South Brooklyn, Mid-Century

I finished a novella this weekend that included a very short statement about South Brooklyn. In it, the narrator, in Chicago waiting to be called to war, reflects on a letter he'd received from a friend.

Another letter from John Pearl, asking for news of Chicago. As if I had any to give him. I know no more about it than he does. He wanted to go to New York but now sounds nostalgic and writes with deep distaste about his "peeling environment."

"Peeling furniture, peeling walls, posters, bridges, everything is peeling and scaling in South Brooklyn. We moved here to save money, but I'm afraid we'd better start saving ourselves and move out again. It's the treelessness, as much as anything, that hurts me. The unnatural, too-human deadness."

There you go, S. Brooklyn, 1942, via Dangling Man by Saul Bellow. I wonder if it was really as bad as he makes it sound. That's not a Brooklyn I'm familiar with. We've got street trees now, big, beautiful ones, and it makes all the difference. I shudder to imagine this place without them. Someone on the subway told me most of our London Planes and other street trees were planted after World War II as part of a government sponsored employment program. I wonder if he's right.