The Ethiopians Across The Street
In the mid 80's we had moved across the street from our old apartment. We now lived next door to the bar, so instead of having drunks peeing on the side of our house, we frequently woke up to find blood on our front steps. We never washed it off. We just waited for rain.
But I digress. We had some people from Ethiopia move into the 4 family across the street from us. These were the oddest people I had ever seen. They put a sofa out on their front lawn.
Not some cool wicker outdoor sofa -a real, live, meant-to-be-inside sofa. It was upholstered in blue fabric with little flowers on it. At first, we figured someone had thrown it out, and they were waiting for bulk-trash pick up day. Nope. That thing sat out there all winter long. When the weather warmed up, they would sit on the sofa and chat with each other. I kept expecting the sofa to just fall apart, considering the weather extremes St. Louis is subjected to. It actually did sort of fall apart, after their kids used it as a sled one winter. The next spring they had acquired a beige sofa to put next to the blue one. We started making bets on how long it would be before they had a whole living room out there.
Sunday, April 27, 2003
The Race War That Wasn't
The neighborhood I grew up in was totally caucasian for most of the time I lived there. The lines were very clear. Black people lived north of Russel Ave. There was a 2 block stretch that was "mixed", and everyone who lived south of Shenandoah Ave. was white. We lived near the corner of California and Sidney. Sidney was 3 blocks south of Shenandoah.
My sister and I were hanging out on our front porch one day, and some kids we didn't know came down our street with a bike. They were telling anyone they could find about how they had stolen the bike from a black kid. The story went something like this. "We stoled a bike from a nigger! He come into our neighborhood, so we beat him up and stoled his bike." They were all flushed with their success at victimization, until my sister shot them down. She said, "You're daddy is gonna beat your ass."
Shortly afterward, we saw some teenagers driving around with the bike held up on top of their car. It became a sort of grim trophy, paraded up and down the streets. It was disgusting. The men in the neighborhood began to gather by the bar across the street. They understood what the teenagers didn't. Theft is crossing a line. Theft from someone off our turf was poking a hornet's nest. Theft from black people was likely to end in bloodshed.
The father of the boy who had been robbed walked into our neighborhood all by himself, and was met by a dozen men.
An agreement was reached. Our men would meet their men up at Fox park, in the softball field, at 7:00 that night, and the bike would be returned.
The Father then turned his back on all those hoosiers, and walked away.
As soon as he was gone, those hoosiers climbed up on the flat roof of the bar, and started tossing down weapons. There was an assortment of things tossed down to eager hands. 2x4's with big nails driven through them, baseball bats full of bb's, broken motorcycle chains, I was amazed at the wealth of weaponry I saw. Jokes were tossed around about whether or not the "niggers" would bring guns. Our side had guns, but they kept them hidden. They were for just-in-case the other side brought guns.
We sat on our porch after dinner and watched this amazing gathering. Men kissed their women good bye like they were going off to die. It was better than watching West Side Story.
Our guys carried the bike up to the park, and all the kids trailed a block behind. We all stood at the corner and watched the tense return of the bicycle, wondering when it would break out into fighting.
Our guys lined up on the south side of the park. Their guys lined up on the north side of the park. Then, from the black men's side stepped a little boy. He was maybe 9 years old. His daddy made him step forward and get his bike back from the men who held it. The children around me fell to talking, "what's wrong with them? You don't bring a kid to a race-war!" etc.
I started crying, and I went home. I wished I had a daddy like that. He was so brave. I wanted to yell at them, that our guys had guns. I didn't want to see that beautiful little boy in a race-fight. It wasn't exciting anymore. It wasn't beautiful and dramatic and tragic, like West Side Story. It was horrible.
The race war never happened. The bike was exchanged, and everybody went home. Not a single punch was thrown. Thank God.
The next day, we all knew who had stolen the bike. It was the 12 year old with bruises on his face. Stealing a bike would have earned him a blistered backside, but he got caught making us look bad to black people, so his dad beat the shit out of him.
