Growing up in the 1970's, a bonding activity for me, my brother, and my father was to go to Schwering's Hardware, in a time well before any of the supermarket-sized or warehouse-sized hardware stores. Just this tiny little place for lots of parts, any sort of part you needed for whatever was broken. I can still smell the inside of that place in my mind and see the closely-packed containers of nuts and bolts, the slanted floors, the narrow spaces, all the things we were not to touch and all the things I did when I was seven. There was a barber shop nearby where I got my first haircut, and a model train store, where my dad found all of the stuff he needed to build his big imaginary train-based city in our basement. Thank you, Linh. This series may be the only one that explains in some way the rise of Trumpism even in the once-progressive area in which I was raised. People with whom I went to high school are all pretty Trumpist which would surprise me had I never seen your photos. Nothing--no article, no statistic, no research analysis, no angry facebook anecdote--captures the ubiquity of the grand capital suck-out quite like these photos. I'd love to catch up with you if you are back in Philly in late December, old friend.
2 comments:
Growing up in the 1970's, a bonding activity for me, my brother, and my father was to go to Schwering's Hardware, in a time well before any of the supermarket-sized or warehouse-sized hardware stores. Just this tiny little place for lots of parts, any sort of part you needed for whatever was broken. I can still smell the inside of that place in my mind and see the closely-packed containers of nuts and bolts, the slanted floors, the narrow spaces, all the things we were not to touch and all the things I did when I was seven. There was a barber shop nearby where I got my first haircut, and a model train store, where my dad found all of the stuff he needed to build his big imaginary train-based city in our basement. Thank you, Linh. This series may be the only one that explains in some way the rise of Trumpism even in the once-progressive area in which I was raised. People with whom I went to high school are all pretty Trumpist which would surprise me had I never seen your photos. Nothing--no article, no statistic, no research analysis, no angry facebook anecdote--captures the ubiquity of the grand capital suck-out quite like these photos. I'd love to catch up with you if you are back in Philly in late December, old friend.
Yo Patrick,
I just got back to Philly from nearly a month in Vietnam. Yes, let's hang out in late December!
Linh
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