Crass Country: lewark, 'N.
J.
To the Meadows (For Stephen Crane)
HOMAGE TO STEPHEN CRANE,
they said; we will buy the house where
he was born and preserve it for all who wish to come and see the glory
of our city. So they bought it (is it true that it was once a nigger whore
house?) but no one had troubled to examine it first, and the builder of
the house had not thought of posterity. The house, near the tracks of the
now electrified Pennsylvania Railroad, was beyond saving, fit only for
lost and unknown slum people, but not for the memory of Stephen Crane
as school teachers would like him remembered. Well, we will tear it down,
they said, and we wili have a little park here, perhaps a playground. But
time passes and the house stands yet, boarded up, its porch ripped off,
(did someone need firewood?) rotting on a lonely little street where you
can hear
Twilight In Turkey
being played in the neighborhood saloon.
So this is the city where Stephen Crane was born, and that says
Upton Sinclair "... goes to prove that a genius may spring up anywhere
in the world"; the city Theodore Dreiser called lovely; the city Harold
Stearns said "•.. there was nothing to do in ... except work-or get
drunk. Or, on Sundays take walks."
So this is the place.
Railroad stations: aU the regular lines except one. The Lehigh Valley
Railroad Station has been abandoned. There is a For Rent sign out and
that was funny enough for
The New
Yorker
to write about.
One airport: an expensive proposition, accusations of graft, trials,
heartaches, movie star sticks tongue out when landing, apologizes later,
second trial vindicates city authorities, no graft just carelessness, crash.
Streetcars and busses: five cents a ride, no transfers.
Traffic regulations: keep right, don't talk back to the cops, no
turDI
on red tolerated under any circumstances.
Accommodations: hotels, etc. But remember that the toilet in the Free
Public Library is locked. However, anyone can have the key. You don't
even have to fill out an application. All you have to do is go to the
right
desk and ask the right attendant for the right key. But they do say once
a guy got sore and used the telephone booth.
Motion Picture Houses: almost sixty including a couple of
Jim
Crow places.
A tremendous
4~
million dollar Cathedral still unfinished after 42
years, but capable of use on ultra important church occasions.
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