Wouldn't Want To Go To School Today

You're not showing the proper spirit.

Come on now; belly up to the bar and try again.

A good education is important.



On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:37:23 -0500, Rowley
wrote:

Way Back Jack wrote:

We're not making much progress here.

Take your time. Read ... absorb .... comprehend .... contemplate
... and then ask relevant questions.

Try again.

Yawn.. why bother? It's pretty obvious that your world view is what it
is and that ain't going to change no matter what I might say. And the
same is true for myself...

Not that it really needs to - IMO, everybody is entitled to their own
opinion.... heck, just having an opinion these days sets someone apart
from most people...

and in the end does it really matter? The world is going to keep on
keeping-on, whether we like it or not...

As Doris Day use to sing, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)"

Martin


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:00:08 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Way Back Jack wrote:

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:55:43 -0500, Rowley
wrote:



Way Back Jack wrote:



On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:25 -0500, Rowley
wrote:





You say "that my parents gave it up"... How many other old timers were
still living in that area at that time - what percentage of them had
already fled to somewhere else?....


About 3/4 of the old timers had been terrorized into white flight by
1984.

So 75% upped and left and abandoned their houses.... leaving the other
25% to survive on their own....


Yeah, the ****ing old cowards. They should have been more
masochistic.



Wondering why your parents waited - didn't property values start going
down as soon as the first couple old families moved and the other people
moved into their houses?....


They didn't care about property values; they wanted to live their
lives out in peace. They wanted to get along with the incoming.

White flight ain't exactly new - given that there is even a term for the
phenomenon... I'm guessing that there was some visible tipping point
during some point.... people getting raped might have been a red flag
for most people....


Must be the fault of them evil white folks for leaving and not letting
themselves be terrorized. (snicker)

You seem to want to blame someone - why not them?....


Das raht, Rassus .... it beez whitey's fault.

IMO, it's no one person or people's fault - its simply a reveral of what
took place in the late 1800's / early 1900's.... when people flocked to
the major towns and cities for work. Tonight I watched a documentry on
"The Orphan Trains" that were operated in the early part of the 1900's...

The American Experience/The Orphan Trains
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/

During that period of time a ton of immigrants and people from rural
counties flooded the cites looking for work... many ended up destitute
or dead... leaving their children (some as young as 3 years old) to
wonder the streets begging or worse... "The Children's Aid Society"
rounded them up and put them on trains and sent them out to rural states
for people to adopt...

Anyway - the point is, the cities did eventual thrive and many people
enjoyed a good life there - then the kids of jobs changed - and the jobs
started disappearing... the kids of the people living there grew up and
moved immediately to the suburbs or to rural areas - where supposedly it
was a better place to raise kids.... abandoning the city neighborhoods
to the people left who didn't have the resources to move some place
better... with the jobs gone and the people who paid the bulk of the
taxes (poor people rent not buy) - city services started to dwindle...
stores started to close, pawn shops started to pop up as well as liquor
stores....

But I imagine that you already know all that... having lived through it.


Why were there not any "good" people buying the houses that the got
sold?


Axt them, why doncha? Axt them why they preferred to seek safe places
to live.

My guess is that they sold the houses to people who didn't even live
there, but rather simply rented them to whoever for whatever that they
could get for them - and the less money that they got, the less
maintenance that they did on the rental properties....


Weren't there good well paying jobs in the area to attract people
like that?


You must not be familiar with big cities. This was a residential
neighborhood within a big city.

Even big cities are not all the same - here Houston is different than
Austin, which is different than Dallas ' Fort Worth, which is different
than San Antonio....


Maybe things are different in Bum**** Texas.

Course they are - heck we're almost a different country compared to much
of the rest of the US... there are even people here who think we made a
bad decision when we allowed the rest of the states to join up with us....

There are even groups out there working on trying to get that fixed....


Why were all these old people's grown kids not staying in the
area to raise their own families?


The natural inclination for anyone who is young is to "move on up."

Then explain all the old multi-generational houses that exist? It's my
understanding that young people moving out on their own is something
recent (last 50+ years or so)....


My parents grew up during the Depression in a 100% concrete jungle.

They moved on up.

And they left grandmaw and grandpop to fend for themselves? or even
grand-grandmama? What about the old maiden aunt - sister of grandpa? Or
did they simply shuffle them all off to the nearest old folks home? Only
to visit them on holidays...


I grew up in a crowded residential inner city area where each house
had a front lawn the size of a postage stamp.

Eh.. I got to visit the place my dad grew up in once, when I was about
9... It was a three level mutli-generational house in pennsylvania - one
that had been converted into a boarding house back during the
depression... it really had no front yard and the back yard bordered a
rail switching yard.... the nearest track was elevated to the house and
about 20 feet from the back door.... across the street in the front of
the house there was a steep drop off - about the length of a football
field which went down to the bank of allegheny river....


My next move as a young adult to move on up might've been the
surrounding suburbs in the county that abuts the city, but I went a
step further and went rural. HEEE - HAWWW!.

I've tried to do that, but even so civilization keeps getting closer and
closer.... but even going rural here has me in a small neighborhood...
where we did have just houses (think something that Jeff Foxworthy would
make fun of - for instance I have a old water heater laying in my front
yard and many of the houses here have similar old junk as lawn
ornaments), till someone bought up all the vacant lots and started
dropping rental trailers on them.... for awhile there, the rental house
next to mine had about 30 pit bulls in the back yard - one chained to
each of the trees....


Thing is - even with the experiences you had, that doesn't mean that
things are bad all over. Is this the case where you are living now -
having to dodge fire bombs and rocks?


The county is reportedly 95% white, altho I suspect it's a little less
than that, maybe 90%. So what do *you* think?

