Day 6 - Roots

TODAY’S NUDGE: Write about your hometown, your roots, or where you come from.


When I think of roots, I think of family.  Where you grew up, where you called home.  I didn't always call Greenpoint home. I mean it was home, but it didn't feel like home.  I always felt like I belonged  somewhere else.  When I left, I couldn't wait to go back.  Miserable as I was when I was there, I wanted to go back.  I never made it back to stay.  It's not the healthiest place to live with millions and millions of gallons of oil sitting under almost the entire neighborhood. But I miss the familiarity of it, my family, and the food...by the gods I miss the damn food.  Polish food, Italian food, Chinese food.  I've yet to find anywhere that can match it.  I don't care how New York style you claim your pizza is, if you can fold it in half and isn't dripping grease, it's crap.  (No offense, but ya know)

But going back to family.  As I was writing my Word Press post, it occurred to me that my family that came here were dreamers.  Great grandparents on both sides came here with a dream.  Whether it was to live the American Dream or to make enough money here and achieve their dream back in there homeland I cannot say.  I truly can't speak on my maternal side, because I don't have any information.  On my paternal side, after they went back with my American born grandmother they bought property.  On that property they had a beautifully built home, with custom built in China cabinets and parquet floors that my grandfather built himself for my grandmother and her parents.  They had an orchard, a farm, live stock, this lovely home, a garden.  Then the war came.  The house got taken from them and they were forced to move.  Before all that, my grandfather was killed a by a sniper, their baby daughter (my father's sister) died, and my grandmother witnessed her uncle murdered by a band of soldiers (she said it was Mongolians) over a milk cow.  It was 25 years before my grandmother could come back to the states.  Her parents were able to return in the late 40s.  She didn't make it back until 1957 all because she wouldn't leave my father behind.  Even though my uncle begged her to do it.  Can you imagine?!
No wonder there was a love-hate thing between my father and uncle.

Greenpoint was once a blue color neighborhood, with factories like Leviton that made electrical sockets, dimmers, switches, etc.  The Domino Sugar Factory, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory, Williamsburg Steel that made elevator and fire doors, Corrugated Box Company, Fink Brothers Bridal Gown Factory...just to name a few.  My grandfather and uncle worked at Leviton, my mother at Fink Brothers, my father at Williamsburg Steel, my aunt at Corrugated Box.  Now, all those factories are gone.  The sugar factory is being turned into housing, retail, and office space as well as a park. I don't know the fate of the other buildings, but I know many of them have been converted into lofts, apartments, or condos.  It isn't my Greenpoint any more.  It's expensive, it's being gentrified, they say they yuppies/hipsters are taking over.  When I look at photos, I almost don't recognize the place anymore.

I come from a line of dreamers, as I am sure many of us do.  Those who came from another country in search of a better life for them and their children.  Repelling the Dreamer's Act I think will do more harm than good.  It's immigrants that built this country, on a dream.  It's immigrants who keep building this country.  Unless you are a Native American, then we are all immigrants.