234
PARTISAN REVIEW
Across the street is the parking lot where used to be the heart of
this
neighborhood: the Hudson Tube station that was outgrown and destroyed.
But still there stands the bridge across the river with its unused tracks, and
on the dirty manila colored wall is still to be seen this statement in white
crudely painted letters: FREE THAELMANN; and that later addition
that is not a question, also done like the first in the middle of the night:
HOW ABOUT TORGLER.
No one in authority took any notice of these statements. At least
they
remain untouched. Maybe nobody knew, or maybe it wasn't close enough
to home to matter. But once somebody ran a red flag up the Liberty Pole
in Military Park above the ancient cannon. That's right out on Broad
Street and nobody could figure out how the hell anybody could do some–
thing like that right out in the open where there's sure to be people or
cars passing at any hour of the night, but you can rest assured that the
flag was hauled down, and the papers got some pretty hot letters.
The meadows are the dumping grounds for the city's garbage, and
it
is here that the first local Hooverville sprang up. It didn't last long. The
houses were torn down and the residents told to move on.
Every once
in
a while another colony of vagrants settles here, but it
is always destroyed before it gets too large to be dangerous. (Say a dozen
or so.) They build themselves houses: a thatch hut, a clay cottage, a tiny
bungalow of wood, materials from the dumps or the earth. They forage
food from the garbage, they get used to the perpetual stink, and some of
them have even been known to try and grow things.
They have then, integrity, and integrity is a challenge.
A pack of about
.15
wild dogs Mve come out of the Newark meadow3
and menaced persons in the vicinity of Doremus Avenue. The dogs pursued
two young women yesterday and put two men to flight today. Business men
in the section appealed.
...
The dogs usually roamed the meadows but
were driven by hunger.
.. .
A hunt resulted in the killing of
11
in a pack of
18.
The pack
Wa3
led
by a three.legged dog. The police were armed with
12
gage pump gum.
When
Me
dogs were cornered they charged at the police, who fired. The
police will return.
...
The police returned one hot day (temperature: 95)
because of com·
plaints received of vagrants who made their home in Haynes Avenue
dumps. They applied torches to the shacks and burned them to the ground.
A number of vagrants were arrested.
(Who complained? Who? The
shacks were half a mile away from anyplace.)
At one Sl/tack detectives
told
kim
(the vagrant)
to
take his belongings before they set fire to tke
mansion. He picked up his coat.
Tke police explained that tke men
had
been stealing material from the
dumps. Tke right to pick through
Me
city's garbage
has
been sold by tke
authorities.
. . .
There is gaiety in the city's thousand taverns. You can't get a seat
in
a movie on Saturday night, and on Sunday you can get all the answers.