This was the neighborhood I grew up in. It wasn't very pretty, and it wasn't very nice, and I thank the Gods that I've come a long, long way from that.
The neighborhood I grew up in was totally caucasian for most of the time I lived there. The lines were very clear. Black people lived north of Russel Ave. There was a 2 block stretch that was "mixed", and everyone who lived south of Shenandoah Ave. was white. We lived near the corner of California and Sidney. Sidney was 3 blocks south of Shenandoah.
My sister and I were hanging out on our front porch one day, and some kids we didn't know came down our street with a bike. They were telling anyone they could find about how they had stolen the bike from a black kid. The story went something like this. "We stoled a bike from a nigger! He come into our neighborhood, so we beat him up and stoled his bike." They were all flushed with their success at victimization, until my sister shot them down. She said, "You're daddy is gonna beat your ass."
Shortly afterward, we saw some teenagers driving around with the bike held up on top of their car. It became a sort of grim trophy, paraded up and down the streets. It was disgusting. The men in the neighborhood began to gather by the bar across the street. They understood what the teenagers didn't. Theft is crossing a line. Theft from someone off our turf was poking a hornet's nest. Theft from black people was likely to end in bloodshed.
The father of the boy who had been robbed walked into our neighborhood all by himself, and was met by a dozen men.
An agreement was reached. Our men would meet their men up at Fox park, in the softball field, at 7:00 that night, and the bike would be returned.
The Father then turned his back on all those hoosiers, and walked away.
As soon as he was gone, those hoosiers climbed up on the flat roof of the bar, and started tossing down weapons. There was an assortment of things tossed down to eager hands. 2x4's with big nails driven through them, baseball bats full of bb's, broken motorcycle chains, I was amazed at the wealth of weaponry I saw. Jokes were tossed around about whether or not the "niggers" would bring guns. Our side had guns, but they kept them hidden. They were for just-in-case the other side brought guns.
We sat on our porch after dinner and watched this amazing gathering. Men kissed their women good bye like they were going off to die. It was better than watching West Side Story.
Our guys carried the bike up to the park, and all the kids trailed a block behind. We all stood at the corner and watched the tense return of the bicycle, wondering when it would break out into fighting.
Our guys lined up on the south side of the park. Their guys lined up on the north side of the park. Then, from the black men's side stepped a little boy. He was maybe 9 years old. His daddy made him step forward and get his bike back from the men who held it. The children around me fell to talking, "what's wrong with them? You don't bring a kid to a race-war!" etc.
I started crying, and I went home. I wished I had a daddy like that. He was so brave. I wanted to yell at them, that our guys had guns. I didn't want to see that beautiful little boy in a race-fight. It wasn't exciting anymore. It wasn't beautiful and dramatic and tragic, like West Side Story. It was horrible.
The race war never happened. The bike was exchanged, and everybody went home. Not a single punch was thrown. Thank God.
The next day, we all knew who had stolen the bike. It was the 12 year old with bruises on his face. Stealing a bike would have earned him a blistered backside, but he got caught making us look bad to black people, so his dad beat the shit out of him.
This was the neighborhood I grew up in. It wasn't very pretty, and it wasn't very nice, and I thank the Gods that I've come a long, long way from that.
Tuesday, April 22, 2003
The Kool-Aid stand
My sister was always a budding entrepreneur, and we spent several summers trying to sell cool drinks. We would drag the coffee table outside and set the drink of the day on it, along with a homemade sign and an assortment of whatever plastic cups were clean. Our customers had to enjoy their drinks at our "stand", so we could re-use the cups. Yes, we washed them.
Most days it was off-brand kool-aid, but we tried snow cones a few times. It was really a pain in the butt to chip all that frost out of the freezer, though. Our customers never really cared for the freezer frost snow cones. We tried breaking up ice cubes with a hammer. That would result in dirty smaller ice cubes. Someone gave Mom an old blender, and that worked better, but all in all, snow cones were a dismal failure. Our most successful creation was kool-aid ice cubes with a toothpick stuck in it. We sold those for a nickel a piece.
