I wasn\u2019t much aware of discrimination until I was in elementary school in Kettering, Ohio in the 1960\u2019s. Kettering was a suburb of a booming Dayton. Back then, Dayton was a \u201cheavy\u201d industry town with Frigidaire, Delco, and National Cash Register all having big assembly plants. And of course, there was Wright Patterson Air Force Base north of town, the biggest employer. It was, and still is, a major Base, but back then it was a Strategic Air Command base as well (SAC). Huge B-52 bombers with nuclear bomb payloads flew low over our house on course to land at Wright-Pat. The garage door would go up and down by itself as they came in a few hundred feet above the roof, receiving some \u201ctop secret\u201d transmission I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Frigidaire, Delco and NCR were all in the south part of town. You could have a good paying union job on the assembly line, and live in Kettering. Racial discrimination wasn\u2019t so much a thing in Kettering \u2013 or maybe it was everything; it was a single race town. There were only three black kids in my school, and two were in my Scout Troop as well. I don\u2019t know how much discrimination they faced, though I expect there was a lot. We didn\u2019t talk much about race. We just were friends, and it wasn\u2019t an issue we discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I did understand living \u201con the Hill\u201d or in the \u201cPlat\u201d. Dad was the General Manager of one to the two television stations in town, WLW-D. We lived \u201cup on the hill\u201d, on a street named for a Kentucky bourbon, Echo Springs. I had a 1950\u2019s childhood in the sixties: we played in the woods and on the streets, out from after breakfast to home for dinner. Our gang of kids all lived nearby and road our bikes all over lower Kettering. We could walk to school at Southdale Elementary, and, then, when we moved onto Van Buren Junior High School, raise a lot of \u201chell\u201d in the neighborhood and on the school buses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cplat\u201d was the Huber Homes built on land to the southwest of \u201cBig Hill\u201d. They were sandwiched in all the way up to South Dixie Highway, with the Delco and Frigidaire plants just across the street. Dad\u2019s TV station was down that way as well, making it an easy commute for him. But even though my \u201cgang\u201d got in trouble from time to time, at school you always heard people blame any mishap on the kids \u201cfrom the Plat\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t think they ever got in trouble for what we did, but they seemed to get blamed for about everything else. \u201cPlat\u201d kids were \u201ctrouble\u201d we were told, though some of them became my friends at Van Buren. I don\u2019t think that I realized the economic or regional discrimination back then. Lots of the kids who lived in the Plat had parents who came North from Appalachia to work in the factories. Looking back \u2013 I understand now that accent and income pegged those kids as \u201ctrouble\u201d more than their actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After ninth grade, Dad got a promotion, and we moved back to Cincinnati. It was the only move that I remember complaining about \u2013I was just about to go to Fairmont West High School, and I was going to lose my friends. But that was the \u201cfamily business\u201d, we moved when Dad needed us to move \u2013 four times while I was in school. So it was high school at Wyoming in Cincinnati, an up-scale suburb was a racially diverse population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But being racially diverse didn\u2019t mean that the students were all that integrated. We all were in class and played sports together. Bob and I were the only white sprinters on the track team, but there wasn\u2019t much socializing after. It was the early 70\u2019s, and there were still unwritten lines that didn\u2019t seem to get crossed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All that memory came flooding back last week when I read the local posts on Facebook. What used to be the gossip at the Nutcracker Restaurant or an article in the Pataskala Standard <\/em>now is the fodder for chatter in the \u201cPataskala Group\u201d. School\u2019s out, and there are kids out on the street. It\u2019s reminiscent of my Kettering days: kids riding in packs on bikes \u2013 the \u201cHuffy Gang\u201d, and middle schoolers and high school freshmen walking in groups down the roads. There are few sidewalks in Pataskala. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of them are harmless \u2013 headed to the Dairy Hut<\/em> for the soft-serve cone, or up to Taco Bell<\/em>. But, as in every small town, there are kids out looking for trouble. Petty vandalism, snagging unattended bicycles from front yards, and harassing adult motorists by refusing to leave the middle of the road is a their version of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in the Pataskala Facebook forum they are summarized as one of three kinds of kids. The first \u201cbad kids\u201d are \u201cskaters\u201d: kids with a skateboard attached at all times. There are lots of good kids that skateboard: it requires a high degree of physical skill, technique, and \u201cpractice man, practice\u201d. But to the unknowing adult it\u2019s the \u201cskater look\u201d that condemns them. Oh, and the fact that they ride down the streets, and perform tricks off of whatever curb or rail they can find. Those kids could use a skatepark rather than condemnation, but with funds always short for the Parks and Recreation Department, and soccer the \u201cking of the fields\u201d, a skatepark isn\u2019t coming soon to Pataskala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the other groups that gets blamed for being \u201crotten\u201d in the summer time, are defined by their residence, and thus their income. There are the \u201cKids in the Greens\u201d, the local government subsidized housing, and the \u201cTrailer Park Kids\u201d. They catch the blame for most of the \u201ckid trouble\u201d in this small town, unfair to all of the \u201cgood\u201d kids who live in the same locations. It\u2019s short hand for low income kids, and that\u2019s just as wrong now as it was when the kids \u201cfrom the Plat\u201d got harassed back in good old Kettering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I spent eight years as the Dean of Students, the discipline guy, at the local high school. I knew the \u201crough\u201d kids that lived in the Greens or the Trailer Park. But I also knew the \u201cgood\u201d kids, trying to do the right thing, who lived in those areas. And there were kids who lived in the affluent areas, Beachwood Trails or the Oaks, who were plenty as \u201crough\u201d as those kids living in apartments or double-wide\u2019s. It\u2019s was always about the kid, not the location or the money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Folks in Pataskala need to get that right. Skaters<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Trailer Park Kids<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"