Let's say you're of an age that would have inclined you to be drawn into the orbit of one Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, whose all-too-human life story spins out across four novels by John Updike. If you know Rabbit, then you know Reading.
Well, perhaps that is to embrace too eagerly the link between autobiography and fiction. But it is a fact that Updike, one of our great prose masters until his death in 2009, grew up near Reading, Pa., and drew heavily on his observations of the city as a setting for Rabbit's star-crossed exploits.
To visit Reading after immersion in the fictional city of Brewer, as Updike calls it, is to marvel at the resemblances lingering from his gorgeously poignant word pictures. You see the row houses with their tidy little yards, rank upon rank climbing the low mountains that frame the downtown, and it's as though you've come back to a place where you, too, once lived.
By the time the Angstrom saga plays out, Brewer has fallen on hard times. But perhaps not as hard as today's real-life Reading. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that of all U.S. cities of more than 65,000, Reading (population 88,000) now has the highest poverty rate - an appalling 41.3 percent of its residents in households below the poverty threshold.
How that happened is a tale of decline that has been all too common in America over the past decades (in Reading's case, over a time horizon stretching back a century or more). It is linked most directly to the collapse of traditional manufacturing and deficiencies in education, which combine to produce severe unemployment and low wages for those who do hold jobs. Recent immigration patterns play a role, as do restrictive annexation laws that deprive the city of some benefits of growth.
A snapshot of Reading on the slippery slope came in the intriguing 1978 book "Gritty Cities," an examination of 12 medium-sized Northeastern cities also including such places as Bridgeport and Trenton. We're told about the industriousness of Reading's early settlers, mostly of German stock, who first made their town the center of a hat-making trade that by 1882 was shipping out 6 million hats.
Then came heavy manufacturing tied to the nearby coal fields and the burgeoning Reading Railroad - factories that made big things out of iron and steel. The famous railroad's freight yards and shops employed 3,000 workers at the beginning of the 20th century.
Fortune turned, the railroad faded and Reading's economy pivoted for a time to products such as hosiery, cigars, pretzels and beer. By 1978, abandoned mills were being converted into complexes of outlets shops, drawing shopper-tourists from Philadelphia and New York. But there was decay at the urban core that no amount of discount shopping could cure.
Reading in August had an unemployment rate of 12.8 percent. And as The New York Times reported last week, the city struggles with mediocre educational attainment. Only 8 percent of residents are college graduates, doubtless a turnoff for employers who might think of locating there. Among the many Hispanics who have moved to the city, only 44 percent have even a high school diploma.
While Reading and other cities fought ailments that came to typify America's Rust Belt, their Sun Belt counterparts sipped the sweet wine of prosperity. Clean industries such as banking and pharmaceuticals took hold, diversifying economies that had relied on old standbys like textiles and tobacco. And the region's successes bred more success. People flocked south, and businesses that support population growth - real estate, construction, consumer products and services of all kinds - enjoyed boom times.
North Carolina, more than any other Southern state, recognized the link between sound educational systems and economic health. Our universities and community colleges magnified opportunities for untold thousands if not millions of people. The eclipse of old-line manufacturing was seen as a spur to innovation that would fuel our economy for decades hence.
Oops - came the recession. The housing market's collapse knocked development-related businesses for a loop. As people had less money to spend, companies with slackened demand for their products showed workers the door. Government revenues dipped and budgets were chopped - including budgets for the schools and colleges so crucial to giving people a leg up.
Now, as the Times reported last week, joblessness across the South is worse than in the Northeast. And poverty's tentacles grip more people than ever.
North Carolina shares in the suffering. But in this state, at least the seed bed is there for a recovery. We can train and we can educate. We have companies at the top of the food chain, where pay is good and horizons are bright.
We just need to ride out the storm without the kind of self-inflicted damage that comes with rash budget-cutting and panicky abandonment of policies that uphold quality of life. When a latter-day Updike tracks his hero here, let the urban symbols be ones of vigor and fulfillment, not places where hope is as elusive as it must be in star-crossed (but by no means hopeless) Reading.
