Here in Weiser, the recession has already hit harder than the Great Depression in terms of housing. Once, this tidy little town was known for its well-kept yards. Even during the 1930s, the paint may have looked faded on once grand houses and the roofs may look tattered, but the yards and gardens never looked better. Rows of sweet corn and beans wafted in the summer breeze, melons peeked out from under bright green leaves and potatoes and carrots waited in the ground to be dug up for dinner. There was not a weed to be seen and the lawn was trimmed neat and short with a push mower.
Today the scene has been reversed in Weiser’s better neighborhoods. The houses stand proud under new roofs with their sides covered in fresh paint and never-fade aluminum or vinyl siding. Their windows however are blank and streaked with dirt, cobwebs and bugs. The front yard is brittle with overgrown, dead grass and weeds reaching two or three feet high. The backyards are the same; some littered with broken trampolines, plastic toys and the general flotsam and jetsam left by uncaring people departing in a hurry.
Washington County, the second poorest in the state, is being abandoned by once middle class people who have lost their jobs to the recession and their homes to the bank. Once there were new cars parked in the driveway, purchased with home equity loans that hucksters flogged on television, in direct mail circulars and door to door at the height of the “ownership America” years.
Many of the houses still occupied have For Sale signs planted in the front lawn. Few have the backyard vegetable gardens that pulled many people through the Great Depression. Their freezers are filled, or not, with frozen pizzas, tater tots and French fries, ice cream and packaged dinners that pass for food in today’s America.
The banks have been saved and the economy is collapsing more slowly; fewer jobs are being lost and the government tells us that the end is in sight. That’s probably why banks are holding on to these foreclosed family dreams rather than sell them short or at a reduced price to people less flagrant in their borrowing habits. That way the whole borrowing and bankrupting cycle can begin again just like nothing happened.
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