  Tponetom Member Username: Tponetom Post Number: 359 Registered: 06-2007 |
Lowell, I was scavenging some older posts and ran across your post # 5125. (Dec. 25) It expressed your thoughts about the muting of sound, and by (my) extension, communication. Your quote: Tponetom, I have often mused on how much air conditioning and other forms of climate control, along with home entertainment did so much quiet the streets and “cocoon us from society and its former cacophony whether at home or on the road.” (I added the quotation marks.) That phrase speaks volumes. It made me realize that the genesis, of most of my stories about Detroit, in the forties, is based on communications! Walking down the street, you would greet neighbors and strangers with a word or two. Standing at the ‘Bus Stop’ you would strike up a conversation, about anything, with a fellow traveler. Once on the bus, other passengers would put in their two cents worth. Max, the sheeney man, was the most verbal person alive. He knew everything about everything. To break the conversation you had to walk away from him. The milkman would be delighted to tell you all the benefits of milk and other dairy products that he sold. Whitey, the iceman, would always have a lurid story about one of his customers who did NOT live in our neighborhood. But then, the gathering years, quieted down. It is quite incidental that I began writing a story about two Detroiters who had a conversation, recently. Just like the ones they have had for 70 years or more. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3774 Registered: 01-2005 |
Different times, Tp. Nowadays, you don't even want to make eye contact. | ||
Lowell Moderator Username: Lowell Post Number: 2146 Registered: 09-2003 |
A lot of invisible walls to interpersonal communications have been erected over our lifetimes, some by technology like climate control, and others by management "advances". Your milkman, iceman, peddlers are a thing of the past. The milkman was largely a victim of Excello Corporation in Highland Park who brokered the simple origami of the paper milk carton into an international phenomenon that allowed people to carry home their milk from the store and throw away the container. No more heavy breakable return glass containers. Now even that technology is rarely seen having been supplanted by plastic injection-molded containers. But it wouldn't matter anyway because the management of delivery changed to where delivery workers were paid by the stop rather than by the hour would have milkman a no-time-for-chat hustler -- no time to natter with the kids or even the customers; chit chat now came off their bottom line, not the company's. I saw this transition during my Sears delivery driver days when our pay was changed from hourly to per stop. Drivers who were friendly and leisurely became "runners" driven to getting home by 2PM while getting paid the same rate as if they worked hourly from 6 to 7PM. Not only did they become brief with customers, they contrived ways to cheat customers out of set ups, removal of old appliances and anything else that could cut their time down. Others and I fought this in the union hall when this "incentive" plan was offered arguing that not only would customer services be affected but that the company would be getting a free time study at one's highest speed that, in turn, would be used to reduce the amount paid per stop. It was to no avail as greed blinds many to what can't be seen beyond the immediate present. Sure enough the rates were cut, then through a union-management-conspired sham, the contract was sold, resold, and eventually sold back to the original contractor -- after all the drivers were fired. I was long gone by that time a victim of the 1980 depression. Today the same job pays less than then. Oddly enough another form of technology has worked as counter trend to depersonalization – the internet, without which we would not be having this discussion and without which I would never have met Ray1936 and so many others in real life. Contrary to what many think, studies have shown those who actively use the internet actually get out and meet each other more than those who don’t. | ||
Dshanks Member Username: Dshanks Post Number: 4 Registered: 12-2008 |
What color was Whitey the Iceman? Can you regal us with one of his lurid stories? Thanks in advance for content that I'm sure will captivate us. | ||
Tponetom Member Username: Tponetom Post Number: 360 Registered: 06-2007 |
Dshanks, Check out my new post on DC. Whitey's Lurid Stories. Lowell, "the origami of the paper milk carton"? Beautiful! I will probably plagiarize that by using different shapes. I have copied your post and I hope to respond to it in depth. I like to masssage simple truths to see how much more I can get out of them. Spontaneity has been a forever lost tool in my memory kit. Spelling, grammar, words, phrases and stories no longer come easy. | ||
Eriedearie Member Username: Eriedearie Post Number: 4398 Registered: 08-2007 |
I KNOW Tp! When I read "the origami of the paper milk carton" - I said to myself, WOW! I would have never in a million years thought up that phrase! Very cool Lowell  | ||
Mauser765 Member Username: Mauser765 Post Number: 2903 Registered: 01-2004 |
What shall we use to fill the empty spaces Where waves of hunger roar? Shall we set out across the sea of faces In search of more and more applause? Shall we buy a new guitar? Shall we drive a more powerful car? Shall we work straight through the night? Shall we get into fights? Leave the lights on? Drop bombs? Do tours of the east? Contract disease? Bury bones? Break up homes? Send flowers by phone? Take to drink? Go to shrinks? Give up meat? Rarely sleep? Keep people as pets? Train dogs? Race rats? Fill the attic with cash? Bury treasure? Store up leisure? But never relax at all - With our backs to The Wall. | ||
