Jackson Jambalaya

"....He was later questioned." How appropriate.

If he was near Pear Orchard Street, then he wasn't at the intersection. Actually, he wasn't even in Jackson or Ridgeland. Pear Orchard is labeled a road in those cities.

That's my old neighborhood. I moved onto Lake Trace Drive in 1994 and moved out ten years later. When we moved there it was such a pleasant, charming neighborhood! I would sit on my porch swing and watch people walking down the street on summer evenings.

About the time they started developing Libby Lane things started to change. That was around the time of the housing bubble and people who could not afford a house in the $170,000 price range (that sounds so cheap now!) started moving in. I started seeing cars with dark tinted windows zooming down the street. I drove home one day and passed a group of teenagers dressed like extras from a Snoop Dogg video shouting and threatening each other. A friend of mine who walked the neighborhood every morning started finding bullet casings on his daily route. A homeless guy came and camped out on my porch rocker to the horror of my wife and child who were inside, frightened prisoners in their own home.

The final straws came when a JPD officer moved three doors down and started having weekly barbecues in his front yard, with several of his buddies loitering on the lawn drinking beer and getting obviously intoxicated. That and a couple moved in next door with a teenage son who washed his car three times a week with his pants hanging to his knees, exposing his butt, and loud, obscene, misogynistic rap music blaring from the garage.

I didn't feel safe allowing my 7-year-old daughter to play in the front yard anymore. That's when I left. I sold my house and moved out.

Donna Ladd and her judgmental a$$hole cohorts would kneejerk and say I left because of black faces. That's what I would expect from her and her ignorant bigotry, but there were black neighbors on my street for at least six years before I moved. Those people caused no trouble. And I move to a street in Rankin County where several black people lived already. So before the hate-fueled JFP crowd comes in with their accusations of racism from their lily-white perch in Fondren, I'll cut that BS off. I wasn't going to sacrifice my daughter's childhood so a group of closed-minded children of privilege would give me a thumbs up from their little realm of craft beer and indie music.

I'd like to say I left and never looked back, but that's not true. I really miss those days in the house where my daughter was born and I knew all my neighbors. It's a shame to see what it has become. When I hear of shootings like this, I think how sad it is that the neighborhood where I have so many nice memories has devolved into such a dangerous place.

But that's 21st century Jackson, and it's only getting worse. That really makes me sad.

Grew up in Lake Trace. Houses there are going down in value because of the people like the ones on Springridge who think guns are appropriate to resolve arguments. Pretty sad.