The 1960s were the highwater mark for American suburbs, as white people abandoned the cities in favor of the towns rimming the cities. Ring roads allowed fathers to commute by car into work. Wives bought food and clothing at spacious shopping malls strategically distant from distressed urban communities.
It was the New Eden for the Adams and Eves of America and their spawn.
I attended a 100% white Catholic school, wore a uniform, and was instructed by the Sisters of St. Joseph to memorized our purpose on Earth according the the Baltimore Catechism.
“To love, obey, and serve God.”
I parroted every word to perfection, because the nuns regarded atheists as Servants of Satan.
The newspapers and TV portrayed the cities as hellholes of sin rebelling against God’s order.
I didn’t believe a single word.
I hated the suburbs.
Town with no life after dark.
By 1965 we were in rebellion.
White kids knew the words to James Brown’s I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD.
Not all, but enough to make a little difference.
We protested against racism, the Viet-Nam War, and marijuana laws.
Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and RFK were assassinated in 1968 and Richard Nixon’s election to the White House showed the truth.
America hated disbelievers in the Great White Way.
We abandoned our hometowns to repopulate the cities with no ambition to change a thing.
We had no contact with the Silent Majority hiding in the suburbs.
Chaos was our God.
Decay was the next stage of evolution.
Oblivion was easier to achieve than enlightenment and who cared if the best minds of our generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.ā€¯
We were less than all that and nothingness gave our souls succor.
Then it was all gone like the exquisite wickedness of the Witch of the East after a little water.
Crime was a black thing.
But only if us were replaced by them.
Luxury Condos.
This is the new vision of New York for the M’zoongoo.
Not a brother or sister left in sight.
Ethnic cleansing.
So this belong their city again, but it never was really ours.
At least that’s why ‘they’ think and say, “4Q.”
This will be our city again.
