Entering Inkster High School is a normal part of my day. The brick exterior stands proud, like an establishment of the community, one that has out-lived its glory days. From the southern expressway, I take the exit for the airport, then continue to the next road to go north.
Being so close to the airport has many implications. The quantity of specialty vans and vehicles increases as the intersection between my turn and the airport approaches. The company names on the sides of them imply catering businesses, limo services and shuttle rides to off-site parking. Industries near the airport are predictable, and they appear as one would expect, around each major intersection and on the straight highways such as “Middlebelt” and “Telegraph”. Trucking companies’ lots are full of the semi trailers neatly parked behind chain-linked fencing, the quality of which tells the current financial standing of the company it serves. Rusty and bent, surrounded by weeds and vacant lots is the fence of the almost-out-of-business companies. Their signs are usually written in a faded 1960’s or 70’s script in some phonetic spelling, often including the words “Nu” or “Kleen” or “Kwik” in the title. Better-off trucking companies have clear signs and new fences. Their trucks are neatly filed in the lot, which the jet passengers see as growing or shrinking rectangular shapes as they approach or depart from the metropolitan airport.
The city below them seems like a decaying shell of an undetermined creature. Very few venture to remember what it used to be. The clients of the airport include those frequent flyers who drive expensive cars, sporty and foreign, or their American-made look-a-likes. Comfortable rides all. They provide the cash flow for the strip club businesses that populate the area around the airport in a ratio of one-to-one with gas stations and motels. The strip clubs are not in danger of closing, in fact, they are seen as viable and successful employment by many of my students. It’s considered a profitable business to these teens, whereas, those who have more wholesome values consider becoming a stylist or barber to be a viable future employment.
The last element of driving near the airport is the constant concern for road debris hitting my car or windshield. The chips on the hood of my car become rust-magnets in the winter salt-season. I wonder how those wealthy businessmen can afford to drive here without getting hit by flying gravel, glass, tire tread or bumper debris. I guess they have leases or perhaps they drive a company car. Such differences in life trajectories and yet all drivers are calm. It stuns me when I see a noisy beater with cellophane-taped windows pass the silent black and chrome sedan. No one’s head turns. No one speeds up or cuts off, just an easy cruising speed for both parties. So unlike the east coast drivers, who seem to take each others’ chosen pace as a confrontation. They say drivers can have road rage from too much job stress. But how can it be, when, here, the stakes of life and survival are much higher, yet we cruise easily by each other, and even help those in the break-down lane? In an east-coast city, where I learned to drive, every maneuver is a statement, hence no yielding to the on-ramp, just a game of “chicken” to see who has more guts... What could be so important, I wondered, to make people risk their own lives on a daily basis, to drive like angry maniacs? Here, in the rust belt, we have much more to be stressed about, or so I imagine. Perhaps stress is a form of hope. Hope for something within reach, worth fighting for... Hope that no longer lives here. Perhaps I am a perfect example of the numbness of lost hope and the face of acceptance of lost dreams. But I am telling this story, which a form of hope, isn’t it?
Survival is a sort of poverty of spirit, I think. The rat race lives somewhere else, because here, we have what we have and we work hard to keep it, yet know that nothing is certain. The powers over us, the economy and the politics therein, don’t know us or consider us in their big ideas. We can’t predict well, except in our understanding of who we are in the eyes of the powerful; those who live on the coasts. I follow the news through NPR to hear what is important to them. What are the buzz-words, the expert knowledge in educational practices. I listen to hear the goals of No Child Left Behind, the reforms of teacher tenure, their view of the crisis in math and reading scores and its causes and solutions. It’s entertaining in a perverse sort of way for me, as I drive each day to and from a district where 2% measured “proficient” in math on standardized tests and where I teach a foreign language to high schoolers who read English as well as my children did in fourth grade (on average). Sometimes I take it personally, the views I hear on the news radio. Sometimes I want to call in to speak on these issues, but my words would sound out-of-tune to the rest of the callers. I would take the conversation to other realms, to surfaces not scratched. The hosts would challenge my assumptions and ask for examples; particulars I am not willing to give. And I feel a little crazy, as though, no one seems to notice or care about the real causes of this achievement gap that has been paraded around the country via test scores. Why don’t the experts ask teachers like me? I think my energy reserves are too low to contribute, and perhaps that is why teachers like me aren’t a part of the discussion... we are too taxed and cannot risk local retribution by a principal to support a nation-wide problem. Again, survival must come before hope.
I park and lock my car, walking toward the building. I look back sometimes to view the rhythm of the back hoes, foraging through the scrap metal like dinosaurs feeding at an ancient pond.
