Discussions between the Blue Suit and Josh Resnek about everything Everett done weekly. The Blue Suit is the only cloth suit we know of speaking to a member of the local press about politics, money, and everything else under the sun. He is much more than a cloth suit. He has let us know this many times. He is closer than most of us to the knowing of the essence of why everything happens here the way it does.
This week the Blue Suit talks to me about life, about his life. He wonders what might have been had he chosen a different path or that is, if his path hadn’t been chosen for him when he flew off the rack at a lesser department store more than a decade ago.
Mind you, he isn’t sorry about his existence. He is, however, concerned about his future.
“The city is an entirely changed place,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“How so?” I asked in reply.
“Just look around, Josh. Gee whiz. You’ve been around as long as the dinosaurs. Tell me you haven’t noticed the changes,” he demanded.
“Obviously, you haven’t been reading your Leader Herald from week to week,” I answered. “If you had been reading it, you would have noticed how we are treating the future as it is staring us in the face. I believe it is a pretty honest look without any bluster,” I said to the Blue Suit.
“You’ve got a point there, Josh,” he said to me.
He cleared his throat, coughed up a big amount of phlegm, and then he put the window down and with a powerful explosion shooting out of his mouth, spit it into the street where we were driving.
“My God, that was disgusting,” I said to the Blue Suit. “Can you imagine hitting someone with that!” I exclaimed.
“You want me to do it again, Josh?” he asked me.
“Please, not again. Anything but that,” I answered.
We were just cruising around to nowhere. That’s not a bad cruise at times if you need to get your head on straight but can’t find a way to do it.
“It’s really different here from just ten years ago,” the Blue Suit said.
“How so?” I asked him.
“I can’t put my finger on it exactly but it seems different. I see many new faces walking on the sidewalks and going into and out of smaller stores along Broadway. I also watch the comings and goings in some of the city’s biggest apartment development projects. I can’t identify a single face among those thousands of new residents living here. At one time, I knew just about everyone…or at least it felt that way in the city of ten years ago. A lot has happened in the past decade. It’s amazing. I repeat over and over, the city is a new place today. Sometimes I don’t recognize the place. And I wonder, where does Everett end up in another ten years? Where is all this heading? How does the city I know survive when thousands of residents take absolutely no interest in the city or the city government? What’s that about, Josh” the Blue Suit asked me.
“That’s about the modern world, my man. Not many people care much about anything except for themselves. And don’t get me wrong, caring for ourselves is OK. But doing so at the expense of heroism, bravery, morality, economy and political honesty has become the norm. Our national government is out of control. State government is ridiculous and our local government, well, it is what it is, struggling along the only way it knows. Is that so bad? I don’t think so,” the Blue Suit said.
“Not many people in Everett are ready for a revolution,” the Blue Suit said. He knows of what he speaks. “There’s a lot of folks speaking out and talking in public now who never ventured into city hall before. “They’ve established themselves as a force, of sorts,” the Blue Suit added.
“Despite their public comments, the vast majority of them aimed at the city council, not much has changed. The councilors don’t listen to the public speakers. But many hundreds of viewers watching the council or school committee meetings allow their word and influence to spread into many quarters around the city. Public comment counts bigtime in today’s political arena,” he said.
“How do you see the city in ten years?” I asked the Blue Suit.
He thought for a moment, belched. Then he spit a lunger out his window.
“In 2033 I see Everett totally built up on the Parkway. I see the casino and hotel developing everything on the other side of Broadway. The Exxon Mobil property could be a city on its own well into maturity at that point. By that time, just about all available land will be developed. Development will have to stop as it will have nowhere to go… but up. Maybe the Parkway sprouts a dozen skyscrapers…but no, that isn’t going to happen in the next decade. I think the downtown – Everett Square – by that time – will be a far different place than it is today. But those two Everett’s, the old fashioned downtown, Everett Square existence will never coagulate with the apartment house empires that have blossomed less than one mile away. Everett will be a tale of two cities by that time. Let’s face it, Josh. The old-timers continue to die out. Many families remain but just as many or more move out of the city seeking safer and prettier places in the suburbs. Everything is in a state of change here right now. In ten years… we won’t recognize the place. Wait and see,” the Blue Suit concluded.