Negril Notes

Why do the windows have to be broken?

January 9, 2007

The answer comes back, “they have to be.”

I always notice this same building, next to the train tracks, abandoned, a five story walk up close to the “bad” part of town. Just past the Temple Train Station heading into Center City, a block from a beautiful gold domed church, or maybe its a mosque. A well built brick structure, old, but not ancient. Wood framed broken windows, flat roof intact, no apparent fire damage, standing like a bored centurion at the edge of blighted North Philly.

I noticed how I always ask the same curious question, “Why do the windows have to be broken?”

Why not, “Why are the windows broken?” or even, “Who broke them windows?”

I wonder if the question stems from residual institutional racism, abandoned broken windowed buildings are usually on the wrong side of the tracks.” I pondered that for a moment.

Maybe it was some self window breaking guilt. I was raised Catholic, guilt is a part of the doctrine (I even feel guilty writing that).

I grew up in rural suburban New Jersey, as a kid my friends and I would break windows in abandoned houses, we never asked why. Did those windows have to be broken? I guess so. They just had to be, and it fell upon us to break them, though usually by the time we discovered the house the windows were already broken.

Someone should board them up.

Vinny  

Filed under: Ode, Philly