Remembering Boardman, OH

I was reading a HuffPost article about a Matt Tabbi book (“America Has A ‘Profound Hatred Of The Weak And The Poor’”). At the bottom of the page was one of those little slideshows, this one was titled “Cities With Greatest Increase In Concentrated Poverty.” Out of curiosity I clicked through. Number 3 was Youngstown-Warren-Boardman. I stopped and stared long and hard at the image for that one (pictured above).

I remember Boardman. Recall that I grew up in a mill town north of Pittsburgh on the Ohio River. I remember my mom and I making the hour-to-90min drive for a day of shopping at a mall in Boardman back in the early 1980s (where I lived it wasn’t uncommon to drive an hour or more for that kind of outing). The mall had a Strouss’ department store, which was a nice change from the local Kaufmann’s.

I always enjoyed the ride, Ohio was…Ohio. Flat, but clean, some farmland, nice roads. This is not the Boardman I recall from those years…

Very sad.