No Place Like Home

Brilliant songwriters have a way of taking words and music and striking a chord that resonates in all of us. Billy Joel's brilliance is pounded out in his 1982 song, "Allentown," one that still rings in my head, and reminds me of who I am, and from where I came.

No, I've never been to Allentown, Pennsylvania, but, like many others, I came from a place much like it. My Allentown is called Flint, Michigan. Flint wasn't a steel town, but a town of car factories. One day, the folks with all the money, the same folks for whom the town was built, left. They left for new places like Mexico, because a 4.5 billion-dollars-a-year profit was somehow not enough. Free enterprise, ya know. It's the American way.

But tell that to the tens of thousands of Americans in that town left with nothing but unemployment, crime, and hungry children.

That, and Billy Joel's words.

"Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line"

As a kid, I stood in the unemployment line with my dad, for hours. There were a lot of desperate people there, and it's an awful feeling.

"Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved"

I remember my eighth grade history teacher constantly reminding us that if we worked hard, if we behaved, if we attended school everyday, we too, could share in the American Dream. A lot of people believed those words. I believed them, and was one of many standing empty handed when it came time to live my American Dream. No one expects to be handed anything, but, what happened to those promises?

"So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke,
Chromium steel
And we're waiting here in Allentown"

When I was working three jobs to pay for college and my step-father was hounding me about getting a real job with good pay, and my college advisers said that if I studied math education I was guaranteed a career, I found a way to get my graduation. But I still had not learned what was real. Like when the only horse in a one-horse town runs off, and leaves you stranded. No jobs for thousands meant no jobs for a shiny, new, wanna-be teacher. Factories, schools, and dreams had all been shut down. I applied to a couple hundred schools. I went to over a hundred interviews. More than ninety of those folks bothered to send me a letter to say "sorry, we don't need you, but thanks for your inquiry." I kept those letters in a stack bounded with rubber bands for years, to remind me where I came from.

"But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away"

Yep, the biggest labor union of all started in Flint. Where are they, now?

"Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting up today

And it's getting very hard to stay"

Well, I did get up, everyday. One day, I got up and left. I got a job in Texas, and I'm doing the best I can. I've been doing it for 22 years, now, and I still have a lot to do. That's the real American dream.

The thing is, I left my hometown, but it has never left me. Everything I ever learned about life is somehow attached to that experience. I doubt I'll ever forget, but if I do, there's always Billy Joel's song to remind me.