16 Jew-Lie (no antisemitism intended!)

This is a shot of the neighborhood beside and behind the shop where I work. I have had the opportunity to walk the streets back there and had the sense that there was a time--perhaps back in the 1950s--when this neighborhood was the epitome of the American Dream. Sure, the houses were small and tidy, but back then the "dream" was not that each American could have 4000 sq. ft. and a swimming pool, but that each could own something of a place of their own.

Today, the neighborhood behind the shop is the American nightmare: crack houses and other homes that are badly in need of major renovation, trash, junk, dead chickens (yes, I said dead chickens!) and other wreckage.

It's a different world from the one I live in, except that I am on the fringes of it for six to eight hours, Monday through Friday.