2717 Martel, in the 1970s
2717 Martel – August, 2012
http://www.whiotv.com/news/news/local/police-bust-dayton-meth-lab/nQCgR/
DAYTON (WHIO-TV web site, August 7, 2012) — It took more than eight hours on Tuesday for authorities to clean up a methamphetamine lab operation discovered in the garage of a Dayton home on Martel Drive.
Four arrests — so far — have stemmed from the operation that police said was discovered after a person in the area called to report the smell of meth coming from 2717 Martel Dr.
My grandparents house in Hammond, IN looks to be well maintained at least according to the google image I found. Can’t say the same for the town, recently turned up on a “worst of” list. Truth is it was kind of rough even in the 70s. My brother and I had all kinds of harassment just walking down the the railroad tracks. Everything from garbage being chucked our way to outright threats. I guess a couple teenagers with cameras were a threat to the drug trade even then. I still loved Hammond for the trains. In its heyday it might have had more grade crossings per capita than any other American town. In the sixties the three mile commute from downtown to Hessville could easily take an hour or more. As much as the residents hated the trains, they were the lifeblood of the town.
Haven’t been by grandma’s house since 2011. She moved to a senior community in Cincinnati in 1993, she passed away in 1999. She was 7 years old when the Titanic sank. She missed the Wright Brothers by two years but lived most of the 20th century. Two World Wars, Great Depression, flight from the first rickety biplanes to landing on the moon. I am glad she never got a computer.
Andy, thanks for the note. Grandma is long gone. 🙁 These shots were taken in 1974-76. But true enough, stable blue collar neighborhoods like this are a thing of the past.
The real issue is the steep decline in blue collar employment. People can’t find jobs to earn an independent living in cities like Dayton … so they turn to crime, drugs, and “mischief”. On one hand I have searing contempt for the individuals who desecrated my best childhood memories with a shitty skanky meth lab. On the other hand, exactly what employment and income options does a high school educated non-trades person have in a city like Dayton?
This kind of event shows real desperation.
This same thing is going on in Indianapolis right now, a city where I had to move for employment. Milwaukee, where I lived for years, also has some of this, but a lot of their rust-belt down-turn happened after the Arab oil embargo, so while not recovered, plenty of people’s kids left town to make a new life for themselves elsewhere, and plenty of the “boomers” were the first generation to go to college enmass. It’s weird to be in Indianapolis, where the millennials seems to be the first generation to go to college enmass, and people of the boomers age seem to ride that factory job into the ground, and barely be able to survive on what it was paying over the last 5-10 years.
The picture of your grandma reminds me of so much, but mostly about when you didn’t have to worry every single day about how you were going to stay employed.
Don, I don’t know how I ran across this, but just sending you a note to tell you I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, and how sad it makes me feel for a lost era.
I grew up on the north side of Chicago and then in Milwaukee, and these lower-middle-working-class neighborhoods were all around. Safe at night, pleasant, everyone had some sort of job that paid the bills, and there was far more of a community ‘ethos’ than ever exists today. Looking at your grandma and her dog makes me miss that terribly.
Now I can’t afford to buy a house (even tho I’m old) because I can’t rely on staying employed for the time I need to pay down the house, I have to pin-ball around the country looking for work just to try and make it to retirement. What about the way we let employers change our world was more positive than what was going on here?
Maybe there’s someplace left in America where I can sit with your grandma and pet her dog…