But only for an evening. If I stayed any longer, I might become depressed. The saddest thing would not be the foreknowledge of loss, though it would be a little poignant to look on the buildings, shops, and companies that would soon be gone and envision their demise through the second half of the last century. But no, the depressing thing would be pity for the people I would see on the train platform, in Robertson’s, or along Main Street, because any one of them would actually be much better off in the South Bend of today.
On those streets of the past I would see people who knew a kind of job security we might ache for. But I would also be seeing people—an African-American laborer or a female clerk—who might be consigned to the same job for life even if they had the gifts to become a great doctor or scholar (or mayor), because admission to a place like Notre Dame was still unimaginable for someone of their race or sex. I would see people living dignified and interesting lives, but know that they did so in a city that was also shortening those lives, its river water and air quality toxic by today’s standards. I probably would not find any sign of gay life, but if I did, it would be nowhere near the Episcopal Cathedral of Saint James, completed in 1894, where I would one day get married to Chasten. Instead, it would be in some sketchy bar or alley where men fearful of exposure would exchange coded and furtive glances, totally unable to imagine that in a future generation they might have known the incomparable joys of authentic love and marriage.
Even the most prosperous men to cross my path would be ignorant and unhealthy compared to the average middle-class South Bend resident of, say, 2015. And while the fruits and meats at the Farmer’s Market then might well have tasted better than today’s, those shopping there would never know the simple pleasure of a taco de chorizo, a chicken pad thai, or a California roll—all now taking their place alongside cheeseburgers and goulash as part of South Bend’s twenty-first-century menu. In short, I would see a world that was as good as it got by the standards of the day, but one in which virtually every person’s everyday life was worse, in absolute terms, than his or her counterpart’s today.
To reverse the thought experiment, imagine if I could fetch someone off the downtown street in one of those bygone years and bring him into the present. Never mind inviting a female or black or gay or Jewish resident to show them the transformative opportunities that might have awaited them. Just imagine one of my own counterparts, a mayor from our city’s heyday. On some level, I ought to envy them. The population and economic growth that, by tremendous civic exertion, we are proudly achieving today is still slower than it would have been in their time, and for them it was comparatively effortless as modernity carried our city on its wave tops.
Certainly men like Mayor Carson (1918–1922) or Pavey (1938–1945) or Bruggner (1960–1964) would be saddened by some of the changes to the city they led. They might look at the factory remnants, or the vacant lots in our neighborhoods, and ask if South Bend had been struck by air raids in some dreadful war. And they would perhaps have little use for Thai food, same-sex marriage, or even racial integration. But as I toured them through the city, they would see what civic gifts time had brought to our hometown, despite its many unkind turns. As only mayors could, they would surely appreciate the sewer sensor system, the 311 center, and the law enforcement technology. If I explained it well, they would see what the railroads that developed here on their watch had in common with the fiber-optic connections that flash stock trades and emails around the world and enable a data-analytics industry to employ residents in whole categories of well-paying jobs that did not exist in their day.
WE DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO GO BACK. We just think we do, sometimes, when we feel more alert to losses than to gains. A sense of loss inclines us, in vulnerable moments, to view the future with an expectation of harm. But when this happens, we miss the power of a well-envisioned future to inspire us toward greatness. Here, someone will say I should be careful, as a progressive, to go around speaking of greatness. Especially in this moment, when “make great” is the mantra of a backward populist movement, the word seems associated with the worst in our politics, its champions consumed by a kind of chest-thumping that seeks to drown out any voice that would point out the prejudice and inequality we still must overcome.
Yet South Bend, for all our struggles, has formed my faith in a great future. Any of my counterparts from decades ago would look at our city and, even after noting that it had been diminished in some ways from the one they knew, would have occasion to use the word “great” to describe what they saw.
There is nothing necessarily wrong with greatness, as an aspiration, a theme, or even as the basis of a political program. The problem, politically, is that we keep looking for greatness in all the wrong places. We think we can find it in the past, dredged up for some impossible “again,” when in reality it is available only to those who fix their vision on the future. Or we think it is to be found in some grand national or international adventure, when the most meaningful expressions of American greatness are found in the richness of everyday life.
A marriage can be great. So can a meal, a recovery from illness, or a song. We are shown greatness on the news, but it is also found in everyday lives, and then in the neighborhoods and communities that take on the character of those lives added up. When the potential greatness of our country first flickered early in the last century, it was intertwined with that of our cities. When a kind of greatness in our society became a beacon for others around the world, helping us to prevail in the Cold War, it did so because of a global admiration not only for our space program and our skyscrapers but also the everyday prosperity, however imperfect and unequal, that could be observed in so many of our neighborhoods.
THE PRIMACY OF THE EVERYDAY is brought home to me every month or two on the lacquered floor of a middle school basketball court, where I set up shop for the simple democracy of an event we call Mayor’s Night Out. We invite residents to meet with each other, local council members, city department heads—and me. Sleeves rolled up and taking notes, I sit with my colleague Cherri at a folding table and meet anyone who wants to talk, one-on-one, a few minutes at a time. We may see twenty people or more a night this way, back-to-back. After the first hour and a half, the department heads are welcome to go home, and the council members usually take off. But Cherri and I stay until we’ve seen the last resident waiting to sit down and talk. By the time we leave, it’s usually down to her, me, a handful of other staff, and the school janitor carting off the last of the folded tables and chairs.
Absolutely anything can come up in these conversations, I have learned. A woman is at her wits’ end because of the drug house on her block and asks what else we can do about it. A taxi driver wants to know whether I am going to allow Uber to continue growing here. A landlord says he had no idea that the vacant house with the tall grass on Fassnacht Avenue was on the demolition list when he bought it, and swears he can fix it up if we could just ease up on code enforcement for six more months. A wide-eyed fellow has miraculously invented a perpetual motion machine and just wants me to review his schematics. Another wants to know if I have personally accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Curbs and sidewalks. Aquaponic fish farming. Deteriorating greens on the city golf course. A Boy Scout troop, eager to earn a new badge, waits to get their picture taken.
It’s like changing channels every five minutes between The Wire, Parks and Recreation, and, occasionally, Veep. It wears me out, and the follow-up keeps my team busy for days after. But it also renews us every time.