The neighborhoods of the city all-seemed to enjoy the same level of basic services during my growing up years (1939 – 1961) although, occasionally, there developed some recurring disagreements directed at the City Council and the School Department as to where the new schools were to be located and which schools would receive the newest reading material in the coming year. Of course, the next question focused on which schools would need to make do with partially tattered books that already sat in the city’s dusty warehouses.
Now, in a perfectly egalitarian, civil government, this legalistic dilemma would never have raised its ugly head, but given the well-known history of imperfect human beings going back to the Greeks in ancient Athens, it was generally accepted – we, French-Canadians, certainly did – that all would turn out for the better if families in the more prosperous and influential Upper Highlands received just rewards for their extra industry while those people of more modest means like the folks living in Little Canada, the Acre or Lower Centralville enjoyed a more Spartan lifestyle, and one which enriches the very character of the culturally disadvantaged and builds the needed backbone for success.
Who could possibly have objected to such an allocation of benefits?
More later!
Work in Progress – WIP