Once upon a time, when I worked for the Johnstown newspaper, a left-wing summer intern felt the need to lecture the newsroom staff on racial relations.
We couldn’t understand the anguish of the black man is what he told us.
My response was that I wasn’t sure that this whitebread Westmont resident fully understood it, either. I’d gone to public school with young black men. I’m sure he had not.
I offered after the night shift ended to run him up to the Prospect section, then an area with a high crime rate, and drop him in the parking lot of what was then called the Frontier Club, a meeting place for doers of misdeeds.
Think of the Dexter Lake Club scene in the movie Animal House and you get the picture of what this big talker and small doer would have encountered
Said youth declined my offer, which meant he lived to impregnate a night reporter and unceremoniously dump her.
I guess he didn’t understand the anguish of the unwed mother.
That was an early introduction for me to the hypocrisy of the left. The lessons continue.
More recently, elites from outside of Johnstown are taking it upon themselves to remake the city by attempting to attract refugees who don’t necessarily speak English, may not possess marketable job skills, and largely would exist as the reason for all the local non-profits and foundations to solicit more federal funds to service this influx and in so doing feed their bloated, overpaid management.
A city and surrounding suburbs operating at a high level might be able to absorb such an inflow of refugees without major difficulty. But these refugees would be plopped down within the city limits, with the children attending a school district already notable for massive student underperformance. The economic health of the area remains on life support, so any jobs likely would not be great ones.
Did we mention the ballooning rate of serious crime?
The Hornerstown section of Johnstown hit the news over the past weekend when a man, woman and dog were found shot to death in their home. They’d been dead for days, according to reports.
The fact that no one seems to have heard the shooting, or felt it particularly noteworthy even if they did, speaks volumes.
Unlike the elites who would tell Johnstown residents what is good for them, or TV news types who mistake Dibert Street for “Dilbert Street,” I can actually say that I lived in Hornerstown for a time, attending the former Meadowvale Elementary School. Then it was two old buildings, since replaced by one building which at present is the district’s middle school.
My credentials from earlier life include lengthy residency at various locations in Walnut Grove, which became quite the garden spot when the Solomon Homes were constructed.
True, I also spent a lot of my younger years in the Oakland section, just beyond the city limits, but still in the Greater Johnstown School District.
Just to add to my firsthand knowledge of troubled neighborhoods, my first house was bought on Daniel Street, across from the Oakhurst Homes, another frequent scene of crime ranging from shootings on down.
Eventually, I voted with my feet to move to Southmont and get my son into a better school district.
It didn’t really bother me to live near the Oakhurst Homes, although a cousin and medal-winning veteran of the Vietnam War who I once had down for a poker game, told he that he’d never be back due to the neighborhood.
There were occasional problems, like two hit-and-runs on our cars, one in front of the house, with the perpetrator escaping, and the other in the rear, with the drunken driver unable to escape due to damage to his car.
I grabbed him, pulled him into my dining room, threw him on the floor and called the police. My wife, awakened from her sleep by the commotion, trudged down the steps and offered the guy a cup of coffee!
But I was never shot, or even shot at in Oakhurst or elsewhere. The house was never burglarized. I did, however, have a battery stolen from my Jeep CJ7.
This was in the early 1980s, so I am confident the area has worsened, just like Moxham, Old Westmont and various other formerly solid neighborhoods.
My street in Southmont has taken on shaky qualities of late, too.
Evidence pours in almost daily that the city and its suburbs are on the decline. There’s no need for the elites who hide in their exclusive suburban homes, or even chose residency in other counties, to try to accelerate that decline while enriching themselves with their myopic vision projects.
Sam Ross Jr's site 