Went back to my hometown (Doylestown, PA) over the holidays and it just – doesn’t have a working class anymore.

It was a county seat founded on a hill in an age when industry was riverside waterpower, so it was always kinda professional and middle class when that was only 10% of population, but back then a huge chunk were farmers and as the market town of a farm region it had a few factories to use surplus farm population as proletarians – the dairy and fish sticks plant were gone by the time I was born (I broke my collarbone riding off a gravel jump on the lot!), the rivet factory across the street (so primal!) became a parts warehouse for a dealership, I think the place down the street still charges fire extinguishers. In more outdoor labor, the seed company Burpee had fields on the edge of town.

All the working-class duplexes by the factories are getting combined into one unit now, but that was all kinda baked in by my day anyway. What’s new is the absence of any service class or anything – bank tellers, shop clerks, hairstylists. The area was built out in my childhood as a “favored quarter” sub/exurb of Philly and I guess still relied on its job market – there were things to do building the area out (::raises hand:: son of a lawyer who went from land deals to school district work to estate planning, right here), but at steady state not much in the way of local careers past the school district/social services and a few office parks. Everyone I know who “never left home” has in fact relocated to Philadelphia.