The American dream’s dark side

I wasn’t really surprised when the Wall Street blew apart over the collapse of the Lehman Brothers bank earlier this week.

I had seen tell-tale signs of the impending doom in the US — not in the glitzy streets of New York, but in the serene backwaters of Michigan during a recent visit.

In all my previous US trips, I had always stayed in the big cities — New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle. So when I stayed in Ypsilanti, a small town in the eastern part of Michigan close to Detroit and  the southern tip of Canada, to be with my daughter during her summer vacation, it was a refreshing experience. The frenetic tempo so typical of all American metros was totally absent. 

Ypsilanti is no pastoral place though. It is an urban centre in its own right but minus the
rush of things you notice in cities. In fact, my first impressions of the town were quite enchanting. One evening, I  noticed a family — mom and dad on their bicycles followed by a little army of their kids — five sons and daughters of varying ages — all on their own bikes pedalling down a cycling trail in the woods along the Huron river placidly flowing by. It almost looked like a scene from the Sound of Music.

As I walked along the river, I found another family — each member in his/her own canoe, rowing downstream and chatting merrily.  A little ahead, you could see a dog jumping faithfully into the river to fetch a stick as soon as his master threw it across the expanse of water, swimming like an ace Olympian and dutifully coming back with the stick.

During my month-long stay, serene scenes like these were a regular sight wherever I went around in Ypsilanti, a historic town tracing its origin to the pre-Independence colonial era with quaint, old European style houses, clean and broad roads, sprawling parks, and a town square called Depot Town resembling a town square in a typical Clint Eastwood western. 

But beneath this serenity, I saw enough disturbing signs of the doom that has
been gathering on America’s economic shores. Houses after houses on almost all streets — well preserved but empty — with big canvas banners hung from their
balconies or cardboard signs greeting at the front porches that read, ‘Now leasing’, ‘On Rent’, ‘For Sale’. This was direct evidence

I notice of how so many people  have lost their homes to the “sub-prime” mortgage crisis in the US that has hit the American financial world so hard.

I heard of many tales of middleclass families, having lost their homes, living in trailers or the ones looking for shelters for the homeless, albeit the “trailer people” can’t be easily seen since they are banished to the distant quarters on the town’s periphery because of the “nuisance” they cause to the folks living in nice houses!

In Ypsilanti, I often saw young men and women — most of them black — sitting idly with bottles of beers on the front steps  of their houses and chatting, or people
moving in rusty, beat-up cars. I once saw a white guy rummaging through the rubbish can outside a utility store and muttering  to himself.

I also heard many tales of lost jobs and broken homes and marriages in Michigan, which once boasted of pride of place in the US economy due to Detroit  being the auto capital of the world, and which now is placed in the bottom five American states. This is the dark reality  beneath Ypsilanti’s serenity that told me  of the unfolding American tragedy reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 1930s in the US.

However, with luck, Ypsilanti can ride out the storm. The town’s life revolves around and depends on Eastern Michigan University. With over 23,000 students on the university’s roll — a sizeable chunk of them being foreign students who bring in huge revenue by way of fees — life in the town can surely hope to go on.