If that's true - then it is either some part of that 95% who was
terrorizing the area, or that for some reason the other 5% were made to
become concentrated into that particular area.... What does any of the
other data say? What percentage of the county was above the property
line and how many were below? If just the five percent was below - then
how did they afford to buy the houses that your parents neighbors sold them?


Verbal diarrhea and non-sequiturs.

I moved to a rural area that does not abut the city line and was
prolly 99% white in 1972. Farming was still a primary industry.
Other whites flooded the area, along with blacks who too were
terrorized from the city and of course now it's a bedroom community
where farming is quite minor. It's surprising that it's still 90%
white.

Give it time.... if the city is as bad as you say it is - it get
abandoned... either that or someone will come in and do gentrification
on it and raise all of the property taxes and the costs associated with
living in the area - which will then displace the poor people who will
then move out your way - where a lot of those people who gave up farming
will sell off their land to people who will put up low-income
multi-family housing..... again, this ain't something new that's never
happened before... it's even happening here....

First you will get a couple of the big box stores (if you haven't
already), then the apartment complexes will start popping up....


Haven't really had to dodge anything the past 35 years. One time a
white tail deer got mad at his reflection and rammed his head into a
window. Another time a turkey made a pest of himself for about a
month; terrorized the cats; and roosted on the roof even in thunder
storms, leaving behind voluminous piles of **** that slid down into
roof gutters .... but we didn't have a cricket problem that August.
There's a persistent problem with woodchucks and their burrows
alongside the eastern property line where there's a row of black
cherry and mulberry trees.

All quite tolerable vis-a-vis life in the city.

Ah - so its only city schools that you wouldn't want to go to today - or
more specifically the school in the old neighborhood that your parents
abandoned...


Huh? My folks abandoned school? Eh? My folks graduated high school
in 1939 and it wasn't the school to which you allude.


Then you're talking about the school where you currently are living? The
rural school - that's just sad that it should be that scary.....


Aren't teachers required to read for comprehension?




I wouldn't want to go to any govt. school today. Even in exurbia
upper middle class white America, there are kids with hunting rifles
sniping their fellow students.

Heck, according to tonight's news you ain't even safe in church.....


Here in Austin the reverse is happening - people are buying old homes in
poor areas and turning them into McMansions - or at least they were till
the credit dried up... the poor neighbors don't like it as it drives up
their property taxes.....


Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened in the southeast section of Baltimore
known as Canton where working-class Polish people lived for a hundred
years. That neighborhood never turned black. And so yuppies moved
in, knowing that they better not set up their homesteads in black
areas. As you say, property taxes soared.



ying and yang - what goes around comes around.....


That's a different issue from what transpired in my parents'
community.

Eh...

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:01:26 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Way Back Jack wrote:


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:00:45 -0500, Rowley
wrote:




It's real simple: treat others as you'd like to be treated.

Wonder why you folks have such a hard time graspin' the concept..


kiss their feet


Nope.

Just treat them as you would like to be treated.

No feet kissing necessary.


And how has that worked for you so far?.....


I don't mind not having my feet kissed.


Then whats the problem? If someone doesn't respond appropriately (ie; do
as you do) to your expectations then why complain?

Why bother to use harsh language when a school employee was just trying
to do his/her job? That didn't sound to golden ruley to me.....

Martin

Eh... you gave up and I guess so will I.....

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:

You're not showing the proper spirit.

Come on now; belly up to the bar and try again.

A good education is important.



On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:37:23 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Way Back Jack wrote:


We're not making much progress here.

Take your time. Read ... absorb .... comprehend .... contemplate
... and then ask relevant questions.

Try again.

Yawn.. why bother? It's pretty obvious that your world view is what it
is and that ain't going to change no matter what I might say. And the
same is true for myself...

Not that it really needs to - IMO, everybody is entitled to their own
opinion.... heck, just having an opinion these days sets someone apart

from most people...

and in the end does it really matter? The world is going to keep on
keeping-on, whether we like it or not...

As Doris Day use to sing, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)"

Martin


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:00:08 -0500, Rowley
wrote:



Way Back Jack wrote:


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:55:43 -0500, Rowley
wrote:




Way Back Jack wrote:




On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:25 -0500, Rowley
wrote:






You say "that my parents gave it up"... How many other old timers were
still living in that area at that time - what percentage of them had
already fled to somewhere else?....


About 3/4 of the old timers had been terrorized into white flight by
1984.

So 75% upped and left and abandoned their houses.... leaving the other
25% to survive on their own....


Yeah, the ****ing old cowards. They should have been more
masochistic.




Wondering why your parents waited - didn't property values start going
down as soon as the first couple old families moved and the other people
moved into their houses?....


They didn't care about property values; they wanted to live their
lives out in peace. They wanted to get along with the incoming.

White flight ain't exactly new - given that there is even a term for the
phenomenon... I'm guessing that there was some visible tipping point
during some point.... people getting raped might have been a red flag
for most people....



Must be the fault of them evil white folks for leaving and not letting
themselves be terrorized. (snicker)

You seem to want to blame someone - why not them?....


Das raht, Rassus .... it beez whitey's fault.

IMO, it's no one person or people's fault - its simply a reveral of what
took place in the late 1800's / early 1900's.... when people flocked to
the major towns and cities for work. Tonight I watched a documentry on
"The Orphan Trains" that were operated in the early part of the 1900's...

The American Experience/The Orphan Trains
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/

During that period of time a ton of immigrants and people from rural
counties flooded the cites looking for work... many ended up destitute
or dead... leaving their children (some as young as 3 years old) to
wonder the streets begging or worse... "The Children's Aid Society"
rounded them up and put them on trains and sent them out to rural states
for people to adopt...

