As many of you know I spent much of my life in Portland, Oregon. It was mostly a nice life. It’s where Janet and I married and lived a delightful four years before getting the hell out as fast as we could.

Now Portland is Antifa Central on the nightly news (assuming you believe that the news still exists). The images sadden me. I know all the buildings and blocks that have been hit. I loved the Elk that’s no longer there. When I joked that apparently the elk, who had been there for 100 years, was racist and deserved destruction, someone told me with a straight face, “maybe the sculptor was a racist.”

What’s odder than the violence, is the reaction from many of my Portland friends which basically comes down to “everything’s fine here; nothing to see.” Of course most of them live in the affluent suburbs on the West and East sides of Portland and rarely go into the city. Nonetheless they assure me that it’s a plot from the government and right-wingers to paint the city as descending into chaos.

I suppose it’s the nature of violence. If your street has had no robberies your town is safe; if you’ve been robbed then what the hell are the police and politicians doing to solve the problem.

The cynic in me is also reminded of not long after 9-11. A buddy of mine went to New York City. When he returned I asked him how it was. “Exactly the same,” he replied. “That is, unless you try to get to Greenwich Street (where the Twin Towers were).”

All this has made me examine my feelings about violence and my history with it, as well as its existence in the Philippines. So that’s what follows.

Childhood/Teenager – Philadelphia:

I grew up in an environment far different from Janet’s. Our neighbourhood was suburban and upscale. There was no crime or murders. We didn’t lock our house or cars. I know that would sound insane to a younger person, but no one did in those days – at least not where we lived.

There were no bad people roaming the streets of my neighbourhood. Now that I am an adult I realise that in those days there were vagrancy laws and the cops would shoo away anyone that wasn’t a resident or “didn’t belong.” I took it for granted that if someone was walking the streets, they lived there.

Then one summer we got robbed. I distinctly remember seeing my father break the back door window so he could tell the insurance company it was a break in; not that we were too stupid to lock the doors. The police told us there had been a series of robberies. From then on the doors were locked. Locking the car would soon follow.

At some point (and I don’t remember the chronology) my female cousin was walking down the street of her neighbourhood and got flashed. I remember how upset people were and my mother talking to me about what to do if I ran into a “bad man.” I’m sure it involved running like hell. Life was changing.

Again, I’ve forgotten the details and chronology but around the age of 14-15 came the big one. My 2nd cousin (who I barely knew) was a co-ed (that’s what they used to call them) at the University of Pennsylvania. She was raped and murdered. It was big news – I mean front page banner news – in Philadelphia. A pretty, upscale co-ed murdered in the dorms at Penn. The family was stunned but I didn’t really know her so wasn’t sure how to feel.

A couple years later I went off to college at the University of Rochester. Her younger brother attended Rochester. I was a Freshman and he was a Sophomore. I think my parents set it up so he would take me under his wing. We got together a couple times at first and I would wave at him when I saw him on campus but I never got closer. He was a nice guy but my God, his sister had been murdered; and at 17 I had no idea what to say to him. BTW, it’s taken 50 years to acknowledge that that was the reason I didn’t try harder to get close to him. I acted like it was his fault but the truth is it scared the shit out of me.

New York City:

After my sophomore year I went to NYC to visit a girl I liked. The first thing she said to me when I entered the apartment was, “Did you lock your car?” I couldn’t remember and we rushed down to the street to check. She acted like the car would be gone or stripped by the time we got there but fortunately it wasn’t. Welcome to New York.

The next year I transferred to City College of New York (yes I was chasing the girl). I found an apartment in the Bronx which I shared with two other students. The apartment was right across the street from a college that had just closed. This meant that previously most residents of the area were students, but when I moved in we were just about the only young white people in the neighborhood. Will get back to that in a moment.

CCNY was located in Harlem. Interestingly I never had a moment of fear walking the streets near school or taking the train to and from school, even at night. Was I young and stupid or was it safer than one would suppose; probably a bit of both.

Back in the Bronx where I lived, I befriended some young people in the neighbourhood. The truth is my roommates were never around (girlfriends), the girl I had chased was no longer in the picture, and the new girl I was chasing was only occasionally available after considerable begging. In short I knew no one and was lonely.

One day one of these friends showed up at my apartment. We watched TV and he brought something to smoke. I provided the pipe and whatever it was was pretty damn good. Once I was suitably relaxed he pulled out a knife and held it to my neck. For the next hour I was sure I was going to die.

