doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com They call this progress

I just read through this thread again, and nowhere did I find a word against the PEOPLE living in apartments or lower income housing. What I deplore, is tearing out usable facilities to build 8-900,000 dollar edifices that to a large degree stand empty, when we have a huge surplus of unsold homes in this country. Many of the "low income" built to minimum spec tracts do turn to **** in a short time. And living in a lot of substandard apartments is like living in a rabbit warren. I resent having people lumped into a category of "boors". When I lived in Halifax, and when we were back there this summer, I really didnt notice the good citizens of good neighborhoods tearing out their open space and recreational facilities to help the underprivileged. I applaud what was done in your mining community. I am sure people were appreciative. We have been doing that kind of thing in the States for a long time, believe it or not. Why even out here "in the middle of no where" we do it locally without public funding as a community share program. It wasnt invented in Nova Scotia.

KY Jon, that's a hilarious story. Kinda like how the idiots around here complain about the small airport - which was here before any of them ever were born.

King,I just don't know where you are coming from. No one is looking down on apartment dwellers. I'll bet those apartments shown cost at least as much per month as the payment on a modest house. As for land being so easy to come across I can tell you that in more and more populated areas it is getting very difficult to find any land free for recreational use. Nova Scotia? A fantasy land. Spend some time in Houston and you'll sing a different song.

Last Dollar and Greg: Read the thread , the references to those living in apartments "like rats" and match-box houses that over time "turn to shit." "It's shocking that people live in such match boxes."

It is boorish---"ill-bred or clumsy" OED---of those who generalize from their lofty perches of aesthetic taste and good fortune about the tens of millions living in apartments and modest housing.

As for Texas, I beat a rabbit path from Houston to Clear Lake for months on end and hunted westward with NASA engineers. All I saw was uninhabited land to the horizon, scrubby to my eyes. People would have made an improvement.

King, I'm surprised you can see the ground from way up there......

I didn't have to rise to read on the thread what you said you couldn't see, Last Dollar. But we should leave it there. I'm sensitive on the subject because of a lifetime of being welcomed in homes of those with less than I have who lived to a true scale of human values.

At table, back porch or parlour, they seemed to say "This is what we' have and you're welcome to our food and friendship." Many times, in many countries, I had more money in my pocket than they would make in a year. Their generosity illuminated my life. They often risked their lives to talk to me.

I'm certain you've had that good fortune, too, and are as grateful for it as I am.

King- my Nova Scotia amigo- I see that you have somehow become, unwillingly, a "new whipping boy" on this thread! There are no "right or wrong" sides to the views you raised (and I share with you in spirit)and friend Tim S. can rest easy- no movie quotes- just this: (1) a 1960's song written by Phil Ochs-"There but for Fortune Go You Or I" (2) a poem- author unknown to me- entitled "Richard Cory" and (3) a parable-again, author unknown- goes like this "One night an older man of means had a dream-in which Jesus told him that He would visit him soon- the man woke up, went to his office, and a ragged panhandler asked him for a handout- the man took him to a nearby diner and bought him a full meal-and went back to his office- days passed, and again at night, in a dream- he saw Jesus and asked Him why He hadn't paid him the visit that was promised- 'Ah, but I did- I was the homeless man you feed the other morning- did you think I might be coming to see you in a cloud of Light. trumpets blowing? I came that way to test you-and you did well'"!

King, that land you saw was owned by people who would no more have a trap range sitting on it than you would have a brothel in your own living room.

You're missing my point - those rats living in apartments are not poor rats, just rats. Those are not low rent apartments, just low quality of life apartments. As for the poor who live in low rent apartments....why is it they always seem to have a beer in hand and a cig hanging from their mouth? Many of the poor I see with my own eyes (not all but many) are poor because they can't handle money, not because they never had it.