Anyway - the point is, the cities did eventual thrive and many people
enjoyed a good life there - then the kids of jobs changed - and the jobs
started disappearing... the kids of the people living there grew up and
moved immediately to the suburbs or to rural areas - where supposedly it
was a better place to raise kids.... abandoning the city neighborhoods
to the people left who didn't have the resources to move some place
better... with the jobs gone and the people who paid the bulk of the
taxes (poor people rent not buy) - city services started to dwindle...
stores started to close, pawn shops started to pop up as well as liquor
stores....

But I imagine that you already know all that... having lived through it.



Why were there not any "good" people buying the houses that the got
sold?


Axt them, why doncha? Axt them why they preferred to seek safe places
to live.

My guess is that they sold the houses to people who didn't even live
there, but rather simply rented them to whoever for whatever that they
could get for them - and the less money that they got, the less
maintenance that they did on the rental properties....



Weren't there good well paying jobs in the area to attract people
like that?


You must not be familiar with big cities. This was a residential
neighborhood within a big city.

Even big cities are not all the same - here Houston is different than
Austin, which is different than Dallas ' Fort Worth, which is different
than San Antonio....



Maybe things are different in Bum**** Texas.

Course they are - heck we're almost a different country compared to much
of the rest of the US... there are even people here who think we made a
bad decision when we allowed the rest of the states to join up with us....

There are even groups out there working on trying to get that fixed....



Why were all these old people's grown kids not staying in the
area to raise their own families?


The natural inclination for anyone who is young is to "move on up."

Then explain all the old multi-generational houses that exist? It's my
understanding that young people moving out on their own is something
recent (last 50+ years or so)....



My parents grew up during the Depression in a 100% concrete jungle.

They moved on up.

And they left grandmaw and grandpop to fend for themselves? or even
grand-grandmama? What about the old maiden aunt - sister of grandpa? Or
did they simply shuffle them all off to the nearest old folks home? Only
to visit them on holidays...



I grew up in a crowded residential inner city area where each house
had a front lawn the size of a postage stamp.

Eh.. I got to visit the place my dad grew up in once, when I was about
9... It was a three level mutli-generational house in pennsylvania - one
that had been converted into a boarding house back during the
depression... it really had no front yard and the back yard bordered a
rail switching yard.... the nearest track was elevated to the house and
about 20 feet from the back door.... across the street in the front of
the house there was a steep drop off - about the length of a football
field which went down to the bank of allegheny river....



My next move as a young adult to move on up might've been the
surrounding suburbs in the county that abuts the city, but I went a
step further and went rural. HEEE - HAWWW!.

I've tried to do that, but even so civilization keeps getting closer and
closer.... but even going rural here has me in a small neighborhood...
where we did have just houses (think something that Jeff Foxworthy would
make fun of - for instance I have a old water heater laying in my front
yard and many of the houses here have similar old junk as lawn
ornaments), till someone bought up all the vacant lots and started
dropping rental trailers on them.... for awhile there, the rental house
next to mine had about 30 pit bulls in the back yard - one chained to
each of the trees....



Thing is - even with the experiences you had, that doesn't mean that
things are bad all over. Is this the case where you are living now -
having to dodge fire bombs and rocks?


The county is reportedly 95% white, altho I suspect it's a little less
than that, maybe 90%. So what do *you* think?

If that's true - then it is either some part of that 95% who was
terrorizing the area, or that for some reason the other 5% were made to
become concentrated into that particular area.... What does any of the
other data say? What percentage of the county was above the property
line and how many were below? If just the five percent was below - then
how did they afford to buy the houses that your parents neighbors sold them?


Verbal diarrhea and non-sequiturs.

I moved to a rural area that does not abut the city line and was
prolly 99% white in 1972. Farming was still a primary industry.
Other whites flooded the area, along with blacks who too were
terrorized from the city and of course now it's a bedroom community
where farming is quite minor. It's surprising that it's still 90%
white.

Give it time.... if the city is as bad as you say it is - it get
abandoned... either that or someone will come in and do gentrification
on it and raise all of the property taxes and the costs associated with
living in the area - which will then displace the poor people who will
then move out your way - where a lot of those people who gave up farming
will sell off their land to people who will put up low-income
multi-family housing..... again, this ain't something new that's never
happened before... it's even happening here....

First you will get a couple of the big box stores (if you haven't
already), then the apartment complexes will start popping up....



Haven't really had to dodge anything the past 35 years. One time a
white tail deer got mad at his reflection and rammed his head into a
window. Another time a turkey made a pest of himself for about a
month; terrorized the cats; and roosted on the roof even in thunder
storms, leaving behind voluminous piles of **** that slid down into
roof gutters .... but we didn't have a cricket problem that August.
There's a persistent problem with woodchucks and their burrows
alongside the eastern property line where there's a row of black
cherry and mulberry trees.

All quite tolerable vis-a-vis life in the city.

Ah - so its only city schools that you wouldn't want to go to today - or
more specifically the school in the old neighborhood that your parents
abandoned...


Huh? My folks abandoned school? Eh? My folks graduated high school
in 1939 and it wasn't the school to which you allude.


Then you're talking about the school where you currently are living? The
rural school - that's just sad that it should be that scary.....



Aren't teachers required to read for comprehension?





I wouldn't want to go to any govt. school today. Even in exurbia
upper middle class white America, there are kids with hunting rifles
sniping their fellow students.

Heck, according to tonight's news you ain't even safe in church.....



Here in Austin the reverse is happening - people are buying old homes in
poor areas and turning them into McMansions - or at least they were till
the credit dried up... the poor neighbors don't like it as it drives up
their property taxes.....


Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened in the southeast section of Baltimore
known as Canton where working-class Polish people lived for a hundred
years. That neighborhood never turned black. And so yuppies moved
in, knowing that they better not set up their homesteads in black
areas. As you say, property taxes soared.




ying and yang - what goes around comes around.....


That's a different issue from what transpired in my parents'
community.

Eh...

Martin

What?


