Every time I watch the opening credits of the classic TV sitcom "Good Times", I am always reminded that the housing projects shown are no longer there. The infamous Cabrini Green projects were demolished in 2011. The Evans family lived in one of these buildings, but the housing project they lived in was never named. But those of us who grew up in Chicago knew exactly where they were.
When I was a little girl, my family also lived in the projects. Cabrini Green was on the nearest north side. We lived on the west side of Rockwell Gardens. These buildings were demolished earlier in this century. Our apartment was similar to the one the Evans family lived in, although our anteroom was not as spacious as theirs. There were two bedrooms, a small kitchen, a small bathroom and a great lack of closet space. Not enough room for a single, divorced mother with three children, but we made it work.
My family had moved out of the projects long before "Good Times" premiered on CBS in 1974. But we still had memories of daily life there. The questions about vandalized washers and dryers in the laundry room, broken elevators, gang wars that made people hide in their apartments, etc., were true. But other things that happened in this series did not always reflect reality.
One of the weird aspects of the show was how everyone, from family members to neighbor Wilona Woods, could just walk into Evans' my next project without knocking. I know it's a regular TV trope. This is done because it is usually too time consuming and / or tedious to display signs that open doors for visitors, especially if it is an individual they know well. But most who have lived in the projects, most agreed with me that front doors in these apartments were usually always locked. Just leaving the door open all the time would have been like hanging up signs that said, "Come in and take what you want." It was just not done.
Bookman was the disgusting guardian whose character was added to the show in the second season. Bookman seemed to have a lot of power, including being able to deport families. Of course, guardians are required to report unusual matters they find to management. But I never knew that the guard in our old building had any authority other than to clean. In fact, I remember tenants always giving the caretaker a difficult path to complain about cleaning issues.
Recently, I saw a repeat of an episode where Thelma had won a scholarship to a prestigious, predominantly white, all-girls high school in Michigan. A member of one of the school's sororities showed up at the apartment to convince Thelma to lift with them. Evans quickly found out that the sorority only wanted Thelma as a symbolic member because she was African American. There were so many things wrong with this scenario outside of racism. The sorority member, a blonde teenage girl who was obviously from a middle class or wealthy background, would not have been caught dead in the projects to this day. Not everyone who lived in the projects was criminal or dirt poor, for that matter. But the only white people I saw who dared go into the projects were social workers, insurance agents, and the police. Stories that the housing projects were dangerous, violent places kept everyone else away.
After Thelma declined the invitation to join the sorority, the sorority girl decided to leave the family with a final farewell. She told them they were lucky they did not send another sorority girl to see Thelma because that girl hated African Americans. JJ slammed the door closed behind the party girl. In fact, this girl would have been highlighted or worse for being asinin enough to express racial discrimination in an area where she was currently a minority.
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