Nature And Nurture in an Industrial Area of New England

[shickdits]

A few days ago, I had driven about 100 miles out to a non-profit theater in western Massachusetts to see Jaws (1975) to see a 4k remaster made for its 50th anniversary (shoutout to Iris for the invite! I'd love to do that again sometime. Maybe my tenure at work makes my schedule more flexible than I thought...). Something people always say about Jaws is how scary it is, and how it was The First Blockbuster, but not many mention its deep-rooted New England identity, and upon reflection of how I had such a blindspot, I womdered if I have such a New Englander identity myself. Is my birthplace and home something that's ingrained itself into my values, my interests, and whatever else can define who I am? The can of Narragansett brand beer Quinn is seen drinking isn't something I would have recognized until fairly recently, nor were the coastal cottages turned small businesses that lined the streets of Amity Island that likely still look like that today.


As I stepped out into the parking lot of the cinema, the mountainous forests in the distance were intensely familiar, but the small town before me, with the oddly specific speed limit in its treets of 25 miles per hour were something that felt unfamiliar. Were these two locations a truer New England Experience than the one I lived with? People seemed closer out here, more in touch with humanity than my own home. The people on the sidewalks weren't too poor to afford a car, stumbling to the nearest 7-11 for barely-legal pills, or a few pints of $1.50 Natty Daddy beers, dumping used opioid needles in the street, or lugging their laundry to a dilapidated laundromat, but lazily milling about, empty-handed to cafés, sub shops, or even back to the cultural landmark that was the theater I had just stepped out of... But it was still the same region of the United States I have always been in, for nearly 30 years. Was I too sheltered as a child to consider these My People?



Well, let's start at the beginning, with the history of a city I called my home during my entire schoolgoing childhood. This entire paragraph is written with barely more than a minute of research, so bear with me for any large omittances; During the early nineteenth century, the Merrimack river, after a few decades of colonial settlement, was slowly, but surely, converted into a major hub of New England's textile mill production during the Industrial Revolution. This area was colloquially referred to as "The Manchester of America", had the largest cotton mill in the world, and was even officially incorporated as "Manchester" in 1846. After the civil war, supplies of raw cotton went dry (wow, I wonder why that happened?), but by then, the many mills had diversified into various refineries, factories, and assemnly plants for paper, cigars, rifles, and, obviously, still clothing and thread made of other materials.

The above paragraph feels relevant, because, as a child, I was always fascinated by mass-produced products of all kinds. Mechanical devices, electronics, tools, clothes, if I ever lost any of my personal belongings, another copy was sure to exist out there somewhere, its shape and purpose already familiar to me, despite my hands never touching it, my eyes never laid upon the example. Many others my age would point to The Simpsons, Dragonball Z, or Spongebob as their favorite TV programming at that age, but mine was How It's Made. I can never replace the loss of my father, but his beloved 1991 IROC-Z Camaro, 1981 Corvette, or 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee, his DVD collection, his dozens of pocket knives, sunglasses, leatherbound multitool, his favorite brand of cigarettes (something in a white box with a gold triangle... Winston? Marlboro? I don't smoke, I wouldn't know for sure), even if bound for the landfill in the past 15 years I've spent without ever hearing his voice again, were still out there, copied perfectly.

I wouldn't go as far to say that art & culture is suppressed in this city, but it isn't exactly largely supported either. It merely exists, because great art can be born from anywhere, from anyone, and needs the appropriate amount of capital in this world to be born. I can only name 3 cultural exports off the top of my head; Toby Fox, Adam Sandler, and the film Mystery Team (2009). None of these things feel central to me, unless you mean Central High School. Yes, that's how lacking in creativity this place feels. The biggest high school in the area is called Central High School, it's named that because it's in the center of town. There's another one called "West High School". Guess where that one is.