On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:43:48 -0500, Rowley
wrote:

Way Back Jack wrote:

On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:01:26 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Way Back Jack wrote:


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:00:45 -0500, Rowley
wrote:




It's real simple: treat others as you'd like to be treated.

Wonder why you folks have such a hard time graspin' the concept..


kiss their feet


Nope.

Just treat them as you would like to be treated.

No feet kissing necessary.


And how has that worked for you so far?.....


I don't mind not having my feet kissed.


Then whats the problem? If someone doesn't respond appropriately (ie; do
as you do) to your expectations then why complain?

Why bother to use harsh language when a school employee was just trying
to do his/her job? That didn't sound to golden ruley to me.....

Martin

Don't run away; be all that you can be.

Don't waste the opportunity to learn.




On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:46:34 -0500, Rowley
wrote:

Eh... you gave up and I guess so will I.....

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:

You're not showing the proper spirit.

Come on now; belly up to the bar and try again.

A good education is important.



On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:37:23 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Way Back Jack wrote:


We're not making much progress here.

Take your time. Read ... absorb .... comprehend .... contemplate
... and then ask relevant questions.

Try again.

Yawn.. why bother? It's pretty obvious that your world view is what it
is and that ain't going to change no matter what I might say. And the
same is true for myself...

Not that it really needs to - IMO, everybody is entitled to their own
opinion.... heck, just having an opinion these days sets someone apart

from most people...

and in the end does it really matter? The world is going to keep on
keeping-on, whether we like it or not...

As Doris Day use to sing, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)"

Martin


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:00:08 -0500, Rowley
wrote:



Way Back Jack wrote:


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:55:43 -0500, Rowley
wrote:




Way Back Jack wrote:




On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:25 -0500, Rowley
wrote:






You say "that my parents gave it up"... How many other old timers were
still living in that area at that time - what percentage of them had
already fled to somewhere else?....


About 3/4 of the old timers had been terrorized into white flight by
1984.

So 75% upped and left and abandoned their houses.... leaving the other
25% to survive on their own....


Yeah, the ****ing old cowards. They should have been more
masochistic.




Wondering why your parents waited - didn't property values start going
down as soon as the first couple old families moved and the other people
moved into their houses?....


They didn't care about property values; they wanted to live their
lives out in peace. They wanted to get along with the incoming.

White flight ain't exactly new - given that there is even a term for the
phenomenon... I'm guessing that there was some visible tipping point
during some point.... people getting raped might have been a red flag
for most people....



Must be the fault of them evil white folks for leaving and not letting
themselves be terrorized. (snicker)

You seem to want to blame someone - why not them?....


Das raht, Rassus .... it beez whitey's fault.

IMO, it's no one person or people's fault - its simply a reveral of what
took place in the late 1800's / early 1900's.... when people flocked to
the major towns and cities for work. Tonight I watched a documentry on
"The Orphan Trains" that were operated in the early part of the 1900's...

The American Experience/The Orphan Trains
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/

During that period of time a ton of immigrants and people from rural
counties flooded the cites looking for work... many ended up destitute
or dead... leaving their children (some as young as 3 years old) to
wonder the streets begging or worse... "The Children's Aid Society"
rounded them up and put them on trains and sent them out to rural states
for people to adopt...

Anyway - the point is, the cities did eventual thrive and many people
enjoyed a good life there - then the kids of jobs changed - and the jobs
started disappearing... the kids of the people living there grew up and
moved immediately to the suburbs or to rural areas - where supposedly it
was a better place to raise kids.... abandoning the city neighborhoods
to the people left who didn't have the resources to move some place
better... with the jobs gone and the people who paid the bulk of the
taxes (poor people rent not buy) - city services started to dwindle...
stores started to close, pawn shops started to pop up as well as liquor
stores....

But I imagine that you already know all that... having lived through it.



Why were there not any "good" people buying the houses that the got
sold?


Axt them, why doncha? Axt them why they preferred to seek safe places
to live.

My guess is that they sold the houses to people who didn't even live
there, but rather simply rented them to whoever for whatever that they
could get for them - and the less money that they got, the less
maintenance that they did on the rental properties....



Weren't there good well paying jobs in the area to attract people
like that?


You must not be familiar with big cities. This was a residential
neighborhood within a big city.

Even big cities are not all the same - here Houston is different than
Austin, which is different than Dallas ' Fort Worth, which is different
than San Antonio....



Maybe things are different in Bum**** Texas.

Course they are - heck we're almost a different country compared to much
of the rest of the US... there are even people here who think we made a
bad decision when we allowed the rest of the states to join up with us....

There are even groups out there working on trying to get that fixed....



Why were all these old people's grown kids not staying in the
area to raise their own families?


The natural inclination for anyone who is young is to "move on up."

Then explain all the old multi-generational houses that exist? It's my
understanding that young people moving out on their own is something
recent (last 50+ years or so)....



My parents grew up during the Depression in a 100% concrete jungle.

They moved on up.

And they left grandmaw and grandpop to fend for themselves? or even
grand-grandmama? What about the old maiden aunt - sister of grandpa? Or
did they simply shuffle them all off to the nearest old folks home? Only
to visit them on holidays...



I grew up in a crowded residential inner city area where each house
had a front lawn the size of a postage stamp.

Eh.. I got to visit the place my dad grew up in once, when I was about
9... It was a three level mutli-generational house in pennsylvania - one
that had been converted into a boarding house back during the
depression... it really had no front yard and the back yard bordered a
rail switching yard.... the nearest track was elevated to the house and
about 20 feet from the back door.... across the street in the front of
the house there was a steep drop off - about the length of a football
field which went down to the bank of allegheny river....



My next move as a young adult to move on up might've been the
surrounding suburbs in the county that abuts the city, but I went a
step further and went rural. HEEE - HAWWW!.

