The Milwaukee Post

May 19, 2017 • Milwaukee County Post • 7 OPINION By BRIAN HUBER Conley News Service WAUKESHA — We used to joke about living in my hometown: "Welcome to West Allis. Don't forget to turn your clocks back 25 years." But looking back now through more than 25 years, there was a time when things felt like an idyllic past: storefront owners who knew your name, family-run businesses on every corner and in between, street football games interrupted by "car!," bike ramps and strikeout in the alleys, walking to a small neighborhood school, ridiculously cheap burgers and Sunday morning bowling, and the families at the same place in life and the true neighborhood we created. It still exists in places. Working in Waukesha County while liv- ing in Milwaukee County does have me feeling sometimes like I am straddling two worlds. Those worlds collided in a big way last week, and again, the news hits way too close to home. First came word last Friday that the daughter of a childhood friend of mine was involved in a head-on crash Thursday night in Delafield and was lucky enough to escape with non-life-threaten- ing injuries. Then Saturday morning, word came of a shooting in the 1900 block of S. 60th Street. I grew up in the 1800 block of South 63rd Street, just off Burnham Street. The incident is believed to have begun with a robbery at a George Webb's on Greenfield, just up the street from my alma mater Holy Assumption. At that Webb's is where I got my free burger for the 13th Brewers win in 1987, and where I blew lots of paper route money on hash browns after Video Starr. It ended in a dump- ster in the very streets I walked and rode a bike on before I had my license, a block away from where I had my first regular job at the family-run Ice-Burg Drive-Inn, now a tacqueria. Mere feet away from where I had my first car acci- dent. That's right next door to Burnham Bowl, where I met my wife, Sherry, worked for two years, bowled a million games, and was hanging out exactly one week earlier. That's the way she takes to work every day. Driving up 60th Street on the way to a Burnham gathering the previous week- end, I was telling Sherry how they never put anything on the old KFC lot, how this bar had that name, etc. — remembering the neighborhood of my youth, where such things as police shootings "never happened." Saturday's shooting may have been just another news item for most, but for me it hit the heart. This was my old paper route. This is where I grew up. Surely these things don't happen in the land of the West Milwaukee Mustangs. What would people like old Tony Sorce and John Weishan Sr. — yes, THAT John Weishan's dad — literally right next door think? This is only the latest in a long line of collisions and near-misses with the news in my personal life — a cousin's death in a long-ago snowmobile accident; a family close to mind still has no answers on the murder of a loved one 20 years ago; a brother whose death is part of the nation- al opioid epidemic and who had the bad luck of an incident before it making the TV news — those are the big things. But there are also the things that have been happening in my neighborhood around me, the one I left West Allis for in Greenfield. I remember well that Pick 'n Save clerk who was run over in the park- ing lot at work; I live just up the street from the scene of a triple murder, and happen to have been detoured on the day of a different homicide last year in West Allis. For months, I have been removed from these things on the news only as a lucky circumstance of time or space. And it just so happens that another place integral to my life has been in the news recently, with that "other paper" recently profiling the area around what used to be A.O. Smith, where my maternal grandfather and uncle worked, and where my father also slung the steel that raised his family in West Allis, sent us to Holy Assumption and bought the scout and sport uniforms my three brothers and I wore. My parents did the best they could to raise a stable, close family of good if flawed people amid sea change that forev- er disrupted lives for millions and changed global commerce. I watched my father hustle to do what it took to keep liv- ing after his job left him, and was there with pride when he received his 30-year watch — from the union, not the company — after somehow hanging on to his job long enough. And I know there are thou- sands of families who went through the same things and worse. So I wonder about the connections in life, and realize that I am part of what con- nects A.O. Smith to West Allis to you, just as we all connect various degrees of sepa- ration. I wonder about the man who died in a trash bin this weekend — how was he raised? What of his mother on Mother's Day? How involved were his parents? What did his neighborhood, his communi- ty, offer him? What opportunities in life were given me but not him? What opportu- nities did he cost himself along the way? For that matter, me too? Look, I am not bashing West Allis here. Alas, my career has taught me these things happen anywhere and everywhere. And when it happens close to you, all you can do is be thankful the effect on your loved ones isn't any worse, or, maybe find a way to make life better for those around you. West Allis may get a bad rap in some circles, but it will always be home to me. I think the city I grew up in, no longer live in, but still spend lots of time and money and have friends in, is doing a pretty good job rolling into a very different future than the one that lay ahead when it was founded. Any drive down Greenfield, from 70th east, like the one I took last week, will yield a very different and fresh streetscape from the one I hung out in after high school. That's to be both expected and commended, even if I will always miss the Paradise theater and how we snuck in friends despite the measly 99-cent admis- sion. This weekend's events got me thinking about so much — how different and far away things may seem over artificial lines, yet how we all want and deserve the same things in life as Americans. And how the larger forces that govern families and soci- ety are things we all have a role in, how events seemingly unrelated are connected in invisible threads that run through all of us. It's worth remembering that in these times, where worlds collide in the space of a few miles; where some die, some live, and things can change in the flash of an instant. Trina's child will recover; Claudia opened Burnham late on Saturday due to the investigation, but the place did open, serving families like mine not — yes, it was — too long ago. And so we press on, looking to take the best of our past into an uncertain future, hoping we can find solu- tions to these issues that shape lives, neighborhoods and nations — and know- ing more than ever that the answer lies only in doing it together. Email: bhuber@conleynet.com Events in two counties have impact on loved ones, view of the world Weekend news too close for comfort Huber Reject Trump's proposed public transportation cuts To the editor: Congress should reject President Donald Trump's proposal to gut federal sup- port for public transporta- tion. Federal funding for pub- lic transportation is a sound investment that creates jobs, spurs economic develop- ment, and helps limit traffic congestion and air pollu- tion. Furthermore, public transportation is essential for the mobility of millions of Americans, connecting people to jobs and educa- tion, and giving older Americans, veterans, and people with disabilities access to essential services and their larger communi- ties. It is deeply disappointing — and, frankly, doesn't make sense — that Trump has pro- posed such severe cuts to transit after pledging to invest $1 trillion in American infrastructure over the next decade. We need to be building intercon- nected, multi-modal trans- portation networks that meet the needs of our grow- ing population and economy. The proposed cuts will take America in the wrong direc- tion. There has been strong bipartisan support in Congress for public trans- portation funding up to now. I urge our congressional del- egation to stand up once again for transportation investments that will benefit all of us and reject Trump's proposed cuts. Anita Jensen Shorewood LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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