The Job

If you’ve never been lauded as an all-American I’ve got to tell you it’s pretty nice.

I’ve been an all-American since the summer of 1973 when I hitchhiked from Oregon to Iowa for the biggest high school wrestling championships of the year.

My third place guaranteed my all-American status, but I was actually the first place guy if I had a ref who knew the rules of international wrestling.

The guy in the finals didn’t follow my Greco-Roman throws down to the mat for the touch fall.

I pinned my opponent three times, didn’t get the call, and lost by one point.

That’s my story and I’ve stuck to it over the past fifty years.

My takeaway was all-American status and that’s permanent, right ref?

 

The good times for me in Brooklyn was learning about a different way of life.

No washing machine, no dryer, small fridge, grocery store a mile away.

The subway stop was a block and a half away.

Those were the living conditions I found, the same conditions everyone else had.

No one popped into their garage, pulled the car out, and drove to the grocery store.

Everything was set up for public use. It was easy for single man me, but looking back it would have been a problem for married man me.

 

The Married Man Problem

Look at the upper windows in the pictures, the windows above the street level businesses.

Families live behind those walls. 

Brooklyn wasn’t a challenge for them because that’s how they grew up, that’s what they expected.

It was their home and it was enough.

Where were the double garage, three bedroom, two and a half bath houses?

Never saw one in the city. They must be in New Jersey?

I value my time living on the east coast because I got to see things up close. And personal.

I got my apartment set up, got the utilities turned on, paid my bills, and settled in for the long haul.

Fifty years later I still value my time there, even if it wasn’t for the long haul.

People still live in the same conditions I did. Apartment life is like that.

Everyone shares the same comfort and discomfort and call it a party.

No one needs reminders about cockroaches and rats, they live with them.

And it’s normal for big city life.

Keep your breakfast cereal in a ziplock bag or you’ll be pouring cheerios and bugs into your bowl and not notice.

 

Normal Life Update

When I left New York I thought I was leaving New Yorkers behind.

I was wrong.

The know it all, been everywhere, done everything New Yorkers never leave their beloved town because then they’d discover they don’t know it all, haven’t been everywhere, or done everything.

They don’t like hearing that, which may help explain president elect Donald Trump.

He’s been everywhere, done everything, and wants you to know he knows all about anything worth knowing.

That’s his New Yorker identification stain leaking through.

And does he have good times waiting for one and all.

The rest of us need to make adjustments.

We will listen patiently when the time comes to victimize his supporters and they can’t belief he’d do it after all they’ve done for him.

His voters will sit in stunned stupefaction.

 

How many Trump voters live in these Brooklyn apartments, these Sunset Park units?

Some families pack in pretty tight. It’s not an easy life, but they make it work for them.

Not everyone has those skills, but add additional burdens and something’s going to break.

Promises break harder when the people count on them.

“It is what it is,” won’t fly for normal folks living their normal lives who get upended by some policy quack implementing a concept of a plan with no idea of consequences for normal people.

When you hear what passes for the voice of reason go off the rails, what’s the plan then?

The knock on the door from people asking for your parents or grandparents to come with them? Then what?

Good times ended for a kid who crossed the border to Tijuana and never came back.

He didn’t check his status like he didn’t check his status the other times he visited his family.

His good times excluded the life he had in Oregon.

Who else will need to make similar adjustments when the man they voted for starts dealing them out of the game in America?

This is where Gomer Pyle says, “Surprise, surprise, surprise.”

Who will be surprised?