It Didn't Have To End Like This

We are all reduced by the way Cass died.

by Paolo Pezzotta

I'd just parked my car around the corner from a rental property I own in Northeast Philly. The home I now rented to others was my family home when I was a kid in the 1950s. As I walked up the block, I realized I was passing Cass and Ben's house on the corner, four doors down.

Ben was a small, cheerful man, and he ran a barber shop in their corner storefront. He was a lousy barber, but the saving grace of Ben's Army-style haircutting was his almost imperceptible ability as a sounding board for the momentous decisions of a young boy.

Cass was a little bigger than Ben, and she was right in your face when she spoke to you. Unlike most women of her day, she smoked cigarettes, even out in the yard, scandalizing the neighbors no doubt.

She was very direct and may have seemed gruff, but she was not. She was a bit hard of hearing and spoke loudly. The combination provided the perfect context for her "I-don't-have-time-for-bullshit" attitude.

After I left home to confront the world with a vision of independence that Cass validated and worldliness that Ben supported, I would see Ben and Cass tending their lawn when I visited my parents — both with their warm smiles; Cass with a smoke and Ben with a glass of red wine.

Ben died about 10 years ago. He'd stopped cutting hair about five years before that, so the shop's blinds had been down for almost 15 years. After Ben died, Cass' sister moved in, and the two women made a go of it. Her sister died about four years ago, and the loss of her sister's Social Security income probably put Cass beyond the edge financially.

Not having seen Cass in a while, I thought to stop by and say hello. Just as I rounded the corner, I saw two cop cars on the sidewalk with lights flashing. That terrific woman had died of heat-induced heart failure in the last heat wave. She could not afford to run the air conditioner.

How many ways can I sum this up? I could blame the dumb-ass policies of the last 50 years relative to urban planning, energy and the environment resulting in many looming crises, the skyrocketing price of oil being one of the symptoms. Or I could blame our acquiescence in the face of preposterous political decisions bordering on criminality that created a way for us to collectively squander a trillion dollars in Iraq while our economy falls apart. Or, I could blame the greedy bastards in the banking community who are more interested in collecting bond-placement fees than adding value as a basis for making money.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

I am not the person to a make case for returning to the 1950s. Like most folks that Ben and Cass would have liked, I am all about living in the present and leaning into the future. But the manner in which we as individuals and as a society are making our way forward is reducing our shared sense of ourselves as a community. We are all reduced by the way Cass died.

As a society, we do not care well for each other. The very process that makes it possible for us to ignore the needs of our neighbors, makes it easy (for those who want to) to manipulate us as individuals and as a group.

If we continue down this path, we will have no common sense of ourselves and be perfectly ripe for the kind of manipulation we have already begun to see. I don't know the answer, but we'd all better begin to get involved in fashioning a more cohesive way forward as a community or we'll senselessly lose a lot more than one terrific lady.

Goodbye, Cass.

Paolo Pezzotta is president of Integrated Transport Planning Inc. He works in sustainable transportation, infrastructure and policy. To respond to his Slant or submit one of your own, e-mail your 625 to 650 word submission to Brian Howard (bhoward@citypaper.net).