A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

urban legends

The most powerful man in Ithaca looks like a cello player with the Trenton Symphony Orchestra. That is, if there happened to be a TSO (short for Trenton Symphony Orchestra.)

Ezra happened to think about Trenton (N.J.) this evening because he spent his formative years around there. Coincidentally he was talking on the phone this evening with a friend from N.J. It's sort of nice to stay in touch. Actually, when you come right down to it, it's a lot better to talk on the phone with someone from Jersey than to be there talking to him in person. As much as you like your friend, and all, talking on the phone means that you're here, he's there and you're not there. If you follow Ezra's drift.

At one time there was a bridge spanning the Delaware River at Trenton with a huge sign that read, "Trenton Makes, The World Takes." Now, people tell Ezra, the slogan has been switched, at least in the mind of most Trentonians, to "Trenton Takes What the World Doesn't Want." Do you think that Common Council should commission a sign for the bridge spanning the inlet that reads, "Ithaca Swallows What Cornell Sends Down"?

Growing up in Trenton prepared Ezra for the experience of living in Ithaca. For those of Ezra's readers who haven't visited Trenton, let him explain. Trenton is a big dilapidated Eastern rust belt city that happens to be the capital and spiritual center of New Jersey. George Washington crossed the Delaware near Trenton to attack the Hessians who were barracked there. John Roebling, the designer/builder of the Brooklyn Bridge started a steel wire factory in Trenton that produced most of the cable for Walt Whitman's and Hart Crane's favorite span. The factory was bought out by J.P. Morgan when he started putting together that industrial conglomerate known as US Steel.

Since it's heyday, Trenton has gone straight downhill. That trajectory was long, slow, inevitable, painful and irreversible.

Does that remind you of another city we know? Begins with 'I'?

In the end, right around the time Ezra was growing up in the old neighborhoods, Trenton's decline had reached a temporary halt. The State of New Jersey began pouring HUD dollars into the city, building new office complexes to house the machinery of state. Even the gold plated dome above the Capitol was made to gleam in the sunlight. Ezra was in high school at the time. He and his buddies who had just signed up for the school literary magazine hopped into a car, drove downtown and took some photographs for the cover art contrasting the former decay that had settled over Trenton with the new spirit of urban renewal embodied in the construction projects sprouting up. We titled our new issue 'Renascence.'

Hey, you folks (or is it just one folk?) don't want to hear a lot of details about Ezra's childhood. Not even Ezra's shrink wants to hear about his childhood. The point is that the spirit of place is very strong with most people. If you grow up in the country, you find it hard to adjust to city life. Vice versa, So, if you grow up in one spiritual death trap, it's not hard to detect the odor of rot when you move to another.

Don't think for a moment that Ezra is calling Ithaca an urban basket case. "Nothing but the dead and the dying in my little town." -Paul Simon.

Trenton had moments when we all thought it could pull itself out of its irreversible descent into a dead zone of empty factories, nasty ghettos, casual urban violence, and a bombed out downtown. In the end Trenton's urban renewal efforts flopped. The city became what it might have always been destined to become. A burnt out hulk where all the new buildings in ten years started to resemble the old buildings. Now Ithaca is at that stage of trying a lot of new things out as well to reverse its slide into irrelevance. A new hotel? How exciting! Ezra wants to apply as a desk clerk! "Hi, welcome to Ithaca!" Can you see that?

Hey, whatever works. But hasn't this formula been tried elsewhere? It's all about business, man. Not rock and roll. "We built this city on rock 'n roll." -Starship. Instead, we get "We built this city on Holiday Inns." Why don't we just take a minute to consider that there might be more to life than business? Stop trying to come up with something that has to do with bringing more business downtown, opening new stores, expanding commerce. Hey, how long will it take all those businesses and stores to fold?

Why don't we raze downtown and create a real commons? Have a few cows and sheep grazing, stick a maypole in the center for the happy campers to dance around. A place where Luddites can have a picnic.

Which brings Ezra back to the guy who looks like he plays the cello.

His name is Jason Fane. He owns half of downtown and a big chunk of Collegetown.The guy's worth millions. He dabbles in real estate in NYC and Toronto, keeps apartments in both cities. Jason owns the Masonic Temple that Ezra wants to turn into a townhouse.

Mr. F started accumulating his fortune in Ithaca. One building at a time. At one point he may have owned (this is unconfirmed) a building across from the Ithaca Journal. Do you know what a SRO is? A 'single resident occupancy'. Flophouse for short. That eyesore filled with garbage strewn rooms, urine-soaked hallways stood around for 20 years before they tore it down to put in an empty lot. A big black stain on the Ithaca community. Right across from the newspaper building - the city's eyes and ears. College students pulled up in front of this gaping wreck of a structure in their sleek convertibles, never glanced for a second in that direction and headed off to find downtown restaurants. Ithaca's invisible wound. (Folks rationalized that that was how the residents wanted to live!)

That's where Freddie lived. Actually, it was only one of his many residences. Freddie was a drunk, a free spirit, a thief, a hobo, an inner-city boy scout, at times a kingpin in the black market. He had piercing blue eyes, a mane that had turned white before he reached 37. Freddie had charisma. It poured out of his flashing eyes, his booze flushed skin, from his rapid way of talking to his quick temper. He was an urban legend. One night, myth or memory has it, he jumped out of the second floor window of this flophouse on State St into the branches of a tree and climbed down. Freddie was like that. For 40 years, he frolicked around the back alleys, rat-infested apartments, bars and hobo jungles of Ithaca. At one point he was banned from every watering hole in Tompkins County.

Actually both Jason and Freddie rank as urban legends. Freddie died at 50 in a hospital in Sayre, PA. Jason still struts the streets of Ithaca, surveying his empire. He's all business.

The new lights on the Commons, the hotels, all the development and urban renewal that's planned, will benefit Jason enormously.

Someday Ezra will have to saunter down to the Chanticleer and have a drink in Freddie's memory. Toast the pilgrim spirit that doesn't want high rises and parking garages crowding out a vision of green hills when Spring finally arrives.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:34 AM