Don't fly here...

Hmmm, the wife and me took our planned flying vacation in April...
Turned out to be a nasty weather driving vacation of some 4000 miles...
Went to see the Arch (underwhelming)... In getting back on the highway
I took a wrong turn and wound up in the worst part of St. Louis just
blocks from the arch... Looks just like inner city Flint, and Detroit,
and Chicago, and Philly,and Pittsburg, and Cleveland, and other cities
I have been... Didn't know where I was for sure and I could have been
in any of those cities... (how come a nice country boy like me keeps
getting lost in these places... I don't get lost in the woods.)
So from that perspective St. Louis is neither better nor worse... I
did not feel threatened driving narrow tenement streets in what was
clearly gang territory, with grafiti, and litter...
I can't speak for St. Louis, but Flint and Detroit have to be a hard
row to hoe for the civic officials... The manufacturing base has
collapsed and the upper and middle classes have mostly fled to the
burbs, like Troy, Oakland, etc... The city population has increasing
percentages of deep poverty, prison records, hard drug addiction where
stealing is the only way to obtain the drugs, crumbling infrastructure,
hoplessness, gang bangers controlling entire neighborhoods, alcoholism,
single mother families where each child has a different surname and no
father in the home, declining educational levels and standards... The
social contract is broken... And that social contract involved the
neighbors knowing your business, being willing to help, and being
willing to let you know if they disapproved of your life style and your
childrens behavior..

At the same time these are large cities that come to life in the
morning with choking traffic streaming in from the burbs to the
downtown and business centers, the malls, the corporate headquarters
established in prior eras, the auto plants... Hundred thousand dollar
cars driving past eight thousand dollar houses... But there are not
muggings at the stop lights or fire fights in the Middle of Jefferson
Avenue... Commerce goes on because even poorer people need food,
clothing, medical care, birth records, gasoline, lawn mowers, rental
movies, and on, and on... The court house complex is a major center of
activity and of economic flow with money changing hands... Used car
lots abound... Check cashing stores abound... Rent To Own stores are
legion... Convenience stores sell cigarettes by the pack or by the
single smoke... Beer and liquor sell well... Cheap clothing and cheap
furniture stores multiply... KMART, WALLMART, etc., do well in these
areas... Sams Clubs, and similar stores are not seen in the inner city
as that population base does not make volume purchases, one smoke and a
single beer are more like it...

You do not take your life in your hands traveling through these
cities... However, go bar hopping, hanging around rough places at
night, looking to get high or laid, and they might just find your body
in the morning... Seems from my readings in latin from high school
(long ago in a world far away) that this has been true from the
earliest writings of man, not just since the post industrial hangover
in Michigan... The Roman soldiers knew that there were certain bawdy
houses best avoided if you wanted to be around in the morning...

denny
hemlock, michigan (one stop light away from being just a wide spot in
the road)