I want our river back
BY ELISA ALBERT
What were they thinking, building that highway along the river?
They were thinking damn this river stinks to high hell. They were thinking I want me a nice little house all set apart from other houses, with a nice little fence around it, and some trees, and a nice driveway in which I can park my very special personal automobile! They were thinking my own personal automobile means freedom and wealth and progress. They were thinking enough with these quarrelsome neighbors, and enough with this stinking river, and enough with the noise and soot and the chaos of densely packed urban living. They were thinking I’m special, I’m affluent, I no longer have to live in such close quarters with the riff-raff.
They were moving on up. Doesn’t every generation want to lay waste to the values and assumptions of the preceding generation? Isn’t that how the great world spins?
It must have been outlandish to imagine cleaning up the stinking polluted river. It must have been absurd to imagine that people might someday treasure the ability to run errands on foot, to engage with their neighbors, to restore and celebrate old buildings. How could they have known that sitting on your ass all day every day, cruising around in our ridiculous personal vehicles would be so catastrophically injurious to physical, mental, and emotional health on scales both large and small, music and podcasts and Bluetooth speakers be damned?
I’m done being amazed and appalled at the racism and selfishness and greed that have shaped this city’s history and skyline. I’m sick of telling this story to visiting friends, year in and year out, trying to explain how this city, like countless others all across the U.S., came to look and feel as it does. I want our river back. I want our neighborhoods re-connected. I want the cult of the personal automobile to go the way of NXIUM. It’s time. •
Elisa Albert is the author of the novels Human Blues (forthcoming in July 2022), After Birth, The Book of Dahlia, and the short story collection How This Night is Different. www.elisaalbert.com