Even though my father, a WWII vet, was renowned in our family for having driven a tank through the gunfire of North Africa to that of Normandy, he never learned to drive a car through the potholes of Brooklyn. As a result, our travels were usually limited to the environs of New York City via the conveyance of public transportion. However, we were, out of necessity, a very imaginative family and could take a short trip and fancy it a wondrous journey.
Probably because our neighbors weren’t as imaginative as we were, the majority began owning cars by the mid sixties. While we were still going to Coney Island, they were going to places like Rye Playland and Rockaway Beach. While we might have made it to Palisades Park, they made it to Disneyland. They were all going somewhere and going there fast; the “frontier lands” of Long Island and Staten Island being hot on their list. Since my family wasn’t going anywhere we decided to stay and observe the evacuation which had started over a decade earlier.
On May 7, 1947, William Levitt began building 2000 ranch-size houses on a tract of land in Long Island, thirty miles from Manhattan. Utilizing mass production techniques, he rapidly built and rented 4000 of these houses to young people (mostly WWII veterans) who were eager to get away from the crowded city and start their own lives. Government financing regulations allowed Levitt to offer his houses for sale in 1948; a small down payment and small monthly payment thereafter. Most of the original renters quickly bought the first 4000 homes and the community called “Levittown” was established in 1951 with over 17,000 homes.
Levittown epitomized the American flight to the suburbs; it was the first of its kind. Accompanied by the postwar “Baby Boom,” it represented the most dramatic shift in population from the central city to the suburbs. As the success of Levittown became more and more far-reaching, home construction soared . Factories were working around the clock turning-out huge quantities of appliances (especially television sets) for the fledgling households. The supermarket replaced the corner grocery store, carrying a more diverse array of food for the suburban family diet. But with the growth of suburbia came the decline of urban areas and inner cities. The American Dream had come to be, but it came with a price.
Eventually, even my father learned to drive and we moved to the suburbs. While we had a nice home, we soon found that we had become a less imaginative family. The “keeping-up with the Jones’” syndrome wasn’t as mythical as we had presumed. But by that time America had gloriously landed on the Moon, yet another frontier that promised to benefit humanity with a marvelous sense of lasting achievement. The 1970s were soon to begin, when even the most humble goals usually glimmered on distant frontiers.
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