In the book project that this website was initially built to promote, my main thesis is that we no longer have any real communities in America. The book manuscript sorts through two centuries of causes and effects. But today, I ‘d like to crystallize it down to one poignant example. The story of my neighbor Alfred.
I first met Alfred nine years ago, shortly after moving into my current home. I was brand new to the neighborhood and had only been here a week when Baltimore was blanketed with a fresh coat of snow eight inches deep. Around here, that’s well more than enough to shutter schools and keep most people out of work.
I was barely awake, walking around the living room in jeans with no shirt or socks, when I heard a tremendous thump outside the window. My primal, territorial instincts took over. The rage began to well up inside me as I prepared to defend my new holding, even if it was just a rental. Who dare invade my domain!
I peeled back the curtain to see kids roaming through the streets, engaged in a massive snow ball fight free-for-all. Children of all ages were streaming everywhere. A rather large one had come cascading over the short wall that connects my porch to my neighbor’s, before rumbling onto the next one, clumsily flopping across the attached rowhomes, and thereby creating the most immediate ruckus.
“Alright, Reinhardt,” I said to myself quietly, “you’re only thirty-five. Don’t become a grumpy old man just yet.”
I got on some clothes, went outside, and started firing snowy projectiles. Sensing the opportunity to act out every kid’s fantasy by safely attacking an adult with impunity, the juvenile chaos coalesced into a children’s army. I held them off for a while, relying on a rapid fire release and some bear-like growling. But in the end their numbers were too large. They drove me back into my yard and up the stairs of my rear porch. In the end, it was all I could do to close the latch to the back gate as a fusillade misshapen snowballs reigned down upon me. All in all, it had been a successful introduction to the neighborhood.
A few weeks later, I met the large kid who’d initially startled me by flopping across my porch. I was surprised to find that he was no child after all. His name was Alfred and he was twenty-seven years old. After a little while, I realized why I’d taken him for a kid. He’d fit in perfectly with the other children because his personality and behavior blended with theirs seamlessly. After interacting with Alfred one-on-one for a few minutes, it quickly became apparent to me that he was mildly retarded. His development was well behind his twenty-seven years. Mentally, he seemed to be functioning at the level of a thirteen year-old, give or take.
Alfred lived across the street from me in a rowhome with his mother and grandfather. The grandfather was quite old and in ill health. On rare occasions he came outside with his oxygen tank and cigarettes. Alfred’s mother, I soon gathered, also had problems: developmental issues like her son, physical ailments like her father. I had minimal contact with her so specifics eluded me, but she got around in a motorized scooter, and she was given to occasional fiascoes. Sometimes an ambulance would show up and take her away. Sometimes she would somehow get locked out of her house in the middle of the night and pound on the door for what seemed like an eternity, screeching “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp!”
None of the neighbors ever came out to help or investigate. I followed their cue, trusting their experience.
Though I didn’t know the two “adults” in Alfred’s life, I was fairly confident that it was the sickly old man holding the household together. Barely, anyway. For example, one year he managed to hire someone to paint 
their rowhome. A nice bright red. But the contractors screwed him over by using some cheap interior paint, and it wasn’t long before the house had faded to a sickly pink and begun to peel.
As I got to know Alfred, I discovered a pleasant young man who clearly wasn’t prepared to make it in the world by himself, and who wasn’t getting enough help at home. Unsurprisingly, he was a high school drop out, which was almost a given considering his reduced mental capacities. He was also morbidly obese, his teeth were an absolute mess, he was already on high blood pressure medication, and he typically stunk to high heaven. He had a knack for parroting what other adults said, some of which was on the crude side. But if there was nary an original thought in his head, there also wasn’t a malicious bone in his body.
Alfred was generally quite happy, and he concentrated on innocent, childish pursuits. He still idolized football and baseball players the way a child would, and he showed the same fascination and exuberance with gaining their autographs or wearing their jerseys.
I did observe slow developmental growth in Alfred, but always far behind where he should be. If he functioned like a thirteen year old when he was twenty-seven, he seemed like a sixteen year old by the time he was thirty-five.
It wouldn’t be enough to save him. In the next post, I’ll discuss Alfred’s demise and how no one did anything about it.