Dshanks Member Username: Dshanks Post Number: 5 Registered: 12-2008 |
Wow. All I can say is Wow. Mauser785, you should put your poem to music. That would make an awesome song. | ||
Jjaba Member Username: Jjaba Post Number: 7704 Registered: 11-2003 |
One of jjaba's fond memories was walking down Northlawn Ave. on a summer night and greet neighbors on their front porches listening to the radio. You could walk all over the neighborhood and listen to a Joe Louis Fight, a Tigers game, or a variety show. As it got dark, we were with parents who sheltered us from the fear of darkness. We could stop for ice creams on Intervale or Wyoming and Schoolcraft. Perhaps air conditioning, television, and the expressways changed alot of it. Lowell's discussion about working conditions and technology shows us other aspects of the arrangements going on at the time in society. Those were the days my friends, we thought they'd never end, we'd sing and dance forever and a day... jjaba, Westside Memories. | ||
Ray1936 Member Username: Ray1936 Post Number: 3797 Registered: 01-2005 |
Summer meant sleeping on the glider on the front porch, and listening to the chirp of the crickets as they put you to sleep. There is no music prettier than a cricket's chirp. | ||
Raptor56 Member Username: Raptor56 Post Number: 709 Registered: 05-2007 |
In an odd twist of fate, the black out of 2003 momentarily brought back a degree of community and community communication. I remember seeing neighbors sitting outside drinking the last of their cold beverages and sitting around their porches chatting amongst themselves and to whoever happened to be walking\sitting near by. With no TV, no internet, and no radio, people were forced to go back to their roots and entertain each other socially and neighborly. Unfortunately, as soon as the power came back on, so did the TV’s, air conditioning, and civil solitude. | ||
Tponetom Member Username: Tponetom Post Number: 362 Registered: 06-2007 |
Ray, Raptor56, et al, When we built our home in the U. P.in 1973, it included an eighty foot, "U" shaped deck, encircling the house. One side overlooked the valley. The front of the house scanned the lake. The third side faced the driveway and the gardens. The valley belonged to the deer. The lake was home to the ducks and geese. The garden side was the realm of all the 'varmints.' There was never a silence. The constant 'awe' clamored for our attention, every second. The communication with nature never stops. | ||
Raptor56 Member Username: Raptor56 Post Number: 710 Registered: 05-2007 |
Tponetom-> Now you're bragging | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 8985 Registered: 12-2003 |
Nah, just sharing. I was just transported in my visual memory to a cousin's joint in the UP...easy to whittle away the days there...so beautiful. | ||
Tponetom Member Username: Tponetom Post Number: 363 Registered: 06-2007 |
Raptor56, Bragging??? No, Crying! We had to give it all up. Too sad a story. I don't care to relate those kind of stories. | ||
Rampartstreetnorth Member Username: Rampartstreetnorth Post Number: 93 Registered: 07-2006 |
It is absolutely the case that the technologies of comfort and convenience have isolated us from one another, starting with reduced personal interactions and extending to the way we hear the life around us. The result is a kind of sensory deprivation which we come to accept as normal but which really isn't. I live in a densely populated 19th century neighborhood in New Orleans where the houses are very close together and the streets are very narrow. All the houses have front porches and people use them. There are pedestrians, drunks, street vendors hawking vegetables from the back of pickups, people playing musical instruments, loud conversations, arguments, kids playing games on the sidewalk. The street is a defacto community patio, and there is a constant, ongoing community soundtrack present in my neighborhood which is completely absent when I am with my wife's family who live in a modern Detroit suburb. That sort of community soundtrack is what Walt Whitman invoked in "I Hear America Singing." Lucky Walt, if he had lived post-A/C and TV, he never would have had the inspiration he did. "I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs." | ||
Rel Member Username: Rel Post Number: 749 Registered: 02-2008 |
Rampartstreetnorth, Did you move? I might be travelling to your neck of the woods this summer. (Not sure if you remember me by nickname here, but I had the pleasure of meeting you & your wife earlier this year when you hosted an author) | ||
Tponetom Member Username: Tponetom Post Number: 364 Registered: 06-2007 |
Rampartstreetnorth The symphony that Whitman describes cannot be reproduced and certainly not imitated. One has to live it in order to experience the variety of human emotions that erupt, via sight and sound. Laughter, tears, curiosity, indignation, amazement, pride, puzzlement, and love, all vied for a moments dominance of our attention. Every day the 'book' of the performance changed. The 'music' remained unchanged. Today? No more 30 foot residential lots. | ||
Mauser765 Member Username: Mauser765 Post Number: 2933 Registered: 01-2004 |
