The stoop of an apartment building consists of a few steps upward, at the entrance.   They are a common sight in many large cities, especially where a large number of brown-brick, multi-story buildings are crowded together, often on both sides of a street, forming a neighborhood.  

Passing through, I saw that it does not look like a pleasant environment in which to live, and a worse one in which to raise children.  My impression was confirmed by an exchange I had online with someone who grew up there.  He literally spent his childhood years on a stoop.  

The discussion began when I mentioned that as a child, I had lived in a small town, semi-rural.  In the summer, I would awaken, eat breakfast, and then be on my bicycle for the rest of the day, riding around, with no means of communication, no identification.  This was normal in the 1950s.  The worst that happened was an occasional dog bite, no blood involved, and that was about it.  At sundown, I was home, eating supper.  

For the person I conversed with, life in the big city was vastly different.  He awakened in the morning in an apartment that was way too small and cramped for a family of five.  His father was up before sunrise, to catch the bus to his sweat-shop job, one that paid barely more than the rent.  When he left, the housewife would serve breakfast to the kids and then immediately send them out to the stoop until lunch.  After lunch, it was back to the stoop, at which time Mom prepared supper (or dinner, as they call it up north).  When Dad got home, everyone had supper.  There were a couple of hours of television, and then off to bed.  

Repeat daily, year after year.  

During the school season, things were a bit more complicated.  Walking to school, and back, one had to avoid the street thugs, who would steal from the young ones.  

Even in the summer, the gangs were a threat.  Sitting on the stoop, the kids had to run inside as soon as they saw the thugs and take refuge in the hallway.  If they did not, they would be beaten.  The thugs considered themselves owners of the street.  

The police were absent and of no help even when present, being cold and indifferent and highly averse to any kind of paperwork involved in fighting crime.  They had to do paperwork and make court appearances, on their own time, for which they received no pay.  Therefore, they were loath to do their jobs.  

The person telling me all this took it all for granted.  He envied my upbringing and could scarcely imagine it.  

We had lived as if on different planets, and only after hearing his story did I begin to understand the dehumanization of life in the big city.  I could not have imagined it.  

A similar gap lies between me and my grandchildren.  They cannot fathom that high school parking lots used to contain pickup trucks with gun racks — with guns in them — but without school shootings.  They cannot fathom that the students used to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord's prayer and read aloud from the Bible each day — in the classroom, led by the teacher.  

There was a time when even the sleaziest boys in the class would never use foul language in the presence of girls.  Doors were held open for ladies, and the ladies expected such signs of respect.  That eventually gave way, decades later, to the fact that even the girls began to utter obscenities in the presence of the boys.  

Like darkness falling, sweeping across the land, the culture has declined in a way, and to a degree, that the young ones of today cannot imagine.  It is as if we grew up on different planets.  Intergenerational communication is difficult, and mutual understanding is all but impossible.  

The church bells have fallen silent.  They toll for no one.

Image: Naked Pictures of Bea Arthur via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped).

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