3/8/2019

We went to Brockton City Hall today to check on the zoning status of a house we were interested in.  Brockton is a city that today is principally known for its drug dealers and street shootings.  But the City Hall recalls a day when it was a prosperous, proud community, the capital of America’s shoe industry.  During the 1980s and 90s Dominican drug dealers carried on a lively trade in cocaine from the City of Brockton.  Today the immigrant community is largely dominated by Cape Verdeans who are generally hardworking and ambitious.  They may be the salvation of the city if it can be saved.  The geologic feature that gave birth to industry here was the small river that powered the shoe factories.  The river seems to barely exist today.  It is not a great transportation hub or desirable city center for food, restaurants and theaters so until something changes it may be destined to be a holding place for the poor.

We climbed the stairs to the Mayor’s office off the central rotunda, and then another level, all was in disarray.  The elevator was being rebuilt, there were a few workmen, a few office workers.  Usually in town and city halls most employees have gone home late on a Friday afternoon.  We were going to the top floor for the Building Department where a woman helped us find the information we needed.  Going up the stairs, first we came to the main floor where the mayor’s office is located.  Here, around the rotunda are the names of Brockton men who were killed or died in the Civil War.  There are marble reliefs of marching armies with generals at their head. And to the left, opposite the Mayor’s office is a hallway with grand pictures of scenes from the Civil war.  It is an imposing and awe-inspiring room which gives you the feeling of the importance and centrality of that war to the people of Brockton only a few generations removed, and it gives you the feeling of the vitality of the city at the time. 

I was introduced to Brockton in 1978.  I was 22 and I began working for a young carpenter, the same age who lived in Duxbury but had graduated from Brockton High.  The city was going to the dogs he said and they had moved east toward the coast and out of the city.  His family had immigrated from Sweden for work in the shoe factories.  His grandfather was a carpenter and had worked a lifetime in the city and taught him enough so that he could start his own business barely out of his teens.  His father had gone the public service route, probably beginning in construction and then becoming the building inspector and finally retired as the Postmaster General of Brockton.  My young employer went on to become a successful designer in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I, having just left the liberal institution of Umass Amherst was horrified at his attitude to the poor people on welfare who were moving into the city.  The last of the shoe factories were closing down then but many of his friends had jobs or were just losing jobs at shoe factories. 

I mentioned my Brockton experience to another friend and he recounted how he had been doing survey work within sight of city hall when a police officer came up to him and demanded to know where his ‘detail’ was.  It sounded as if the officer was shaking him down for money, he said.  The officer told him he had to have a f—ing detail and that just the other day a man had been shot to death on the bar on the corner of the street.  My friend begged off getting a detail but he remarked that the lot he was working on was littered with spent hypodermic needles.  He re-emphasized, “in sight of City Hall”. 

I have a few other memories of Brockton.  I was a substitute teacher briefly at Brockton High School.  It was the most highly regulated school I have ever been in, and probably for good reason.  I also have bad memories of a long ago divorce battle and the court house is something of a nightmare to pass by.

Driving through downtown the first thing you notice is that so many of the buildings are empty.  Many ex-industrial cities have become cultural meccas with trendy shops, restaurants, galleries and theaters.  No such thing is evident on a drive down Main Street Brockton.  Over regulation, high taxes, corruption, lack of good transportation into and out of the city, lack of a pool of educated workers, lack of safe, clean neighborhoods to live in and most of all lack of commerce and industry to create jobs all contribute to the demise of a once great city.  I do not know what can be done, but there is the potential to bring the city back to life if the right steps are taken and enough people are determined to make it happen and I know there are people who still believe deeply in Brockton and are proud of the city