I have two houses and two refrigerators. The one in the city had an ice maker that worked great until some summer tenants neglected to close the freezer door. That neglect turned the-little-ice-maker-that-could into one that couldn’t. While the door was open, the machine so over extended itself that it made enough ice to flow out through the freezer onto the floor, ruining the floor and causing the ceiling in the room below the kitchen to collapse. The floor has just dried out enough to consider replacement. Likewise, the beams in the exposed ceiling are just about dry enough to be fixed as well. We had a very wet autumn here in the great state of New York, and the heat had just come up, allowing the possibility of drying out a fighting chance.
When I called the repair people, they said they would have to come out for a diagnostic visit. The charge would be $178.00. They came, they diagnosed. Several weeks later, the company called to request a down payment of $688.70 for their next visit. We are still talking to the credit card company about cancelling the first charge and have bought two very reliable ice cube trays. I don’t know how to charge Mr. Fix It, the appliance repair company, for the aggravation. I’ll just put it on my stress credit card, which is once again over-charged for the month.
The second ice maker is in our country place. It hasn’t worked since the day we bought the place eight years ago. Upstate it is hot during the summer, and we have eight ice trays, all blue, one for every year we’ve owned the place. A plumber came to fix the washing machine, charged us $60.00, and offered to fix the ice maker. We actually asked him if he knew anything about ice makers in an opportunistic citified approach to his presence. He said, “Sure.” With a pinch of a wire, the upstate ice maker started to make the same noises that the downstate ice maker used to make.
Needless to say, we made ourselves a tall drink. Is there any meaning to this modern Aesop “City Mouse/Country Mouse” tale? Or is it just an anti-urban screed? Or a pro-rural parable?
Indeed, it is both of those things, plus one. In New York City – a place I couldn’t love more – people with apartments like mine are meant to be so filthy rich that we can enjoy paying someone $700.00 plus for an ice maker repair. My place is a parsonage, owned by my employer. People on my block have been watching gentrification with glee – all but us. We aren’t of their class. Not one, but two, giant high rises are going up as I write. One will take out the morning light; the other will remove the remaining afternoon light. All the bodegas are already gone. They are replaced with fancy sunglass “boutiques” or coffee that costs $5 a cup. In Fishkill, New York, people are not as captive to, or captivated by, money. That matters in odd ways, not all fully romanticizable. We call these matters gentrification–the occupation of place by the gentry. Others have even more interesting names.
Academician George Lipsitz has coined a concept, “white spatial imaginary,” which means gentrification plus its pal, racism. If you’re not white or don’t think white, you aren’t part of the gentry. You are an extra or an outsider. People look at you on “their” corners with suspicion.
Another word for gentrification and more is rasquachismo. The scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto describes this Chicano point of view – Rasquache – as something that people use to combat gentrification or being turned into an outsider in your own apartment or on your own block. Roberto Bedoya tells the story of a storytelling kid in South Tucson, who mapped routes that involved as little sun as possible. (I map the exact opposite routes on my way to work.) Amalia Mesa-Bains calls rasquachismo “the capacity to hold life together with bits of string, old coffee cans, and broken mirrors in a dazzling gesture of aesthetic bravado.” Another image often used is repurposing a tire into a flowerpot. Activist Jenny Lee coined a very interesting word, “Placekeeping.”
What do these big ideas have to do with my bi-location or my two ice makers? Or keeping a place together? I can only work in the city and can only live in the country. Call me double-minded.
I am not alone. The place I really want to keep doesn’t exist yet. It is a place where culture is as important as capital. A place where people know how to fix things and do so without extortion. A place where people know how to appreciate a good story. A place where people feel at home and walk to work in the sun.
Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper is senior minister at Judson Memorial Church, co-founder of New York City New Sanctuary Movement and Bricks and Mortals: RemoveThePews.com. Author of 35 books, most recently I Heart You Francis: Love Letters from a Reluctant Admirer. She also grows a good tomato.