I've tried to do that, but even so civilization keeps getting closer and
closer.... but even going rural here has me in a small neighborhood...
where we did have just houses (think something that Jeff Foxworthy would
make fun of - for instance I have a old water heater laying in my front
yard and many of the houses here have similar old junk as lawn
ornaments), till someone bought up all the vacant lots and started
dropping rental trailers on them.... for awhile there, the rental house
next to mine had about 30 pit bulls in the back yard - one chained to
each of the trees....



Thing is - even with the experiences you had, that doesn't mean that
things are bad all over. Is this the case where you are living now -
having to dodge fire bombs and rocks?


The county is reportedly 95% white, altho I suspect it's a little less
than that, maybe 90%. So what do *you* think?

If that's true - then it is either some part of that 95% who was
terrorizing the area, or that for some reason the other 5% were made to
become concentrated into that particular area.... What does any of the
other data say? What percentage of the county was above the property
line and how many were below? If just the five percent was below - then
how did they afford to buy the houses that your parents neighbors sold them?


Verbal diarrhea and non-sequiturs.

I moved to a rural area that does not abut the city line and was
prolly 99% white in 1972. Farming was still a primary industry.
Other whites flooded the area, along with blacks who too were
terrorized from the city and of course now it's a bedroom community
where farming is quite minor. It's surprising that it's still 90%
white.

Give it time.... if the city is as bad as you say it is - it get
abandoned... either that or someone will come in and do gentrification
on it and raise all of the property taxes and the costs associated with
living in the area - which will then displace the poor people who will
then move out your way - where a lot of those people who gave up farming
will sell off their land to people who will put up low-income
multi-family housing..... again, this ain't something new that's never
happened before... it's even happening here....

First you will get a couple of the big box stores (if you haven't
already), then the apartment complexes will start popping up....



Haven't really had to dodge anything the past 35 years. One time a
white tail deer got mad at his reflection and rammed his head into a
window. Another time a turkey made a pest of himself for about a
month; terrorized the cats; and roosted on the roof even in thunder
storms, leaving behind voluminous piles of **** that slid down into
roof gutters .... but we didn't have a cricket problem that August.
There's a persistent problem with woodchucks and their burrows
alongside the eastern property line where there's a row of black
cherry and mulberry trees.

All quite tolerable vis-a-vis life in the city.

Ah - so its only city schools that you wouldn't want to go to today - or
more specifically the school in the old neighborhood that your parents
abandoned...


Huh? My folks abandoned school? Eh? My folks graduated high school
in 1939 and it wasn't the school to which you allude.


Then you're talking about the school where you currently are living? The
rural school - that's just sad that it should be that scary.....



Aren't teachers required to read for comprehension?





I wouldn't want to go to any govt. school today. Even in exurbia
upper middle class white America, there are kids with hunting rifles
sniping their fellow students.

Heck, according to tonight's news you ain't even safe in church.....



Here in Austin the reverse is happening - people are buying old homes in
poor areas and turning them into McMansions - or at least they were till
the credit dried up... the poor neighbors don't like it as it drives up
their property taxes.....


Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened in the southeast section of Baltimore
known as Canton where working-class Polish people lived for a hundred
years. That neighborhood never turned black. And so yuppies moved
in, knowing that they better not set up their homesteads in black
areas. As you say, property taxes soared.




ying and yang - what goes around comes around.....


That's a different issue from what transpired in my parents'
community.

Eh...

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:
If you use as a measuring stick the success you have enjoyed and the
ability to retire in your early 50s, Catholic elementary school in the
1950s and Catholic high school in late '50s-early '60s sho nuff worked
for me. It contributed at least significantly, albeit not totally.
It wasn't for everyone though; the nuns prior to 1960 could be brutal.
I recall our third grade class having 86 kids, but you could hear a
pin drop.

The stories I hear today, especially pertaining to govt. schools:
metal detectors, cops patrolling the halls, absolute chaos in the
classroom .... whew. You have to feel sorry for those kiddos who want
to learn. They're probably in the distinct minority though and, if
so, that's a major cause of the problem. Private school? Hah, the
high school I attended now charges $20K per year just for tuition.

The old lady and I made the right choice not to reproduce.

This makes me think of a comment I saw posted on Craigslist when the OP
was talking about "Your Baby can read". The OP was commenting on what
fun it was for the parent and the child, yet the responder said "why
would people do that to their child?... why not let them read when they
are ready?" as if the toddler reading program was cruel and unusual
punishment.

But my thought is "Why would anyone want to do PUBLIC SCHOOL to their
child?"

My bad.... think I was channeling something said in another thread by
someone else..... was a bit blurry-eye'd this morning what with DST and
that I forgot to reset the timer on my coffee maker....

Martin


Way Back Jack wrote:

What?


On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:43:48 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Way Back Jack wrote:


On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:01:26 -0500, Rowley
wrote:



Way Back Jack wrote:



On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:00:45 -0500, Rowley
wrote:





It's real simple: treat others as you'd like to be treated.

Wonder why you folks have such a hard time graspin' the concept..


kiss their feet


Nope.

Just treat them as you would like to be treated.

No feet kissing necessary.


And how has that worked for you so far?.....


I don't mind not having my feet kissed.


Then whats the problem? If someone doesn't respond appropriately (ie; do
as you do) to your expectations then why complain?

Why bother to use harsh language when a school employee was just trying
to do his/her job? That didn't sound to golden ruley to me.....

Martin

Naw.. I've gotten dizzy enough on this merry-go-round that's going
nowhere.... time for me to step off....

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:

Don't run away; be all that you can be.

Don't waste the opportunity to learn.




On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:46:34 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Eh... you gave up and I guess so will I.....

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:


You're not showing the proper spirit.

Come on now; belly up to the bar and try again.

A good education is important.



