I'm obviously a part of the front-row, striving America. My parents didn't go away to college; my siblings & I did, & in several material respects I've moved up in the world from where I started, by doing well in school & becoming a professional.
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At the same time, I loved the middle class, churchgoing suburb I grew up in. I'd gladly have stayed, & disliked only the commute. We've always lived in places like it, even in Queens. My parents grew up in Manhattan; we grew up where they escaped to.
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Of course, my family had moved many times for a better life before my parents settled down. My grandparents were all immigrants, and my father's family were Irish who moved to Scotland, in the 19th century.
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I suppose it helped that my family had role models, people who had worked their way up in one generation after another, some as coal miners or cops, some as inventors or public speakers - and whether successful or not, none left the Church.
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People went where the work was. My mom's brother moved to California with his job 60 years ago. My younger brother moved to Virginia, then Texas.
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My dad's brother was a construction worker after a tour in the Marines, no college, settled in the Bronx. But he still took construction jobs that took him to Israel & Iran, traveled to Brazil, Hong Kong, Australia, died in the Philippines.
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Anyway, the narrative of a secular, mobile, front-row America & its back-row opposite has a lot to teach us. I just object to its overdetermination.
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I think more folks fit into the middle camp then folks assume; if my well educated Norman Rockwell-esq. place of residence is any indicia of such
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