Meanwhile, just outside of Ferguson…

Don of all trades / Master of none Blog ^ | August 19, 2014 | Don of all Trades

[liberty_lvr]

I followed a trail of blood up the concrete steps as Deja vu overtook my thoughts.

I’d been here before, just a few short months ago, doing the same exact thing, following a trail of blood to an open front door.

As was the case then, on this night there had been another call for shots fired heard coming from the street.

A trail of blood, an open door and no body to be found.

Just like last time, the person was taken to the hospital by a friend, so we wait to hear from the hospital when they make their mandatory call about somebody coming into the emergency room with bullets in their body.

As I was checking the house for another injured or dead person, I couldn’t help but notice that the house was exactly as it had been before.

There was no furniture in the living room and there was trash all over the place. Paper plates with leftover food and cigarette butts littered the kitchen counter. The upstairs was where the televisions and furniture were kept. When you live in fear of drive by shootings, upstairs is the safer place to spend most of your time.

As I was leaving the kitchen, my eyes were drawn to the floor by a cockroach scurrying over a button, the kind that you can pin to your shirt to announce things like, “I voted” or “I gave blood!”

This button had a picture of Michael Brown on it and the words “Justice for Mike Brown” or some similar message around the photo.

There was something queer about the button being on this particular kitchen floor on this particular night, surrounded by roaches and drops of blood and dog **** as well.

[liberty_lvr]

I found this blog post originally on the Conservative Tree House site, but thought a direct reference would be more appropriate here.

As a former resident of Ferguson, and still a property owner there, I have been greatly dismayed by the perception of other FReepers that we here in St Louis are living in some kind of war zone, that all has been laid to waste, and that our authorities are all incompetent boobs.

Besides our tool of a governor, and a few other notable Democrat opportunists (St Louis is, after all, a Dem stronghold), nothing could be further from the truth. I'm re-posting this beautifully written story to show that our police are caring, upstanding memebers of our communities and that life is moving on daily around the Ferguson mess, much as it has in peaceful times past.

So loudmouth know-it-alls like Uncle Chip who want to sit behind their keyboards and denigrate our fair city with no first-hand knowledge of anything can just go suck it...

[cripplecreek]

Same with Detroit but don’t expect any rational discourse about it.

[Enterprise]

Uncle Chip was given his retirement papers by Jim Robinson.

[Tennessee Nana]

and some fail to PING those FREEPERS they mention by name in comments..

[Enterprise]

See Post #3.

[lacrew]

I admit I rarely go to ST Louis...and really just pass through. But I think I’ve got a fairly accurate perception of St Louis and Ferguson.

Ferguson looks to be a ‘near suburb’ - a suburb close to the glistening office building downtown. IOW, some of the original suburbs that are now showing their age.

One of the first thing I did when this story broke is go the CityData to look at demographics. I noticed that the population of Ferguson was minority white, and had a declining population. This fits a pattern of places I have lived (Birmingham), and places I have read a lot about Detroit). No, I don’t consider Ferguson a war zone...but in any of these failed ‘near suburbs’, I wouldn’t walk around a lot at night.

I have to say, the coverage of Ferguson is almost one of a carnival atmosphere. The reporter at the mic will have cars going back and forth behind him - festooned with banners and slogans, and often brimming with people. In one clip, people were even riding on the roof. Just positioning themselves for nightfall.

And once night comes, its a predictable and familiar cycle of ‘wanna be famous’ blogger types getting close enough to the police to get tear gassed - to put on a youtube channel.

I live in the Midwest (Topeka), and I work in land development - often becoming involved in discussions of causation of ‘blight’. The Midwest has it particularly bad, because land is cheap, easy to buy, and without major obstacles. IOW, even the poorest parts of NYC never completely collapse - land is scarce and even the ‘ghetto’ has value. Not so in the Midwest. Cities sprawl and their economic center of mass shifts with it - leaving areas behind that are exactly like Ferguson. And there seems to be a tipping point - in the blink of an eye, you start to notice: a lot of houses are empty, the grocery store moved to a better location, the gas station closed, etc.

Then the city unleashes an alphabet’s worth of grant programs to try and stabilize the situation - but it hardly ever works. And it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy - the worse it gets, the more people leave...and it just keeps getting worse.

So I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp of what Ferguson must be like. I do have friends who live in St Louis, who haven’t even mentioned this mess. So it does appear that the police have done an excellent job in containing the nightly ‘protests’ to one area....and I certainly don’t think all of Ferguson is on fire. But it is probably smoldering - a slow burn that will methodically destroy the value of the city. Its a familiar story of urban Midwest cities...just amped up for a few weeks.

[factoryrat]

I grew up in Pontiac, MI, and worked in Detroit for a lot of years. For a small amount of time, I worked for a guy who bought run down houses (ie:slums) and would fix them up to rent. The scenery described by “don of all trades” regarding filth and insects, or worse, was the norm, not the exception. How people can live in such pestilent squalor is completely beyond me. Drugs are one factor, and welfare along with its discouragement of responsibility is another factor.