DIARY
I found this picture posted at Greg Cumberford’s website.
It kind of shocked me with a sort of dejavu… the summer before last I watched this house burn down while I was apartment hunting.
I saw the smoke billowing toward the sky, so I parked at the Quik Stop at Court and Glenwood, and walked one block west. A crowd had gathered across two vacant lots, blocks from the historic site of the 37-38 Sit Down strike to watch one house collapse, another gutted by fire, and a third sufficiently damaged so as to warrant demolition.
When the original house (indicated by a pile of rubble in the picture) collapsed, the Kettering kids cheered.
Three families out on the streets… a lot to fucking cheer about there.
Three months later, a neighbor took me to task for photographing this site myself. He asked if I’ve ever lived in a house that’s burned down. I answered “no,” but I thought such things must be documented, and nobody else seemed willing to document them.
I found this sight through the Wikipedia article on Flint, which labeled the Hole and 3rd Avenue Neighborhood the “2nd worst neighborhood in Flint.” It’s splitting hairs, frankly, but this area is far from the bottom, and might actually be considered typical of Flint neighborhoods.
I just wish people looked a little closer before they spoke.
~ Connor