Book notes - Florida by Lauren Groff

Northern Florida is cold in January and I walk fast for warmth but also because, though the neighborhood is antique—huge Victorian houses radiating outward into 1920s bungalows, then mid-century modern ranches at the edges—it’s imperfectly safe. There was a rape a month ago, a jogger in her fifties pulled into the azaleas; and, a week ago, a pack of loose pit bulls ran down a mother with a baby in her stroller and mauled both, though not to death. 

It’s not the dogs’ fault, it’s the owners’ fault! dog lovers shouted on the neighborhood email list, but those dogs were sociopaths.

When the suburbs were built, in the seventies, the historic houses in the center of town were abandoned to graduate students who heated beans over Bunsen burners on the heart-pine floors and sliced apartments out of ballrooms. When neglect and humidity caused the houses to rot and droop and develop rusty scales, there was a second abandonment, to poor people, squatters.

Groff, Lauren. Florida (p. 2). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

The last paragraph describes what happened to Brockport, NY, but it was in the 60s. The slumlords bought up these old beautiful Victorian houses, cut them up into apartments, filled them with college tenants on semester long leases, and let them disintegrate. Destroyed the charming, family friendly village I grew up in.

Life goes on and just leaves us grieving for the beauty and goodness that existed before profit making came to town and exploited it,

I wrote a little book about it way back in 2014.