The front of our house was not exactly a high traffic area. On a good day we'd make a dollar or two. We would always proudly give the money to our mom, and she would send us to the store with that same handful of change to buy milk or real butter. Whenever we had real butter, mom would bake peanut butter cookies.
Ahhh. Peanut butter cookies.
My sister was always a budding entrepreneur, and we spent several summers trying to sell cool drinks. We would drag the coffee table outside and set the drink of the day on it, along with a homemade sign and an assortment of whatever plastic cups were clean. Our customers had to enjoy their drinks at our "stand", so we could re-use the cups. Yes, we washed them.
Most days it was off-brand kool-aid, but we tried snow cones a few times. It was really a pain in the butt to chip all that frost out of the freezer, though. Our customers never really cared for the freezer frost snow cones. We tried breaking up ice cubes with a hammer. That would result in dirty smaller ice cubes. Someone gave Mom an old blender, and that worked better, but all in all, snow cones were a dismal failure. Our most successful creation was kool-aid ice cubes with a toothpick stuck in it. We sold those for a nickel a piece.
The front of our house was not exactly a high traffic area. On a good day we'd make a dollar or two. We would always proudly give the money to our mom, and she would send us to the store with that same handful of change to buy milk or real butter. Whenever we had real butter, mom would bake peanut butter cookies.
Ahhh. Peanut butter cookies.
Monday, April 21, 2003
Easter Eggs and Video Games
When we were little, we'd buy 18 eggs from the store and dye them pretty colors. This would become mom's lunch for the next week. This also meant we could afford some easter candy, since eggs are cheap.
We never bought dye. We used a few drops of food coloring in a mix of vinegar and water. We'd draw pictures on the eggs with a white crayon, dye the egg yellow, draw more pictures, dye it green, etc. The end result was usually a murky, dirt colored egg covered in multicolored crosses. My awesome parent would take these monstrosities out in public, and come home raving about the compliments she had received on her lunch hour.
Then came the age of Pac-Man, and a game room opened next to the bar across the street. The game room had 2 video games and a pinball game. They also sold hot dogs and soda.
The first easter after the game room had opened, my sister and I found little plastic eggs scattered all over the house. Each egg held several quarters. My mom had probably been saving quarters for months. Quarter eggs became a yearly tradition in our home. It's amazing the power of a few handfuls of change.
When we were little, we'd buy 18 eggs from the store and dye them pretty colors. This would become mom's lunch for the next week. This also meant we could afford some easter candy, since eggs are cheap.
We never bought dye. We used a few drops of food coloring in a mix of vinegar and water. We'd draw pictures on the eggs with a white crayon, dye the egg yellow, draw more pictures, dye it green, etc. The end result was usually a murky, dirt colored egg covered in multicolored crosses. My awesome parent would take these monstrosities out in public, and come home raving about the compliments she had received on her lunch hour.
Then came the age of Pac-Man, and a game room opened next to the bar across the street. The game room had 2 video games and a pinball game. They also sold hot dogs and soda.
The first easter after the game room had opened, my sister and I found little plastic eggs scattered all over the house. Each egg held several quarters. My mom had probably been saving quarters for months. Quarter eggs became a yearly tradition in our home. It's amazing the power of a few handfuls of change.
Saturday, April 19, 2003
ok. ok. I first read Poe when I was 9. I had gotten bored with my own books, which I knew by heart, so I started swiping my mom's. Her one-shelf collection included A Compendium of Short Stories and Poetry by Edgar Allen Poe. I picked that one first, because everyone said I was too young to understand it, and I wanted to prove them wrong. My favorite story was The Cask of Amontillado.
I didn't understand why the guy wanted revenge, but I loved how he bricked the guy up in a wall.
I didn't understand why the guy wanted revenge, but I loved how he bricked the guy up in a wall.
