HomeSeptember 3, 1997
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a thousand mill lofts emptyThis subject deserves a far deeper treatment than I'm about to give it. This is after all a personal journal and not a historical treatise. But I'll give it my best shot. I was born in Massachusetts: the Massachusetts of rapidly emptying textile mills and shoe factories. Massachusetts has been in decline my whole life with the brief exception of the so-called "Massachusetts Miracle" in the early to mid 1980's. The mills were hulking symbols of economic catastrophe, not yet proud reminders of history. The Charles River - power source for the famous Waltham mill in its heyday - stank. We used to tell each other stories of some new kid in town who made the mistake of swimming in the Charles and died of two or three exotic diseases at once. I don't think this ever really happened. It was one of those urban legends. Anyway, there was nothing hopeful or modern or forward looking about living in Massachusetts. The glory days had long been over. The Massachusetts I grew up in was a sort of once-proud backwater combined with a hothouse for growing new technological businesses. The empty broken-windowed mills started filling up with strange small businesses. A sort of technology boom happened along Rt. 128, known briefly as "America's Technology Highway". A lot of these businesses were in the "defense" industry (ie. war industry) so I somehow couldn't see myself growing up to work among them. Anyway, besides all the gleaming modernistic buildings on 128, the industry refilled the old mills. In particular, 3 guys started a company in an old mill in Maynard. They didn't dare call it a computer company because in those days nobody could make money in computers. Only IBM could make computers. Investors wouldn't look at you twice if you thought "computers" was a business. So they called them "Programmed Data Processors" (PDP). Very funny and quaint now. But they started a revolution of sorts.
Actually, the SunWorld correspondent has it a little wrong. Boston was not the capitol. Computing largely by-passed Boston. Maynard was the capitol for awhile. They used to have a sign at the town line "Entering Maynard: Minicomputer Capitol of the World". Digital would hand out maps of "the greater Maynard area" clearly showing Boston as part of it. In computing's world view, Boston was a suburb of Maynard or at least a necessary evil to sustain 128. Some of the more successful companies established plants in "inner city" Boston later on to demonstrate real or imagined "social responsibility". But it wasn't Boston where the miracle grew. It was out among the mill towns on country roads - along the same rivers that had made the mills possible. In a way, the collapse of the textile industry made space for the computer industry. The textile industry moved south in search of non-union labor. The computer industry moved west in search of venture capital and better weather. Amidst the downsizing and takeovers of the smaller computer companies and Digital's faltering, there was some attempt to make Massachusetts a "telecommunications capitol" and to make Boston the hub of the so-called "Atlantic Rim". Methinks former Governor Weld was smoking something when he made all those speeches. Once when I was working for one of those telecommunications companies that was supposed to revitalize Massachusetts after the fall of the computer industry, someone relocated from California to work for us. I couldn't restrain myself from reacting to the insanity of that decision. No one moves to Massachusetts, you flee from it. Half my mother's family moved to California (SF Bay Area) in the 1950's. Some of my Dad's family went back to Ireland. One stays here if there's something to hold you and there's no shame in that. My excuse for living here has always been the fact that I was born here and my family is here. But why give up the promised land to come here? I made list of reasons it is insane to live in Massachusetts. I forget everything I had on that list now, but some of it was:
I can think of more reasons like political corruption, the lack of a decent football stadium, the lack of country music stations on the radio, the price of avocados... yeah, that's it the price of avocados - how could anyone from California stand to live here when you can't afford avocados at every meal? |
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I drove over to the New Balance factory in Lawrence to buy some new sneakers at the outlet. I noticed a mill on that street that used to have a computer company in it. Now it has a psychological counseling center. That can't be the future, can it? With managed care that'll be gone in a year. Textiles to computers to telecommunications to whatever comes next Massachusetts pioneers and it all goes somewhere else. And with Congress busy dismantling all the protections for workers gained since the days of the mill workers' unions, you gotta wonder if we'll ever really have both bread and roses. |