On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:37:23 -0500, Rowley
wrote:



Way Back Jack wrote:



We're not making much progress here.

Take your time. Read ... absorb .... comprehend .... contemplate
... and then ask relevant questions.

Try again.

Yawn.. why bother? It's pretty obvious that your world view is what it
is and that ain't going to change no matter what I might say. And the
same is true for myself...

Not that it really needs to - IMO, everybody is entitled to their own
opinion.... heck, just having an opinion these days sets someone apart

from most people...


and in the end does it really matter? The world is going to keep on
keeping-on, whether we like it or not...

As Doris Day use to sing, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)"

Martin



On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:00:08 -0500, Rowley
wrote:




Way Back Jack wrote:



On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:55:43 -0500, Rowley
wrote:





Way Back Jack wrote:





On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:25 -0500, Rowley
wrote:







You say "that my parents gave it up"... How many other old timers were
still living in that area at that time - what percentage of them had
already fled to somewhere else?....


About 3/4 of the old timers had been terrorized into white flight by
1984.

So 75% upped and left and abandoned their houses.... leaving the other
25% to survive on their own....


Yeah, the ****ing old cowards. They should have been more
masochistic.





Wondering why your parents waited - didn't property values start going
down as soon as the first couple old families moved and the other people
moved into their houses?....


They didn't care about property values; they wanted to live their
lives out in peace. They wanted to get along with the incoming.

White flight ain't exactly new - given that there is even a term for the
phenomenon... I'm guessing that there was some visible tipping point
during some point.... people getting raped might have been a red flag
for most people....




Must be the fault of them evil white folks for leaving and not letting
themselves be terrorized. (snicker)

You seem to want to blame someone - why not them?....


Das raht, Rassus .... it beez whitey's fault.

IMO, it's no one person or people's fault - its simply a reveral of what
took place in the late 1800's / early 1900's.... when people flocked to
the major towns and cities for work. Tonight I watched a documentry on
"The Orphan Trains" that were operated in the early part of the 1900's...

The American Experience/The Orphan Trains
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/

During that period of time a ton of immigrants and people from rural
counties flooded the cites looking for work... many ended up destitute
or dead... leaving their children (some as young as 3 years old) to
wonder the streets begging or worse... "The Children's Aid Society"
rounded them up and put them on trains and sent them out to rural states
for people to adopt...

Anyway - the point is, the cities did eventual thrive and many people
enjoyed a good life there - then the kids of jobs changed - and the jobs
started disappearing... the kids of the people living there grew up and
moved immediately to the suburbs or to rural areas - where supposedly it
was a better place to raise kids.... abandoning the city neighborhoods
to the people left who didn't have the resources to move some place
better... with the jobs gone and the people who paid the bulk of the
taxes (poor people rent not buy) - city services started to dwindle...
stores started to close, pawn shops started to pop up as well as liquor
stores....

But I imagine that you already know all that... having lived through it.




Why were there not any "good" people buying the houses that the got
sold?


Axt them, why doncha? Axt them why they preferred to seek safe places
to live.

My guess is that they sold the houses to people who didn't even live
there, but rather simply rented them to whoever for whatever that they
could get for them - and the less money that they got, the less
maintenance that they did on the rental properties....




Weren't there good well paying jobs in the area to attract people
like that?


You must not be familiar with big cities. This was a residential
neighborhood within a big city.

Even big cities are not all the same - here Houston is different than
Austin, which is different than Dallas ' Fort Worth, which is different
than San Antonio....




Maybe things are different in Bum**** Texas.

Course they are - heck we're almost a different country compared to much
of the rest of the US... there are even people here who think we made a
bad decision when we allowed the rest of the states to join up with us....

There are even groups out there working on trying to get that fixed....




Why were all these old people's grown kids not staying in the
area to raise their own families?


The natural inclination for anyone who is young is to "move on up."

Then explain all the old multi-generational houses that exist? It's my
understanding that young people moving out on their own is something
recent (last 50+ years or so)....




My parents grew up during the Depression in a 100% concrete jungle.

They moved on up.

And they left grandmaw and grandpop to fend for themselves? or even
grand-grandmama? What about the old maiden aunt - sister of grandpa? Or
did they simply shuffle them all off to the nearest old folks home? Only
to visit them on holidays...




I grew up in a crowded residential inner city area where each house
had a front lawn the size of a postage stamp.

Eh.. I got to visit the place my dad grew up in once, when I was about
9... It was a three level mutli-generational house in pennsylvania - one
that had been converted into a boarding house back during the
depression... it really had no front yard and the back yard bordered a
rail switching yard.... the nearest track was elevated to the house and
about 20 feet from the back door.... across the street in the front of
the house there was a steep drop off - about the length of a football
field which went down to the bank of allegheny river....




My next move as a young adult to move on up might've been the
surrounding suburbs in the county that abuts the city, but I went a
step further and went rural. HEEE - HAWWW!.

I've tried to do that, but even so civilization keeps getting closer and
closer.... but even going rural here has me in a small neighborhood...
where we did have just houses (think something that Jeff Foxworthy would
make fun of - for instance I have a old water heater laying in my front
yard and many of the houses here have similar old junk as lawn
ornaments), till someone bought up all the vacant lots and started
dropping rental trailers on them.... for awhile there, the rental house
next to mine had about 30 pit bulls in the back yard - one chained to
each of the trees....




Thing is - even with the experiences you had, that doesn't mean that
things are bad all over. Is this the case where you are living now -
having to dodge fire bombs and rocks?


The county is reportedly 95% white, altho I suspect it's a little less
than that, maybe 90%. So what do *you* think?

If that's true - then it is either some part of that 95% who was
terrorizing the area, or that for some reason the other 5% were made to
become concentrated into that particular area.... What does any of the
other data say? What percentage of the county was above the property
line and how many were below? If just the five percent was below - then
how did they afford to buy the houses that your parents neighbors sold them?


