Over the years I watched the gentrification of Charlotte NC's economically depressed inner city. For whatever reason it was done--logic, profit motive, real estate development, etc.--I had a front-row seat as a letter carrier. I would deliver mail in places where gunshots were a common background noise, drug deals were open and going on in plain sight, police crime scene tape was like a bright yellow Easter decoration on every block. Fights and screams and threats of violence was something you tuned out and walked through; garbage was piled high from time to time, and stray mutts ran loose while trained attack dogs were chained in about one of of every three yards.
Despite the crime, these neighborhoods were gorgeous. Hilly streets. Enormous hardwood trees everywhere. And even the poverty of the then-current owners and renters could not hide the former beauty of most of the faded old homes that had been built when these neighborhoods were where the people with higher paying jobs had once lived.
And then...poof! The investors came in and started buying up the houses. If the homes were rentals, the new owners waited until leases were done and did not renew. Once the tenants were gone they boarded up the structures until 50-75% of the neighborhoods were vacant. They bought apartments and multi-family units and knocked them over.
After that...the Yuppies moved in. They fixed up the old houses and turned them into attractive and now high-dollar properties. Lawns were seeded and maintained. Flower gardens were planted. Street lights were repaired and replaced. The police were suddenly present as smiling security and not as brutal enforcers. New buildings sprouted where the low-rent apartments had once stood. Nice shops, neighborhood bodegas, boutiques, restaurants--all of these appeared.
It only took, on average, about six years or so for these various neighborhoods to be transformed from poor to middle class. All are easily accessible to downtown Charlotte. The old cars that once rattled around the streets were suddenly replaced with shining, new sedans--Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, Audi--in freshly paved driveways and on roads gleaming with newly pressed asphalt.
Where did the poor go? In the most massive part of the irony of it all, the white flight that had been from urban to suburban has been reversed. The poor blacks, Hispanics, and Asians I once delivered mail to are now in those suburban houses where the white folk had retreated a few decades back. They just switched places, like a tide ebbing and flowing, but populations being moved by the gravity of money instead of the Moon.
Recently I took a drive through several of the old neighborhoods where I used to deliver mail. These were places many letter carriers couldn't wait to move out of because of the crime and poverty and the labor of avoiding dog bites and dodging bullets (but where I worked for about twelve years). Now, sparkling with safety, not much breaks the silence. All we saw were a few kids riding their bikes and some young moms pushing baby strollers. And the rambling ranch houses one could have bought for $30K in 1995 when I started carrying mail? A lot of them are still there, but you'd hardly recognize them with poured concreted driveways, second-floor additions, fresh paint, and $700K price tags.
Nothing moves humans like the power of cash. Or lack thereof.
According to Robert Graves, that nastiest of curses (you know, the one that begins with “f”) is derived from the Celtic word fachen, which means, literally, to seize.
I had been holding down the route of another carrier who was out on maternity leave. She was going to be gone for a couple of months, so I was getting spoiled doing her route. It was a nice one in a safe, secure neighborhood with lots of trees and wide lawns. A pleasure to walk.
One particular elderly couple had taken to talking to me every day. Eventually, they began to expect me to take a seat on their porch if the weather was really hot and humid and they’d offer me a glass of tea or a soft drink so I could cool off for a few minutes and talk with them. They liked square dancing and, it ended up, had met my in-laws who were also into that.
I enjoyed the brief respites from the labor of lugging the mail across that section of the route. On the occasions when they weren’t at home, they would leave me a canned soft drink in the mailbox and it would always be frosty since it would be in one of those can insulators. I’d take the drink and the packet of crackers that would also be left for me. It was all rather pleasant.
The only drawback to this section of the route was a particularly nasty Dalmatian that lived across the street from the old couple. I’d have to pass the dog each day and it would roar and bear its fangs at me and I always thought blessed be the fence-builders, for my ass is safe. But I knew that if that dog ever got out, I’d be in big trouble. Some dogs, you just know are going to tear you apart if they get the chance. This was one of those.
A day came; you get into a groove after a while and it’s all very comfortable doing a route. You cross this street, you walk through this yard, you detour around this flowerbed, and you walk up this set of steps. The day was nice, not too hot, and partly cloudy, I was in the zone, and across the street from the old couple’s house. I walked past the fence where the Dalmatian usually waited to snarl, growl, and slobber at me. But he wasn’t there and I figured he was in the house.
I was wrong.
The dog came roaring at me as I approached the front steps. He was out in the yard and I didn’t see him until he was bearing down on me full speed. The dog’s owner was standing about twenty feet away, watching, talking on a cell phone. I froze. The owner continued to stand and talk. The dog ran toward me and all I could see were teeth.
Just about the only thing you can do in a situation like this is to get your mailbag between your flesh and the dog’s jaws. At the last possible instant, I was able to do this. I dropped the mail I was carrying and put my satchel between my legs and the dog’s muzzle. The dog bit the mailbag instead of me, tore at it, and actually tugged me from side to side (and I’m not a small man).
I looked up. The owner was still talking on the phone, casually, as if nothing was going on.
The dog let go of the bag and lunged at my legs. And once more I got the bag down low enough so that he got a mouthful of canvas instead of my calves. I screamed for some help from the dog’s owner who continued to chat on the cell phone. There was another lunge, and the Dalmatian got canvas again, tearing at it.
Finally, the dog’s owner put the phone in his pocket and walked over, very casually, as if this were no big deal. He grabbed the dog by the collar and pulled him away, the hound slobbering and snapping and growling all the while until he was shoved into the house.
The dog’s owner stood at the front door and looked at me, saying nothing. I looked at him.
And at the top of my lungs I burned his ears with my rage. I stood there, surrounded by the mail I’d had to drop to defend myself while he talked on his cell phone. Larry Flynt wouldn’t print what I yelled. The dog owner said nothing and retreated into the house while I picked up the scattered letters and magazines.
Shaken, my head aching, the blood pounding in my ears, I continued my route. It was some time before my heart stopped hammering in my chest. Back at my postal vehicle, I just sat and collected my wits. This happens a lot, but I never get used to it. All you can do is try to put it out of your mind.
The next day, the dog was behind the fence again. No one else was there. I delivered that mail and crossed the street to the old couple’s house. The woman opened the door a crack as I was placing the mail in the box.
“Hello,” she said to me from behind the door. I could just see her in the space she had opened.
“Hi,” I said. “How are you today?”
She ignored the greeting. “Was that you yesterday yelling across the street?”
“Oh. Yes, ma’am. The guy over there let his dog out on me and wouldn’t get it off of me.”
She closed the door without another word.
I never saw either of them again, and that was the end of the soft drinks and packs of crackers waiting for me in their mailbox.
