WORCESTER: Homage to 3 Deckers

They stand like sentinels, bold haunting, angled and jutting up from sidewalks, stroking the skyline with horizontal interruptions.. They heave their square frames and wrap themselves around street corners. They pockmark this city of seven hills, cascading down and rolling –like flotsam from some distant immigrant sea onto Route 290. They sit above fish and chips stores, aside fire houses, across from haggard ball fields, near churches and parking lots, adjacent to stores, hair salons and butcher shops, and nestled within their shadowy side-walked streets are families and things.

One, as the story goes, somersaulted down Vernon Hill fell across the Blackstone River and its roof ended up half way across Fitton Field. Close to the thirty yard line. Against the skyline, the roof tops are knitted together, stitched like a grandfather wool sock. Apex points shutter along the run. From a quick glance along 290, they amble and bump like some grand child’s game. They rumble to the heavy gage steel rods that support a hundred rail line cars.

Plot to plot, roof to roof and an occasional surprise. Windows, porches, trees shade the view. Rising streets, cartways and the usual red taillights worming along compressed , compacted roadways forcing cars to wedge themselves against some imaginary demarcation point. They box themselves into corners, and step backward into wedges of ground that can barely support a pup tent. They seem to cling tenaciously to inclines and defy the compass points. North or south they hunker down. They give cover to auto body shops, used car sales floors, old, smothered and tattered “Sale” flags with their red and white colors fading into a muted pink. They collect and coddle beauty salons, lock repair shops and pizza parlors on the first floor, residences above.

They open their doors to tap rooms and on Park Avenue, they have more taps than Aliquippa, PA per linear feet. Sort of an Edwardian thing.. They are hoisted around squares, circles, corners, and odd blunt- shaped dead ends. Their stoic angular shapes often are hidden . There is an occasional house kicked and settled at the rear and between two houses.

You have to stand at the perfect angle to see them. Necks and heads bobbing for a look- like standing before MoMA ‘s Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie”. Right angles, let’s go! We are after all pedestrians at heart. These are given a street address such as of ½ like 83 ½ Florence street. Tall buildings nestled aside each other with little room for breathing suck in strange bedfellows. Compressing air flows is ok when you r flying a jet, but in Worcester, when you compress air, the result is chaotic.! On a windy day with clothes lines whirling the vortex’s are startling and underwear and towels fly through the air .

Welcome to the world of wood, windows and three deckers Some sit gracious, southern plantation style on warm sunny evenings expecting a horse drawn buggy whipping its way to the front door. They sit at street level, on a small grades just above the curb top. Often they are heaved up and onto embankments that bring their building ‘s front to a level of graciousness. Some have concrete front steps that require heavy railing from the top landing to the cart way. In an odd, healthy way, all these shenanigans says: welcome.

The hallways have a smudged old wood smell, dark wood that seems to absorb all lamp light. The horsehair plaster walls are cracking, fissures run along imaginary fault lines and they bear the wrath of countless nails and screws which were intended to hold a picture or a like. Don’t they know that horsehair plaster is for comfort and practicality and not culture?

  They support front porches, boxy and shadowy. Two doors , the left to the second and third floors; the right to the first floor. Ownership had its structure. Hard wooden planks nailed together to introduce. It’s a Worcester introduction, don’t you know. I guess a heavy wind and foresight shook the bedrooms to the rear.

If a tree grows in Brooklyn , will it grow in Worcester? I’m not sure. Now my father wasn’t a frail, boozing Bartender, but does that matter? Trees, shrubbery, bushes the entire genus of green thing s that grow under the watch and command of humans are suspect in Worcester.

This is not a case of the Beaver street wind that roils the purple Blackstone river seeking unknown things ( although a case could be made and will be in this tirade I’m about to unleash, what Streets follow a path, not a plan.

And there was no master plan for the three deckers. None. And away from the street, the hum and the constant rhythmical waves of an old industrial city on the waning side of change. They hold court over all that passes before, beneath and below. They often swagger amongst themselves, maybe when a new window treatment is applied.

They obscure the Byzantine alleys of short sighted planners, long, long ago sweltering at the distaste of the City’s powerful elite. They slap away rain, screen hold rainwater, small compact garages. Aged street trees that have long ago gasped the finale. They have edges, curves, drab colors and an occasional burst of firecracker. They have seen a multitude of generations, lst floors, second floors and on those horrendous, steamy late August nights a third floor that has collected and hold tightly the soggy hot air.

Welcome to Worcester. Well, my Worcester as I remember and if memory fails, I’ll make it up.