Verbal diarrhea and non-sequiturs.

I moved to a rural area that does not abut the city line and was
prolly 99% white in 1972. Farming was still a primary industry.
Other whites flooded the area, along with blacks who too were
terrorized from the city and of course now it's a bedroom community
where farming is quite minor. It's surprising that it's still 90%
white.

Give it time.... if the city is as bad as you say it is - it get
abandoned... either that or someone will come in and do gentrification
on it and raise all of the property taxes and the costs associated with
living in the area - which will then displace the poor people who will
then move out your way - where a lot of those people who gave up farming
will sell off their land to people who will put up low-income
multi-family housing..... again, this ain't something new that's never
happened before... it's even happening here....

First you will get a couple of the big box stores (if you haven't
already), then the apartment complexes will start popping up....




Haven't really had to dodge anything the past 35 years. One time a
white tail deer got mad at his reflection and rammed his head into a
window. Another time a turkey made a pest of himself for about a
month; terrorized the cats; and roosted on the roof even in thunder
storms, leaving behind voluminous piles of **** that slid down into
roof gutters .... but we didn't have a cricket problem that August.
There's a persistent problem with woodchucks and their burrows
alongside the eastern property line where there's a row of black
cherry and mulberry trees.

All quite tolerable vis-a-vis life in the city.

Ah - so its only city schools that you wouldn't want to go to today - or
more specifically the school in the old neighborhood that your parents
abandoned...


Huh? My folks abandoned school? Eh? My folks graduated high school
in 1939 and it wasn't the school to which you allude.


Then you're talking about the school where you currently are living? The
rural school - that's just sad that it should be that scary.....




Aren't teachers required to read for comprehension?






I wouldn't want to go to any govt. school today. Even in exurbia
upper middle class white America, there are kids with hunting rifles
sniping their fellow students.

Heck, according to tonight's news you ain't even safe in church.....




Here in Austin the reverse is happening - people are buying old homes in
poor areas and turning them into McMansions - or at least they were till
the credit dried up... the poor neighbors don't like it as it drives up
their property taxes.....


Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened in the southeast section of Baltimore
known as Canton where working-class Polish people lived for a hundred
years. That neighborhood never turned black. And so yuppies moved
in, knowing that they better not set up their homesteads in black
areas. As you say, property taxes soared.





ying and yang - what goes around comes around.....


That's a different issue from what transpired in my parents'
community.

Eh...

Martin

YOU GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!

Your education's important.



On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:51:12 -0500, Rowley
wrote:

Naw.. I've gotten dizzy enough on this merry-go-round that's going
nowhere.... time for me to step off....

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:

Don't run away; be all that you can be.

Don't waste the opportunity to learn.




On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:46:34 -0500, Rowley
wrote:


Eh... you gave up and I guess so will I.....

Martin

Way Back Jack wrote:


You're not showing the proper spirit.

Come on now; belly up to the bar and try again.

A good education is important.



On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:37:23 -0500, Rowley
wrote:



Way Back Jack wrote:



We're not making much progress here.

Take your time. Read ... absorb .... comprehend .... contemplate
... and then ask relevant questions.

Try again.

Yawn.. why bother? It's pretty obvious that your world view is what it
is and that ain't going to change no matter what I might say. And the
same is true for myself...

Not that it really needs to - IMO, everybody is entitled to their own
opinion.... heck, just having an opinion these days sets someone apart

from most people...


and in the end does it really matter? The world is going to keep on
keeping-on, whether we like it or not...

As Doris Day use to sing, "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)"

Martin



On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:00:08 -0500, Rowley
wrote:




Way Back Jack wrote:



On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:55:43 -0500, Rowley
wrote:





Way Back Jack wrote:





On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:38:25 -0500, Rowley
wrote:







You say "that my parents gave it up"... How many other old timers were
still living in that area at that time - what percentage of them had
already fled to somewhere else?....


About 3/4 of the old timers had been terrorized into white flight by
1984.

So 75% upped and left and abandoned their houses.... leaving the other
25% to survive on their own....


Yeah, the ****ing old cowards. They should have been more
masochistic.





Wondering why your parents waited - didn't property values start going
down as soon as the first couple old families moved and the other people
moved into their houses?....


They didn't care about property values; they wanted to live their
lives out in peace. They wanted to get along with the incoming.

White flight ain't exactly new - given that there is even a term for the
phenomenon... I'm guessing that there was some visible tipping point
during some point.... people getting raped might have been a red flag
for most people....




Must be the fault of them evil white folks for leaving and not letting
themselves be terrorized. (snicker)

You seem to want to blame someone - why not them?....


Das raht, Rassus .... it beez whitey's fault.

IMO, it's no one person or people's fault - its simply a reveral of what
took place in the late 1800's / early 1900's.... when people flocked to
the major towns and cities for work. Tonight I watched a documentry on
"The Orphan Trains" that were operated in the early part of the 1900's...

The American Experience/The Orphan Trains
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/

During that period of time a ton of immigrants and people from rural
counties flooded the cites looking for work... many ended up destitute
or dead... leaving their children (some as young as 3 years old) to
wonder the streets begging or worse... "The Children's Aid Society"
rounded them up and put them on trains and sent them out to rural states
for people to adopt...

Anyway - the point is, the cities did eventual thrive and many people
enjoyed a good life there - then the kids of jobs changed - and the jobs
started disappearing... the kids of the people living there grew up and
moved immediately to the suburbs or to rural areas - where supposedly it
was a better place to raise kids.... abandoning the city neighborhoods
to the people left who didn't have the resources to move some place
better... with the jobs gone and the people who paid the bulk of the
taxes (poor people rent not buy) - city services started to dwindle...
stores started to close, pawn shops started to pop up as well as liquor
stores....

