Voices: The Music Man's Travails
I was going to write this column about road rage and the nuisance known as "aggressive drivers" plaguing Scranton these days.
But after speaking with Ronald Shager, proprietor of the used music store Mr. CD, about a car accident which occurred in front of his store on Main Avenue in West Scranton on Friday, May 31, I was compelled to narrow my focus.
This is an editorial, not a news story as such, so I can admit to you that I like Ronnie. I interviewed him a couple of months after he opened Mr. CD and I appreciated his determination to stock the recordings of our local musicians, his concern for the displaced teenagers of town and his charity in hosting free performances for "the kids," as he likes to call them.
On Friday, May 31, he welcomed a punk act and a flock of young people to his store for the usual two plus hours of entertainment. The trouble began when two 30-somethings Ronnie described as "bombed" began to harass some of the kids that were enjoying a cigarette in front of the store - Ronnie doesn't let them smoke inside. The passers-by apparently had a problem with blue hair or other such physical manifestations of alternative youth culture and decided it was their place to assert their imagined superiority. The kids defended their ground and the belligerent men grew even more belligerent. They climbed into their white Blazer, rear ended Ronnie's car, and attempted to run over the teenagers before speeding away and slamming into several more vehicles including a van carrying a man, a woman and a couple of children. The woman, at least, was very badly injured.
I live a block away from Mr. CD and heard the crash in my living room. After running instinctively out on to my back porch to ascertain what might have happened, I was shaken by the screams of a undeniably traumatized woman. I never would have related the incident to Mr. CD. I had just driven by the store on my way home that evening at about 9:50 p.m. I saw some kids hanging out and Ronnie chatting with a bike patrol cop. The scene appeared peaceful. I thought, "Oh Good, he's having another one of those shows for 'the kids.'"
Ronnie's been holding these shindigs almost every Friday for seven months without incident, but now the zoning board has prohibited him from holding any more shows. He was prohibited from opening his store the day after the accident and claims to have lost five days worth of business.
He's suddenly having problems with the landlord he previously praised to me. Several neighbors, once friendly and glad to see an empty storefront occupied, are now slandering his name. Ronnie says he's received three parking tickets in one week for parking in a spot he's been parking in for months. The asinine actions of two men that were not in any way connected to the show that evening has somehow been blamed on youth culture and a man who cared enough to cater to it. To punish these teenagers for the actions of irresponsible grown-ups is a justification of the alternative youth-profiling and hazardous aggression of the real perpetrators.
Why is it so easy for our society to blame the kids? Why are we so afraid of youth culture? As Ronnie noted, "These kids aren't bad, they're just bored." So maybe they're not interested in extra-curricular athletics, must they become pariahs? They're just not interested in practicing for a future stint in alcoholism by throwing keg parties in the woods. They just dig music and they want some place to go where they won't be treated like a social scourge. They're exploring, they're expressing themselves, they are trying on identity - it's called growing up and if those accident causing adults had tried it, maybe they would have been a little more understanding.
Our teenagers may be able to look after themselves for the most part - they no longer require baby-sitters. But why must we leave them to fend for themselves, without a culture of their own, and without compassion for the trying time that is adolescence?
Ronnie doesn't want to leave the neighborhood, but he has considered taking the hint. I wonder where "the kids" will hang if he does.
-- alicia grega-pikul, june 13, 2002