The sections of this place are so clear, it's visibly a slow expansion from the banks of the Merrimack river, each one further out a clear mark of eras of American history; the area surrounding Canal Street, named as such as it was the former site of a canal, is full of former industrial mills comverted to various universities, apartments, restaurants, cafés, offices, etc. All that remains is a pharmaceutical plant with its smokestacks (well, steam, probably) billowing next to Queen City Avenue as unruly motorists cut each other off at 50+ mph in a 30mph zone on the bridge next to the highway onramp that leads to Boston. The hydroelectric dams upstream still power this and the various metalworking and auto-repair shops that lie a few miles east of the Merrimack, and the surrounding ghettos in that area are where I spent my childhood.



Freshly fired from his job as a car dealer at a Dodge dealership for temporarily losing his license for a traffic violation, my father reluctantly became an office worker for a short time too early in my childhood for me to remember more specific details than that. Maybe the office job was one of a frined of his, or he was a janitor, maybe my mother was the janitor, I'm unsure, but I remember playing with a LEGO set of a battleship in what pathetically counts as a high-rise building in a state with a population this low and oft-forgotten. No matter which of the three dozen+ floored buildings it was, it certainly was less than 30 floors up, I doubt any of them exceed that number. It is from the window of this building, and from the tops of the rolling hills of the ghettos and suburbs that I can see the beautiful mountainous forests of this region, its many evergreen flora, and the slight burnt-firewood smell of the petrichor here that have been an ever-present background for my entire life.


I wrote all of this without an outline, a smattering of what comes to mind about my origins, how it affects a sense of identity for myself, in order to see what would spill out in the paragraphs above, and I think what's lacking in this is something that feels truly human. But what do I even mean in this self-critique... I think I just didn't interact much with other people around here when I was younger. The New Englander was a character on a screen, an amalgamation of Stephen King's protagonists, the old man who would Tell You The Story, Tonight, On New Hampshire Chronicle, the Scout from Team Fortress 2, because many of my classmates were children of immigrants who hadn't yet let their culture become fully subsumed by the homogeneity of capital; the cowboy hats, Ford Toddler Annihalators, and pop country music that I see endlessly in the suburbs today. I saw Greeks, Bosnians, Italians, Puerto Ricans, and a few from the Caribbean islands, but perhaps my note of these ethnicities was because the baseline of White American wasn't something worth remembering. It wasn't *their* ancestors' hands that were torn apart at the looms in the 19th century at large, after all.


This upbringing definitely had an effect on my political ideals, what's core to it is that a free flow of immigration, health, and self-autonomy is to never be alienable in policy. My mother was never one concerned with politics, somehow, bafflingly, as someone who was nearly a casualty in the US invasion of Panama in 1989, but my father had a srong root left-of-center. How far, I can only be as sure as my 14 year old self, but I knew for sure he had an unrelenting hatred of Rush Limbaugh and the Bush Administration. He was a host of a podcast in the late 2000s that had his full, legal name attached to it, something like, [his full name]'s Countdown To Reality, but all I have ever heard of it was an excerpt he played of it to me, that professed how much he loved me. What eventually killed my father wasn't some tragic accident or dramatic encounter, but the thousand cuts of the negligence of a capitalist society and what was likely undiagnosed ADHD. The direct cause? Sleep apnea. Embarrasing. My father was a bodybuilder, he may have had asthma as well, but after a falling out with my mother, he fell into a deep depression, became morbidly obese, and put off a lot of small steps in managing his health; not committing to quitting smoking, losing wieght, or, perhaps most importantly, obtaining a sleep mask for sleep apnea. He simply took a nap on December 7th of 2010, and snored so heavily he stopped breathing. I entered the room my mother left in our apartment to him to say goodnight, and he was cold and stiff. Nothing has felt completely real to me ever since, but sometimes I have moments of what feels like lucidity; usually after plans, obligations, or errands are fimished, and I am not at home. I stop and stare into space for a moment before repressing whatever it is I am about to feel and head home, head under the sand so that I may upkeep a routine that keeps my mouth fed, and the roof over my head.