He started out the robbery with intimidation, yelling, “Where’s the gun. Where’s the gun!” “What gun? What are you talking about?” He was sure we were packing. Once I convinced him we had no gun he proceeded room to room. My roommates weren’t poor and had some high end shit but he only had two hands and lugging around 200 pounds of tube McIntosh stereo equipment wasn’t practical. One of my roommates had the habit of coming home and emptying his pockets of all the change onto the carpet in his room. The robber starting fishing for quarters. I must admit I had been broke a few times and had done some similar fishing in the past. Marty, my roomy, must have had $50 in quarters on the carpet and my burglar friend stuffed his pockets.

Naive moron that I was at some point I asked him why he was doing this; after all we were friends. He laughed at my stupidity. “I’m an addict.” Welcome to New York.

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We got to my room. I had two guitars and a small amp. He could only carry one guitar. “Which one?” he asked. “What?” “I can only take one so choose.” “That’s like asking me to choose between my children,” I wailed. One of the guitars was a ’63 Fender Jaguar, which I had recently purchased in Greenwich Village. I thought of this recently because a top vintage guitar seller (Norm’s Rare Guitars) with a YouTube Channel recently posted a video of a ’65 Jaguar which was selling for $10k. I’m yelling at the TV, “Janet – I had that guitar but mine was even older.” I gave my burglar friend the Jag.

Now mind you throughout the ordeal I was looking for something to pick up and brain him. One roomy had a big candle and I wondered whether that would be heavy enough to knock him out but I was too terrified. One consequence of the robbery was I subsequently decided that if something similar ever happened again I’d use the candle and bash the MF to death!

The guy tied me up badly and locked my door. I got out of the ropes within a half hour but no one responded to my yelling until the next day. Free, I went to a pay phone and called the police.

Two policemen arrived and they took a report. As we sat on the living room chairs-sofa they were exchanging glances and giggling. I couldn’t figure out why until I realised the pipe and it’s remains were laying on the coffee table! It was like a scene out of The Big Lebowsky.

Portland:

Years later I was living in Portland with my soon to be Wife #2. We had a nice rental home in a beautiful old Portland neighbourhood. One day she got home to see the back door glass had been smashed just liked my Dad had done all those years before and the place robbed. “But they didn’t take anything,” she said relieved. I searched the house. “Yes they did – my guitar.”

It wasn’t a high end guitar but it was the best I could do at the time. The experience was actually positive and a couple years later I decided to teach myself how to make guitars so I’d always have one! I’ve been hooked ever since.

A couple years later Wife #2 and I were living in our own home (not far from that rental) and had one child. In the middle of the night someone pounded on our door and yelled. I looked through the peephole and saw a youngish and clearly stoned person very insistent on getting in. “Get the hell out of here,” I yelled but he continued. Wife #2 called the “soon to be defunded” police. Within 3 minutes two cop cars screeched outside our home. Four officers rushed out. I could hear a struggle on our porch; the struggle was brief and the guy was in the back of one of the cars. One officer came inside our home and quickly told us what had occurred, we thanked him profusely, and off they went. This is why we pay for police!

It was about 12 years later. I’d divorced and married Janet. Again we owned a nice home only about 5 minutes from the previous home. By now the neighbourhood had changed a bit. It was still pleasant and slightly upscale but the local park, like so many others in Portland, had allowed tent cities. During the day homeless young people wandered the neighbourhoods; no vagrancy laws enforced in Portland. People drank or defecated in back yards.

One day both Janet and I were home. A young man wandered up the street. Clearly he was stoned, psychotic or both; he yelled incoherently and pounded on everyone’s door trying to gain entry. Our neighbor and Janet were on the phone consoling each other, terrified. I called the police. One officer finally arrived and took his time about it. He came into our house. The guy was in the middle of the street ranting and then occasionally would go up to someone’s house and shake the door knob to get in. The cop explained, “I can’t do anything unless he agrees to go.” “What!” I said incredulously. “If he volunteers I can take him to the hospital. If not he has to commit a crime.” “What about trespassing?” I asked. The cop shrugged. “What if I did something about this?” I asked. “Then I would arrest you.”

In all fairness to the Officer, he spoke to the guy a couple times and eventually the guy did get into the car and off they went. But the experience certainly demonstrated the changes in City policy over the 12 years.

Philippines:

As we prepared to retire and move to the Philippines a consistent mantra from friends was, “Is it safe?” You’d think they were attempting to do an impression of Lawrence Olivier in Marathon Man.

Let’s see: as safe as Philly where we were robbed, as safe as NYC where I was robbed or as safe as Portland where I was robbed multiple times?

I have already written about how we were robbed in a previous rental house in Dumaguete.

The Philippines is the same as anywhere else. If you haven’t been robbed you think it’s safe. If you have been robbed you do what we did: put bars on the windows, a large spiked wall around the property, install a CCTV system and get a dog. Are we safe? Not necessarily. If someone wants to get in badly enough they can. The difference here is the cops arrive ready to shoot! Its taken me 67 years to admit it but – that’s a good thing.