17. Ormwood

Where the mazy alleys of Mt. Zion yield to the outskirt parkways of Ormwood, Newcastle grows nasty. It’s a part of town that no one wants to be in, especially the people who live there. Resentful of their own poverty, Ormwood residents have little to turn to other than lives of crime. That’s because, more than any other neighborhood in Newcastle, residents of the Ormwood neighborhood have the statistically highest rates of incomplete education. Ormwood residents would much rather take a chance at getting lucky with a pro sports career or music contract than they would earn an honest living at a realistic wage. As a result, Ormwood comes to resemble the ugly side of musical fantasies and hard-luck stories from the sports page. Most streets have a liquor store and street wear shop, and even these turn over with regularity, due to crooked suppliers or too many robberies. The last stop on the rail line is ruined, the tracks twisted so that the train can’t even approach the last quarter mile from the station.

Background

Ormwood began to show signs of its irreversible slide into thuggery during the late 1980s, when refugees from a tropical storm further down the coast took up residence in Newcastle. They brought a transient criminal element with them and for a time in the late ’80s, it was impossible to find a motel in Ormwood that didn’t have baggy-pants hustlers running a rigged craps game out of the lobby or selling stolen goods out of rented vans in the parking lot. People thought that when the storm relief came, the refugees would blow back to their own city, but it didn’t happen. In short, what everyone thought would go away didn’t, and the cancer instead took permanent root in what was never a particularly pleasant part of town to begin with.

Alternative Name(s)

Slums

Type

District

Location under

New Castle