The Spirit of Recession

Abstract

In 1991, I was at once too poor and not poor enough to be caught up in the last great American recession of the twentieth century. Living far from the coastal epicenters of culture and capital, and being too young and naive to know, much less care, about life beyond my meager horizons, the idea of a phenomenon that throws entire societies into dire phrases like negative growth and depression was as abstract and remote to me as the actual reasons behind the appearance of a recession are in reality. That summer, a decline in gross domestic product for me meant saying no to yet another McDonald's quarter-pounder with cheese. Survival had nothing to do with measuring the rise and fall of economic indicators, but the cunning of living in-between these inhuman quantifications, and finding novel ways to be unmoved and unmoored by their movements, in any direction. Progress was not chasing profit, but standing firm where you happened to have found yourself, against the forces that bull or bear either way. But one learns rather quickly that standing firm doesn't guarantee that the ground one stands on stays firm. The McDonald's where I went now and then closed toward the tail end of the '91 recession; so did other businesses in the area. At the time I didn't think much of it, and if I did, I thought it strange. The place had a lot of customers because the neighborhood it was in didn't have a real grocery store or day care or any semblance of a community or job training center. So inevitably, that McDonald's became all of them at once. People gathered and sat in those obscenely uncomfortable plastic chairs, slowly poisoning themselves with nitrates and chemically flavored meats, waiting for a mother, or a friend, or a paycheck, or the promise of the day's only hot meal. No one mourned the McDonald's closing, but it was missed. And it became a harbinger of other closings and cutbacks. Friends and family of friends lost jobs. And even those who did not lose anything still understood, without comprehending, the turning that was taking place. It was a rare moment when the course of