AARP- Flagrant Hypocracy

AARP, again with a subtle form of bias The recent edition of the AARP Bulletin, June 2014, contained a very subtle form of political party bias to the unschooled eye.

 In a Q&A with historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (pg 8) regarding the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the questioner posed the following: “Why did LBJ urge civil rights leaders Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young to pressure Republicans (italics mine)?” Ms Goodwin’s answer was a general reminder, “that sometimes you have to mobilize from the outside … get Congress to act.”

The answer should have been: Because a majority of the Democrats were opposed to the Civil Rights Act! Senators Mansfield (D) and Everett Dirkson (R) at then President Kennedy’s urging brought the bill to the Senate floor where it was met with anger and vows that the bill would never see the Senate floor by the segregationist chainman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. James Eastland (D)

 In fact a “Southern block” of 18 Democratic Senators actually filibustered the bill! It was only Sen. Mansfield’s mastery of the Senate rules that the legislation was brought to the Senate floor for a vote, bypassing Sen. Eastland’s committee where it would have languished for ever.

  Here is the voting record of Congress regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Version Republicans supporting Democrats supporting Original House 80% 61% Senate Version 82% 69% House vote on Senate version 80% 63%

Did Pres. Johnson pressure Republicans for a favorable vote? Your darn right, without the overwhelming Republican support, the Democrat Party would have defeated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The construction of the question to Ms. Goodwin was so heavy handed as to make the informed reader blush with hypocrasy. AARP should issue a statement of correction.

Klatuu and Sec. of State Kerry

Watching Sec. Kerry at his news conference in Baghdad the other day (June 2014), I was reminded of Klatuu’s admonishment to the gathered dignitaries invited by Dr. Barnhart. Klatuu was to speak to those gathered to warn the world that it faces total oblivion unless they contain their nuclear bomb ambitions. (Not sure if Klatuu wanted earth to cease nuclear energy production, but he did get to earth on what sounded pretty close to nuclear propulsion, so I doubt he would have chastised us for nuclear power.) If you recall the movie, The Day The Earth Stood Stll (1951) the premise was that the earth’s nations could no longer “dabble “ in nuclear weapons because it threatened the stability of nearby planets. So long as the earth conducted wars amongst themselves that was OK. But with advent of missile technology and the ability to launch such missiles into space ( I guess just straight up without trajectory), well that was unacceptable. I have taken Klatuu’s final warning speech and dropped the Iraq/Middle East turmoil into the subject matter rather than the Klatuu’s world wide threat. And let’s put Sec Kerry near the emotional breaking point , straining under the heavy pressure of modern day diplomacy in a volatile part of the world. Sec. Kerry stands at the podium. Next to him is a life size cardboard cut-out of the robot Gort. He measures the room and in a solemn tone begins: "I am leaving soon and you will forgive me if I speak bluntly. The Universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group -- anywhere -- can no longer be tolerated. "There must be security for all -- or no one is secure... This does not mean giving up any freedom except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Like here in the Middle East, folks. "Our ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves -- and hired policemen to enforce them. And I don’t mean the Iranian Quds. "We today have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual benefit of all nations. The United Nations, for darn sake. The test of any such higher authority, of course, is the police force that supports it. "The robot to my left is the policeman to other planets. I wish we had robots like Gort to act as our policeman. I mean Gort’s function would be to police the world and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression I would give them absolute power over us. You see? "At the first sign of violence, robot Gort here would act automatically against the aggressor. And the penalty for provoking Gort’s action would be too terrible to risk. We wouldn’t have had WWII, Korea and Viet Nam wars, Kosovo, I mean guys , I mean robots like Gort would have kicked butt. I mean Ernst Rohm would have the crap kicked out of him long before the Long Knives stuff. "The result would be that the world would live in peace. The Middle East would live in peace. We could position a Gort robot in every mosque. And if you want, Gort could be programmed to perform salat 5 times per day. We’d have to rearrange his knee joints to allow him to kneel and then rise , but well, we can work on it. The world would be without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war -- free to pursue more profitable enterprises. "Now this would not be perfection – but it would be a viable system and it could work. We have to perfect our computation process of course and find a company that can produce the Gorts, but we can do that. My Gorts won’t have a stitch line running along the back like the movie’s version. If I can parasail, why we can’t build robots. Right? "I came here to give you the facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own part of the planet but if you threaten to extend your violence, these Gorts could reduce you to a burned- out cinder "Your choice is simple. Live in peace. Or pursue your present course -- and face obliteration by these armies of robots like Gort. We will be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you. And as Sec Kerry turns from the podium, he grabs the cut out of Gort and exclaims: 'Gort ,veracto.'