SUBURBAN LIFESTYLE DREAM VS REALITY IN OREGON

I heard a reference to suburban lifestyle dreams from someone who was raised in urban apartments.

There’s nothing wrong with city living, except when a city slicker claims to know about life in the suburbs.

In my time, I’ve lived small town, urban, and suburban, though I’m not a fan of the suburban lifestyle tag.

What big city boys forget is that every town is not a suburb to their city. I’ve met New Yorkers who consider the rest of the country their suburb. They’ve got a good point as long as they stay on their block.

I met a man from Coquille, Oregon, told him I was raised in North Bend. He gave me a dismissive look and said, “City boy, huh?”

Leaning on my small town roots is important to my work here. It gives me a sense of credibility to remember where I come from. But in some eyes I’m as big city as a Brooklyn strap hanger on the subway?

Prove me wrong, but I believe every big city is full of small town people stuck in the mix of urban life. I lived it for a few years in Philadelphia, riding the Broad Street line, and New York riding the now defunct RR line.

Those places were not much different than small town Oregon, suburban Oregon, or Portland, Oregon.

Suburban Lifestyle Nightmare

Why live in the suburbs? For me it was my wife growing up in LA. She didn’t want a reminder, and Portland’s Eastside where we lived was too much of a reminder.

So we took our toddler and soon to be born baby out of town. We broke the choices down to Gresham in the east, Beaverton in the west, or Tigard in the south. After scouting them all out one town rose to the top: Tigard.

That’s when the reality of a suburban lifestyle kicked in. On my first walk to the bus stop I saw a hypodermic needle on my nice suburban street.

I shared the bus back home the same day with a couple of homeless guys discussing whether or not they could open a beer on the bus. One said no, the beer guy said he had a knife for anyone didn’t like it.

The first guy asked the other one why he bussed to the suburbs?

“You go to sleep downtown and someone will steal your shoes. That’s why I’ve got a knife.”

I noticed he had shoes on his feet.

My introduction to the suburban lifestyle dream felt a lot like urban living. It got more that way when I moved to a bigger house in a beautiful neighborhood. Except two houses down is what local law enforcement called a “Meth friendly” house.

My neighbor’s activities attracted two Swat Team exercises where an army of police from different agencies showed up with a case of whoop ass. And guns out. And dogs. I didn’t see the moment as an opportunity to discuss my opinion of police action.

Suburban Distance

Everything in the suburbs is too far away to walk. A mile away isn’t much, but who is walking to Costco, loading up, and carrying it back? Way too far.

When I was house shopping with my wife, one of the places was a flag lot butted up against a halfway house for juvenile offenders. It was a nice house, but the neighborhood seemed a little off for a new family.

The place we settled into seemed to answer all of our house questions: Dead end street, big yard, good fence. One neighbor across the street was a religious man who filled the street with worshippers’ cars once a week like a Black Friday sale at Washington Square.

Another neighbor was a man of the people who helped prisoners get out of jail early by providing a job and a place to live until they got on their feet. He was paired with an older single man on the other side who hated kids and threatened to pop their basketballs.

Any of them would have fit into a city setting. As a good neighbor I interacted in good faith, but there was a distance between us.

If you hear the words ‘Suburban Lifestyle Dream’ coming from Mr. Trump, it’s not a compliment, or aspiration, for anyone raised in his circumstances. To a man surrounded by bling, we are all a lesser form of life.

What’s that like? It’s like The Rolling Stones singing Sweet Virginia, and we’re the stuff that gets scraped off her shoe. Since it is an election year, there’s going to be some scraping going on.