The Road From Rome

Decline, Fall, and Delirious Logistics

All roads lead to Rome, and, for the pilgrim — all roads lead away from Rome about as quickly. And just this week, I found myself there in Roma, city of pasta and pallid old priests, where the bocce balls roll about as fast as the Fiats and mopeds and rivulets of shining lambrusco fill bejeweled goblets of tired, old, cigar-smoking men whose names all end in vowels. Corruption in the halls of the government, cracks in the cobblestone, cannolis by the dozen, and yes, Saint Peter's Church, magnificently towering over the city's promenades — only steps from Little Caesars, the 9/11 memorial, and the DMV.

This is Roma, to be certain — but the Pope does not live here, and no Pope has ever even visited. It is doubtful to imagine any Pope would have so much as a layover in this squalid backwater where Wal-Mart reigns, elderly Italian-American retirees vegetate, and the depressing neon lights of shops selling "vapes" and "exotics" flicker over the empty, freezing streets by the empty Blockbuster video store and the shuttered gas stations. This is Rome, New York — a yawning, ersatz, New World iteration of the European capital for which it was named.

If the proverb is followed as earnestly as one can — when in Rome, do as the Romans do — one would perhaps begin to compulsively smoke Seneca cigarettes, to blow their paycheck at the Turning Stone Casino, and to wear their pajamas to the local Denny's. They might drive a rusty Dodge Neon with studded snowtires on both axels even in the middle of July, puffing on a blunt as they run red lights — or they may slug liter-sized lattes from Dunkin' Donuts in strip mall drive-thrus with conservative AM talk radio blaring in their SUV on their way to their do-nothing state job. But we are doing none of this — we pass through only as pilgrims, as observers, here to see grandma and to attend a sleepy-eyed Mass at the other Saint Peter's Church of Rome.

Rome is the capital city of brain drain, a city whose optimism has been bled from it by generations of piss-poor decisionmaking on the part of city fathers, local officials, and various 'urban planning' bureaucrats who embraced a vision of "Urban Renewal" for Rome in the 80's.

It started with the Barge Canal — a rerouted, widened version of the old Erie Canal, which formerly wended its waters through Rome's downtown in Venetian style, beneath so many "low bridges" and past mule depots and sawdust-floor taverns chortling with vino-quaffing Sicilian immigrants drawn to the town by its nostalgic name. But beginning in 1908,