sorry - forgot to cite song r.waters " empty spaces/ what shall we do now ? " from "Pink Floyd, The Wall", melodrama rock musical dealing with heavy depersonalization themes and isolation in general. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =cFevDtxbBHM& | ||
Rampartstreetnorth Member Username: Rampartstreetnorth Post Number: 94 Registered: 07-2006 |
Yes Rel--we moved back to N.O. this fall. We still have our Michigan cell phone numbers. Give us a call if you come this way. | ||
Mayor_sekou Member Username: Mayor_sekou Post Number: 2627 Registered: 09-2006 |
Just testing to see if I can post | ||
Mayor_sekou Member Username: Mayor_sekou Post Number: 2628 Registered: 09-2006 |
Ahh. Thanks Lowell. | ||
Cheddar_bob Member Username: Cheddar_bob Post Number: 1677 Registered: 10-2003 |
"Just testing to see if I can post" = Have I been banned? No? Good. | ||
Mayor_sekou Member Username: Mayor_sekou Post Number: 2629 Registered: 09-2006 |
Not quite, but carry on. | ||
Reddog289 Member Username: Reddog289 Post Number: 877 Registered: 08-2007 |
While I should add some more insulation to my house, I,d miss out on the funny things the toddlers on the east side of me say and do, or the reving of the Harley on the west side of me. THE TRAINS to the north, and the kids playing baseball to the south.2003 was cool when most folks came outta their houses, like back in 1980. | ||
Sumas Member Username: Sumas Post Number: 650 Registered: 01-2008 |
Mauser, I actually liked your poetry. Your first phrase was the strongest though. "what shall we use to fill the empty spaces". It made me think long and hard. We engage with neighbors, church, area businesses, non profit volunteer work and so forth. Yet I still feel kind of empty. Possibily low self esteem. This made me recollect an old Appalatian (sp) tune, "I wonder as I wander" . It ends on a discordant note. I do feel a disconnect these days. I plan on volunteering time this weekend but take no real pleasure in that either anymore. Sorry for being a sad sack. | ||
Gannon Member Username: Gannon Post Number: 8975 Registered: 12-2003 |
Sumas, Taking NO pleasure in activities which used to bring such is one of the most serious symptoms of clinical depression, of which the seasonal sun-deprivation is certainly a significant subset in our area at this time of a long and dreary winter. If you can, seek out an area with artificial sun...and life abounding...like the WinterGarden in the RenCen, the conservatory on Belle Isle, or even a simple visit to a tanning booth. Find you some sunshine, even if fake, and see if that helps adjust your mood. We're all going through it, but you seem self-aware enough to help yourself find solace in ol' sol. Good luck... | ||
Jcole Member Username: Jcole Post Number: 5602 Registered: 04-2005 |
quote: That's a Pink Floyd song. | ||
Cheddar_bob Member Username: Cheddar_bob Post Number: 1690 Registered: 10-2003 |
I've heard about this "Pink Floyd". Apparently it's all the rage amongst the kids these days. | ||
Johnlodge Member Username: Johnlodge Post Number: 9270 Registered: 10-2003 |
Pink Floyd, doesn't she sing that "I'm Coming Up So You Better Get This Party Started" song? | ||
Bigb23 Member Username: Bigb23 Post Number: 3577 Registered: 11-2007 |
Pink, and Floyd Tillman ? Actually, I have "Pickin on Floyd" on CD. "Careful with that Axe, Eugene" sounds pretty good with banjo. | ||
Bigb23 Member Username: Bigb23 Post Number: 3642 Registered: 11-2007 |
Lowell - just saw the expanded Archive section. I love it ! It will help me find remembered links for queries on the other threads. Although, just few glitches left. quote: (Message edited by Bigb23 on February 04, 2009) | ||
Gistok Member Username: Gistok Post Number: 6111 Registered: 08-2004 |
Lowell et al... We no longer smell that acrid smell of leaves burning curbside in the fall... We no longer hear the jingling sound of the Good Humor mans bells clanging down a shaded Elm lined street... We no longer hear the sounds of the produce man driving down the street with his loudspeaker blairing "Strawberries Strawberries... 3 quarts for a dollar"... We no longer see the shimmer of silver of fathers change at the end of his work day looking for Mercury Dimes or Buffalo Nickels... We no longer hear the freighters blaring their distant fog horns as the ore laden leviathans ply the Detroit River from Lake St. Clair... We no longer smell the burgers grilling on the lunch counter at S.S. Kresge's while paying for our nickel candy bar... We no longer lick the stamps purchased at school for the government Savings Bonds book, or for those of the S&H Green Stamps... But we still hear the Ciccada singing their songs from the tree tops in the heat of an August evening, as they have done so for millenia... (Sorry... I just had a 1960's Maya Angelou moment... ) | ||
Kathinozarks Member Username: Kathinozarks Post Number: 1862 Registered: 11-2006 |
Gistok, you made me sad, then brought me out of it with the cicadas. Thanks! My husband says he can still hear them in his head well into the winter months. ReeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrRee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrr rrrrReeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrr | ||
Tponetom Member Username: Tponetom Post Number: 368 Registered: 06-2007 |
Gistok: "(Sorry... I just had a 1960's Maya Angelou moment... )" No,there is no time, specific, to those delights. The reverie of those reverberations had no beginning nor do they have an ending. The venues may change but the euphoria they exude is forever constant. | ||
Kathinozarks Member Username: Kathinozarks Post Number: 1869 Registered: 11-2006 |
OMG, I love that. |
