You're My Home

Yesterday Jen and I went for breakfast at Stars and then on to Hull for a tremendously long walk along Nantasket Beach.

She told me the story of an HR drone at a company where we used to work -- how the woman offered to accompany an older female employee on her visit/interview at a low income, senior assisted living complex.

A truly lovely, generous, going above-and-beyond-the-call of her job sort of offer. But then...then...Norma told the woman the location of the apartments.

Our 'front yard' with view of harbor islands

 Quincy. Yup, that's my town. My burg of the last 11 years with the beaches, two small colleges, ancestral home of two presidents (John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams), rock climbing at Quincy Quarries and more.

Here's what Ms. HR Wonder said:
'Oh no, I can't go there. My husband won't let me.'

'the fuck? Jen said that the woman's implication was that this is a really dodgy, dangerous little city. Wow. Quincy's def blue collar and not so hip but dangerous?

I'm guessing she commuted into work from one of the posh, white collar ONLY, western suburbs like Wellesley or Newton.

So, this 20 something couldn't set foot in our treacherously malignant hamlet but she was cool with a 60 something, partially disabled woman going on her own.

OK then!

What a twat.

When I first moved to Boston, after college and a few seasons with a southern carnival, there were two sections of town that gave me the stone willies. I wouldn't go to one, Charlestown, without mega male accompaniment and the other, South Boston, not at all. I eventually did -- 25 years after arriving at the bus station just half a mile from the neighborhood line, 32 years after the busing crisis and a decade post gentrification.

What these neighborhoods had in common was this -- if you weren't iridescently white (even my half Italian/half Irish looks were too dusky to pass) you didn't belong and were, therefor, a target.

I always lived in very mixed neighborhoods. This being Boston, college capital, that mostly meant student ghettos. Loud and break-in prone but otherwise, for a city, safe-ish.

Quincy's racial makeup? From City-Data.com:

White alone - 60,448 (65.5%)
Asian alone - 22,124 (24.0%)
Black alone - 3,998 (4.3%)
Hispanic - 3,089 (3.3%)
Two or more races - 1,686 (1.8%)
Other race alone - 768 (0.8%)
American Indian alone - 137 (0.1%)
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone - 21 (0.02%)

I like my little adopted town, my home. A lot.

The Standells -- Dirty Water