Phoenixville is an old Pennsylvania steel town. We have been the company town of the Phoenix Iron Works for most of our existence, until the Mill stopped operating in the mid-1970s. For more than a century-and-a-half this town produced everything from Civil War cannons for the Union Army, to rail for the railroads, to structural columns for the nation’s bridges and buildings, to billions of various nails for everyone in the world.
Nailer’s Row was built by the Mill in the mid-1800s as company housing for its workers. This was done out of necessity, not benevolence. The population of the town was growing rapidly and there was a shortage of housing. The Reeves family, the owners of the steel mill, did not pay as well as other mills and owning their housing gave them more control over the employees. Dependence begets servitude whether you are talking about governments or corporations. (I live in an old Reeves family house on Gay Street).
Despite the semi-nefarious motives for its creation, Nailer’s Row is a pleasant street to look on today, (actually called Mill Street), especially in the Spring when her young trees are bursting. The history of this charming spot, with its neat row of houses, got me thinking about community and neighborhoods, and about neighbors. About living shoulder to shoulder with the same people you work with every day. About having the same struggles and complaints around work and life. About watching each other’s kids. There would be fewer secrets; everyone would know who was lazy and shiftless at work; who had marriage problems, or who had drinking problems. It would be impossible to be one person at work and a different person at home. It would require genuine love to maintain that balance between being a loving neighbor and a nosy neighbor.
How different life is today. Everything feels global. Everything seems digital. Our neighbors are often two-dimensional beings on social media. Everything is Amazon and Google, distant and uninvolved. I don’t even have to interact with my local restaurant server; I can have DoorDash do it for me. It is as if some invisible conspiracy has driven us underground and away from each other. It is far too easy for me to live as some type of urban hermit today. This may appeal to my introverted little soul, but I am not permitted to cut myself off from my community; to be a tiny island of self.
I try my best to follow Jesus every day, most days l fail badly. He boiled all the laws of Heaven down to two:
Love God with all your heart and strength and love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Two separate commands that are now forever linked. I cannot claim to be doing the first unless I am doing the second. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” was the question asked by a killer near the beginning of the Bible. Much of the rest of the book is spent answering that simple question, “yes, yes you are.”
Love your neighbor, no matter how different they may be from you. Love your neighbor, no matter what they look like. Love your neighbor, no matter what language they may speak. Love your neighbor, no matter who they voted for. Love your neighbor, whether they love you back or not. If we are just disconnected protoplasm in a meaningless cosmos then we owe each other nothing. But we are not, so love your neighbor.
I love you Phoenixville, I wish you nothing but peace and glory. But never forget who you are; a gritty blue-collar town that helped build a nation. I know we are much broader than that now, but those are our bones. They are good bones. The bones of a town that lived and worked and played together. Look out for each other. Do not hold grudges with each other. Keep an eye on each other’s kids. Do not fight over parking spaces, even in winter. Check on the elderly who live alone, make sure they are ok. Let us not become another bland bedroom community. Let us not live like urban hermits. Take care of each other. Towns are not buildings and streets and trendy shops. Towns are people.
We do not own this place, just as we do not own this world. We are guests on land created by another. We all live in God’s company town; he is a benevolent landlord, but he cares deeply how we treat each other. It is how he measures our affection for him, “in as much as you have done it unto the least of these…you have done it unto me.”As far as he is concerned we are a community whether we feel like it or not. As far as he is concerned we are all our brother’s keeper. As far as he is concerned the obligation is on us to be a neighbor.
As far as he is concerned we all live in Nailer’s Row.