The Sad Story of Sabo's

Terry Cowgill, who blogs for the Lakeville Journal Company, has written a gem of a post on the decrepit trailer park cum shantytown known as Sabos that for decades was an anomalous eyesore in an otherwise bucolic landscape in Amenia, New York.  I remember this place well, as I used to pass it on my daily school bus ride in the 1970s when I was growing up in Dutchess County.  Not only people but chickens and chimpanzees survived on the margins at Sabo's. The taint of human and animal misery of this place was in plain view to passersby, hinting at the squalid conditions within, but I understand the reality was far worse than any of us imagined.

The comments to Terry's post are just as thoughtful and illuminate the question of the invisible rural poor of our rapidly gentrifying area.  Most communities in the southern Berkshires have banned mobile homes and rentals are few and far between.  Shabby little eyebrow colonials may have several families crammed within but still appear as quaint parts of our rural landscape.  There are corners and hollows in these hills where the rural poor accumulate, but they just as often live in rooms above storefronts, or in aging Victorians carved up into apartments, or in their vehicles.  Many of us are blind to the conditions they endure. 

There is little or no public transportation in our region.  The mean travel time to work in Litchfield County is 26.2 minutes (roughly the same as my 19 mile drive), while in Dutchess it is 1/2 an hour.  Without a car your are likely without a job.  While the median household income in Litchfield County was $57,691 in 2005, 5.5% of residents live below the poverty level.  In Berkshire County that number is 10.2%.  In Salisbury, Connecticut, a town with soaring property values and second homes for transplanted Manhattanites, 7.8% of the population live below the poverty line.

Sabo's was demolished last winter and will fade from local memory, a shadow of a thought from a forgotten past.  But the poor are always with us, even here in these moneyed hills.

Read the whole post here.

Comments

[GreenmanTim]

Welcome, Jenny, and many thanks for the kind words.

[Jenny]

I just found your blog via Terry Cowgill - great stuff, and I look forward to coming back often!