But I imagine that you already know all that... having lived through it.




Why were there not any "good" people buying the houses that the got
sold?


Axt them, why doncha? Axt them why they preferred to seek safe places
to live.

My guess is that they sold the houses to people who didn't even live
there, but rather simply rented them to whoever for whatever that they
could get for them - and the less money that they got, the less
maintenance that they did on the rental properties....




Weren't there good well paying jobs in the area to attract people
like that?


You must not be familiar with big cities. This was a residential
neighborhood within a big city.

Even big cities are not all the same - here Houston is different than
Austin, which is different than Dallas ' Fort Worth, which is different
than San Antonio....




Maybe things are different in Bum**** Texas.

Course they are - heck we're almost a different country compared to much
of the rest of the US... there are even people here who think we made a
bad decision when we allowed the rest of the states to join up with us....

There are even groups out there working on trying to get that fixed....




Why were all these old people's grown kids not staying in the
area to raise their own families?


The natural inclination for anyone who is young is to "move on up."

Then explain all the old multi-generational houses that exist? It's my
understanding that young people moving out on their own is something
recent (last 50+ years or so)....




My parents grew up during the Depression in a 100% concrete jungle.

They moved on up.

And they left grandmaw and grandpop to fend for themselves? or even
grand-grandmama? What about the old maiden aunt - sister of grandpa? Or
did they simply shuffle them all off to the nearest old folks home? Only
to visit them on holidays...




I grew up in a crowded residential inner city area where each house
had a front lawn the size of a postage stamp.

Eh.. I got to visit the place my dad grew up in once, when I was about
9... It was a three level mutli-generational house in pennsylvania - one
that had been converted into a boarding house back during the
depression... it really had no front yard and the back yard bordered a
rail switching yard.... the nearest track was elevated to the house and
about 20 feet from the back door.... across the street in the front of
the house there was a steep drop off - about the length of a football
field which went down to the bank of allegheny river....




My next move as a young adult to move on up might've been the
surrounding suburbs in the county that abuts the city, but I went a
step further and went rural. HEEE - HAWWW!.

I've tried to do that, but even so civilization keeps getting closer and
closer.... but even going rural here has me in a small neighborhood...
where we did have just houses (think something that Jeff Foxworthy would
make fun of - for instance I have a old water heater laying in my front
yard and many of the houses here have similar old junk as lawn
ornaments), till someone bought up all the vacant lots and started
dropping rental trailers on them.... for awhile there, the rental house
next to mine had about 30 pit bulls in the back yard - one chained to
each of the trees....




Thing is - even with the experiences you had, that doesn't mean that
things are bad all over. Is this the case where you are living now -
having to dodge fire bombs and rocks?


The county is reportedly 95% white, altho I suspect it's a little less
than that, maybe 90%. So what do *you* think?

If that's true - then it is either some part of that 95% who was
terrorizing the area, or that for some reason the other 5% were made to
become concentrated into that particular area.... What does any of the
other data say? What percentage of the county was above the property
line and how many were below? If just the five percent was below - then
how did they afford to buy the houses that your parents neighbors sold them?


Verbal diarrhea and non-sequiturs.

I moved to a rural area that does not abut the city line and was
prolly 99% white in 1972. Farming was still a primary industry.
Other whites flooded the area, along with blacks who too were
terrorized from the city and of course now it's a bedroom community
where farming is quite minor. It's surprising that it's still 90%
white.

Give it time.... if the city is as bad as you say it is - it get
abandoned... either that or someone will come in and do gentrification
on it and raise all of the property taxes and the costs associated with
living in the area - which will then displace the poor people who will
then move out your way - where a lot of those people who gave up farming
will sell off their land to people who will put up low-income
multi-family housing..... again, this ain't something new that's never
happened before... it's even happening here....

First you will get a couple of the big box stores (if you haven't
already), then the apartment complexes will start popping up....




Haven't really had to dodge anything the past 35 years. One time a
white tail deer got mad at his reflection and rammed his head into a
window. Another time a turkey made a pest of himself for about a
month; terrorized the cats; and roosted on the roof even in thunder
storms, leaving behind voluminous piles of **** that slid down into
roof gutters .... but we didn't have a cricket problem that August.
There's a persistent problem with woodchucks and their burrows
alongside the eastern property line where there's a row of black
cherry and mulberry trees.

All quite tolerable vis-a-vis life in the city.

Ah - so its only city schools that you wouldn't want to go to today - or
more specifically the school in the old neighborhood that your parents
abandoned...


Huh? My folks abandoned school? Eh? My folks graduated high school
in 1939 and it wasn't the school to which you allude.


Then you're talking about the school where you currently are living? The
rural school - that's just sad that it should be that scary.....




Aren't teachers required to read for comprehension?






I wouldn't want to go to any govt. school today. Even in exurbia
upper middle class white America, there are kids with hunting rifles
sniping their fellow students.

Heck, according to tonight's news you ain't even safe in church.....




Here in Austin the reverse is happening - people are buying old homes in
poor areas and turning them into McMansions - or at least they were till
the credit dried up... the poor neighbors don't like it as it drives up
their property taxes.....


Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened in the southeast section of Baltimore
known as Canton where working-class Polish people lived for a hundred
years. That neighborhood never turned black. And so yuppies moved
in, knowing that they better not set up their homesteads in black
areas. As you say, property taxes soared.





ying and yang - what goes around comes around.....


That's a different issue from what transpired in my parents'
community.

Eh...

Martin

On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:46:41 GMT, (Way Back Jack)
wrote:


At any rate, back to the 50s, there were a few war widows but single
parents were in the distinct minority.

Often, teenage pregnancies were covered up with the girl going out of
town to have her baby. If she returned with baby, the grandparents or
an aunt and uncle often claimed the baby was theirs and raised it
without the child knowing who the real mother was.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits