Rethinking Home

I have been thinking about my last post and feel oddly disturbed for dissing Levittown.

So, in the effort to relieve my guilt and to be fair, let me mention some of the upsides of Levittown.

In theory, Levittown embodied a promise: a piece of the American Dream for young, working class families. Here families could potentially own a single-family home and raise their kids in a safe and neighborly environment. And to some degree, this proved true in my case.

I grew up on a block with 14 other kids all within a year or two in age of one another. There was always someone to play with, someone to hang with. In the warm weather we hung out in the street playing frisbee, wiffle ball, and a game we just called chase, which involved teams and a kind of elaborate hide and seek that finding and capturing your opponents. We swam in above ground backyard pools (remember "Marco Polo," anyone?). We rode our bikes to the local parks or to the beach. In the evenings we sat on the curb or in someone's backyard, listening to the radio, talking, joking, flirting, being.

We were also well-supervised as every parent on the block had "bossing rights" over us and every parent knew every kid. Politeness required calling our friends' folks Mr. or Mrs., but the formality belied the familiarity that underwrote these relationships.

The homogeneity that the suburbs tends to promote can be insidious. On the other hand, last Spring, I was back in Levittown for a visit and spent a lovely Saturday having lunch with Lisa, Linda, Junior and Ant'ny... kids from the block now 20 plus years later. And, we picked up the conversation as if we'd seen each other yesterday. There is something to be said for this.