I move people’s dusty, plastic furniture all over my town and pick up scrap metal and sell it. Truthfully, it is an infinitely fascinating business. I’ve been doing it for several years, and I actually really love it, so when I was asked to skip school and head to Philadelphia to pick up 7000 classical music CD’s, I was instantly joyous.
The drive down is the type of depressing that you feel while standing alone listening to cold chains of a swing set whine in the wind. Atop the late 1800′s farmhouse skeletons that once characterized northeastern gentlemen estates now stand ubiquitous EZ Loan shops, adult book stores, depression clinics, and used car lots. Just like the rest of the northeast, virtually all the heavy industry has long departed Philadelphia although the brooding hulks of masterfully crafted factory buildings endure. What remains are the intangible non-industries that we hope like hell somebody will buy. I took to mentally noting the billboard advertisements: $.99 fast food deals, cancer treatment, foreclosure buyouts, weight loss plans, cell phones. What I noted is a very faded Philadelphia with very few tracts of sanity.
My job was in a notably clean and beautifully historic stretch of city that was more paint than preservation, but turn a corner and all you get is urban disaster branded by piles of ancient trash, damaged infrastructure, boarded wrecks. Thoughts of a different type of American future invaded my brain all day… thoughts of the type of giving up that prevents you from picking up trash out of your own front yard… thoughts of the person who owned 7000 classical music CD’s amidst a decaying city…
I met the prior owner’s best friend. The CD collector had passed away rather unexpectedly and the family decided to sell the collection to a store in NYC. As his best friend and I packed up 50 boxes of immortal music — Chopin, Bach, Haydn, Cavalli, Mozart — I asked him to reminisce about his friend. I felt like he had something he wanted to say to me. As we spoke, we laughed, and I asked a lot of questions about everything to keep his mind off losing his friend and losing the memories of their music.
At the end of the job, we sat on plastic milk crates in a 120 year old basement in the heart of Philadelphia in a house that had only been owned by two different people. He lingered, and I obliged — not really ready for a transition myself.
“This is really hard,” he told me with a cracked voice. “I know we’re not losing everything, but it feels like it today.”
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That was powerful. Thanks.
A great metaphor, Tommy.
Thanks, Tommy, for another really evocative post. It’s so much more depressing to see the remnants of an older, prosperous, hopeful, and grand culture alongside the dross and junk that came later to fill the economic and physical void; even more so when the “infill” blatantly points to the bankruptcy and sickness of our current national character.
Your post also reminds me of trips I used to make when I was a boy to visit my father’s aunt in the Ohio River valley. This was in the early 80s, but the place and most surrounding areas seemed like a neutron bomb had hit years earlier: no one on the streets, no movement, just houses that hadn’t changed much in 40 years. When the coal and steel industry there collapsed in the 70s, everyone who could leave left. Eerie.
Yooper’s Trails has a good bunch of articles about Detroit:
http://yooperstrails.blogspot.com/2009/01/part-i-catabolic-collapse.html
“Shed your stuff, don’t stuff your shed.”
It’s a good reminder to tell our friends and family how much we love them while we are here. In the end we will all lose everything, including each other.
I have numerous times been crushed by depression and despair, so I empathize and extend my sympathy. Despite the loss, a man with 7000 classical CDs in a decaying city is to me a symbol of beauty and hope, because I think that’s the part of being human we most need to hold onto when things are at their worst.
I could be wrong, but I choose to think that America is going to make it. Deep down I believe in us, in humanity, and the better future world that we can all build. I see the same destruction and trash that you do, but for me I have to believe these things, or there is no reason for me to exist. Mine is a message of hope. Contrary to Nietzche’s assertion that “it prolongs man’s torment,” I say it is the fuel that helps us burn through grief. Whenever I need to remember what hope sounds like, I listen to “Spring” by Vivaldi. Despite all the ugliness of which we are capable, that’s the true sound of the human soul. We should strive to create a world that is as beautiful, and I will never let go of my conviction that we can.
Thank you for honoring the collector’s life, helping his friend, and sharing your story. I trust the many CDs you picked up will bring others joy.
Filly is a funny place, and it kind of breaks my heart. On the one hand, there is enough urban devolution there to doom-up anybody’s day.
OTOH, there is money and investment and growth happening. But it’s all in the burbs, and it’s all in fairly modern industries which I would prefer not to support with my own cash.
So, there’s despair and hope. And uncertainty for the future. But I guess that’s an apt metaphor for all of us, no?
Beautiful, powerful, spiritual writing. You are a witness. Yes yes yes. Let us never lose the ability to grieve.
So, Will, I had to run over to YouTube to find out what Vivaldi Spring sounded like. Of course, I’ve heard it a million times before, but I never knew what it was called. (I also discovered the Valkyrie song, also familiar, also nameless until now.
Thank you for the music.
Tommy, thank you for this post.
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