The neighborhood is a concept of human settlements that is loosely defines as the people who reside in the dwellings next to and in some proximity to your own dwelling space. It was the people on each side, across the street and in some cases, on the other side of your backyard. The extent of the neighborhood varied by individuals and might stretch for an entire block or street in all directions. Before the introduction of the automobile, neighborhoods were more compact and consisted of the people who you met on your way to and from daily destinations. Even in small towns neighborhoods developed and were defined by acceptance or rejection of new residents. Some residents were never part of the neighborhood even though the live within the geographic confines of the theoretical boundary of the neighborhood.
Many neighborhoods developed around ethnic affiliations and were very homogenous in their nature. Civil rights and efforts at desegregation coupled with the upward mobility of minorities stirred up many neighborhoods and diminished the dominant features of the settlement. The automobile allowed for people to economically stratify and populate outer regions beyond the old neighborhoods. People in their cars exited their home neighborhood, traveled through a irrelevant corridor and arrived at a second important neighborhood. It may be their work neighborhood. It might be their religious neighborhood. It might be the neighborhood of shopping. Whatever the other neighborhood was, it was arrived at after a solitary insular ride in a car.
While many Americans were traveling ever greater distances in their cars, others remained attached to the neighborhoods and saw the larger landscape as their neighborhood. When a person walks from home to store, the entire trip there and back is part of their larger neighborhood. They see and interact with many more people, both desirable and undesirable, along the way. When they ride in buses and subways they have a chance to see and meet people who would never be part of their experience otherwise. Anyone who eschews public transportation modes because of the perception of the frequency “undesirable” interactions are themselves complicit in diminishing the level of “desirable” interactions. The automobile created a filter effect that removed higher socio-economic persons from the public spaces of cities.
I have commuted by train into DC from Baltimore for 16 years. I ride with a man who has done it for 20 years and a woman who has for 11, although we have only known each other for a few of them. The ride is made with anywhere from 800 to 1000 people each way each day during the morning and afternoon rush hours. Ninety-eight percent of them I never have spoken with because they were merely passing through the traincar to get to somewhere else. Those people may be the huge fellow with a backpack that rivals his belly. Maybe it’s a woman towing a wheelie-bag filled with all her important work stuff that must be at hand every day. It could be the anxious man who must be at the vestibule door five minutes before we all arrive at the station so he can be out the door and ahead of the throng who will follow. There may be beautiful girls dressed more for a night out than for a day at work, but then I have no idea what their job might be. More people are centrist in their appearances, but there always is the type who is the transvestite man who feels more comfortable in his oddness than in men’s clothing. Some women are no different with their preferences. Short cropped hair, nose studs and a half dozen ear piercings sometimes does the advertising.
Then there is the man in his baggy suit who things he is well dressed. His satchel is overly stuffed with paperwork of dubious relevance. To him it is a sign of importance. I could describe archetypes for another dozen paragraphs, but the essential part is that these are people I have seen on and off for more than a decade and a half. I’ve watched people grow old, even as I myself was doing the same. I’ve seen new people arrive and stay. I’ve seen people move on and disappear. Some have gone to different jobs, different trains, or left this world all together. They are and were part of the neighborhood that is the transit corridor between Baltimore and DC.
When you more around at human speeds you get to see so much more than when you are confined to the metallic shell of a car on an increasingly confined highway. When you board a train for a 40 minute trip to work or home, there is a neighborhood that is created even for just that temporary interval.
The Car 5 Gang has been such a community for many years. We have seen people come and people go. Some are gone for good and seek not to ever gather again. Others go elsewhere and return as their circumstance permit. Some stay in touch and enjoy the continued albeit remote contact made possible by email, text messages, and websites. Others are not open to that communication. Everyone who happens by is a welcome part of the neighborhood. If they themselves are open to and compatible with the nature of the neighborhood, they stay. Otherwise they quickly move on.
Make no mistake about it, the train commute is an extension of the neighborhoods that each person lives in. While they may see hundreds of people on the street while walking to their place of work or back to the train, they get no time to interact in a social context. The train provides that dwell time when people are face to face and can be involved in a conversation and get to know each other. Then they get in their cars and drive alone to their house or apartment somewhere in the Baltimore region. It may be Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Harford, Anne Arundel or Howard counties. They will pass thousands of other solitary auto drivers in both directions and never interact with them except through expletives and digital gestures. Those people are not part of the neighborhood. They will never make you happy, share news of the arrival of a grandchild, grouse about a difficult boss or co-worker, hand you a cold beer on a hot Friday afternoon.
In the neighborhood, one person will say that Obama is the worst President we ever had, or that Congress is a bunch of spoiled brats who can’t get anything done. Others will say that the President inherited a bad situation from his predecessor and just can’t get the massive snowball turned around in a mere two years. Taxes are too high and kill jobs, while others say the taxes need to be raised to pay for the things we need, like jobs. Some people in the neighborhood are directly paid by taxes while others work for businesses who get paid by taxes. We need not agree on anything, ever, unless we want to. We can still talk about other common concerns and share a pizza and beer and get together at a cookout or a nightclub. Like neighbors.
