Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 3, 1993 TAG: 9308030210
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But one morning in July, when a group of friends and I were visiting Chicago, we suddenly didn't feel so sophisticated. We did a typical small-town tourist thing: we accidentally took a brief - very brief - walking tour of Chicago's rough south side.
At first, it seemed like a good plan. We wanted to get to the Museum of Science and Industry, and since we're all train buffs, we decided to ride the "El" - the elevated train. We knew it went through a bad part of town, but we figured that the neighborhood near the museum would be better.
We began to get worried halfway through the trip, when, for the first time, we had the opportunity to see a crack pipe in use. The guy who was smoking it was walking between cars, demanding change and swearing at people when they refused.
My fiance, Karl, put him off, and we decided the guy was harmless. There were other people on the train who were giving him dirty looks and telling him to quiet down.
As we drew closer and closer to our stop, the neighborhoods began to look worse and worse. I don't think I'll ever forget what I saw through that window that day. I felt a mixture of sadness and bewilderment.
Everywhere I looked, there were decaying buildings, boarded up and rotting away or burned out. Whole walls were gone, leaving staircases hanging in mid-air.
Around the row houses were factories and stores, mostly empty, with windows broken out, and graffiti sprayed in unlikely places, such as the side of a high water tower over a decrepit building.
Some of the buildings were less than an arm's length from the roar of the El. In among some of the worst of them were little pockets of life, where someone not only was living, but was trying to make a pleasant home, by putting up curtains or growing flowers in a window box.
I was stunned. How did it happen? It was easy to see that these were once thriving neighborhoods, perhaps not wealthy ones, but ones where business and industry and people's lives went on normally.
I could see, however, that even though the buildings were falling down, the community was still there. Children played on the sidewalks, adults gathered on stoops to talk, and there were well-traveled footpaths through the waist-high weeds that covered the vacant lots.
Someone suggested later that the neighborhoods are so run down because the people who live in them don't care. But I can't buy that. The residents don't own the buildings, other people do. Given a choice, no one would live in a rat-infested ruin. But they have no choice. And whatever else it may be, the place is home to them.
Despite our worries, we got off at the end of the line. At street level, a dozen men stood among the girders that supported the track. We tried to act cool. We went on our way, not making eye contact.
Through the silence, a man called out: "Hey, are you lost?" And when we didn't reply, he shouted: "You look lost!"
Suddenly Karl stopped in front of me, and quietly said, "Let's leave." We didn't argue. Karl is a big man. He could hold his own if he had to, but he walked away so fast it scared me.
We piled into the station and paid our fares, and got on the train that was waiting to start up the line again.
It was only when I felt the tingle of blood returning to my face that I realized how frightened I had been. But I couldn't really figure out what I was scared of.
It wasn't the people. I think what scared me was the place. It was a terrible place, but it was all they had. It was theirs, not ours, and we simply didn't belong. It's easy to see why gang members are willing to kill each other over a few blocks of territory. We all want to defend the most precious things we have.
Compared to Chicago's, Roanoke's problems are so small that it gives me hope that something can be done about them.
I had one final observation about our trip. When it was over, I turned to one of my friends and said: "This makes me glad I live in Roanoke."
"Me, too," she agreed.
Betsy Biesenbach writes for the Neighbors section of this newspaper.
by CNB