The Library Summer
My mom worked downtown, at Royal Papers Inc. When her live-in boyfriend moved out, we had no adult to keep an eye on us. The three of us would get up at about 6:15, have breakfast, pack a lunch and catch the 7:00 Cherokee bus. My sister and I would get off at the library on Jefferson Avenue, and mom would continue the ride downtown. We would sit outside the library waiting for it to open at 9:00.
When the library opened we would go inside and start reading. On cooler days we would read the books outside, sitting on the limestone steps. On warm days we would read inside, enjoying the luxury of air conditioning. We worked our way through the entire juvenile section and had started in on the adult section by mid-summer. The librarians weren't supposed to let children under 12 into the adult section, but they let us peruse the books as long as they had final say so on whether we could read them or not.
Adult fiction is a wonderful thing. Anne Mc Caffrey, Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe lit up my world. They widened my (already large) vocabulary and introduced me to the idea that Life is bigger than your own slice of it. They taught me that people work best when they have other characters to bounce off of. Adult fiction can cover multiple story lines, all meeting and separating, covering an entire fictional world. The Library Summer gave me words for all the feelings and desires I had. There, on paper, were vivid descriptions of everything I had witnessed in my life. Everthing had a reason, everything had a story behind it. Everything had the power to change the world. Every protagonist rose above his (or her) crappy situation, survived all manner of insult, and truimphed in the end.
I'm sorry to say, I blew through those wonderful tales like a kid goes through Halloween candy. I didn't take the time to enjoy them, and I don't remember most of them now. The ones I remember most vividly were the ones I had to put down because I didn't understand them yet. I didn't get sex and intimacy. I didn't get archaic phraseology. I didn't make it past the third page of War of the Worlds. The wording bored me to death. Maybe because I'm a bit dyslexic, some "classics" were nearly impossible for me to struggle my way through. It really frustrated me to return a book unfinished. I felt like the book had defeated me. "It was an epic battle, but Hard Words eventually won out against Simple Stubborness." I would get mad at the cheezy author who just assumed the reader would know what the hell he was talking about. Why would they never explain why Lessa and F'lar were strained after their dragons had mated? Why should I care about an 1800's version of creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water? These books weren't written for a just-turned-11 year old, and I had a lot more living to do before they would make sense.
-wow, went off on a tangent there, didn't I?-
The library closed at 4:30, so we would borrow whichever book we had been immersed in and wait outside for mom's bus to come by. Every ten minutes, we'd hear a bus coming and lift our heads, watching for any sign of mom's distinctive orange afro. The bus would pass, or stop to let off passengers, and we'd go back to reading. Eventually we'd see her, pressed up to the window, smiling and waving. We would ride the bus home with her, basking in her love of us. The hunger pangs would slip away as we fed our real hunger- the hunger for companionship.
My mom worked downtown, at Royal Papers Inc. When her live-in boyfriend moved out, we had no adult to keep an eye on us. The three of us would get up at about 6:15, have breakfast, pack a lunch and catch the 7:00 Cherokee bus. My sister and I would get off at the library on Jefferson Avenue, and mom would continue the ride downtown. We would sit outside the library waiting for it to open at 9:00.
When the library opened we would go inside and start reading. On cooler days we would read the books outside, sitting on the limestone steps. On warm days we would read inside, enjoying the luxury of air conditioning. We worked our way through the entire juvenile section and had started in on the adult section by mid-summer. The librarians weren't supposed to let children under 12 into the adult section, but they let us peruse the books as long as they had final say so on whether we could read them or not.
Adult fiction is a wonderful thing. Anne Mc Caffrey, Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain and Edgar Allen Poe lit up my world. They widened my (already large) vocabulary and introduced me to the idea that Life is bigger than your own slice of it. They taught me that people work best when they have other characters to bounce off of. Adult fiction can cover multiple story lines, all meeting and separating, covering an entire fictional world. The Library Summer gave me words for all the feelings and desires I had. There, on paper, were vivid descriptions of everything I had witnessed in my life. Everthing had a reason, everything had a story behind it. Everything had the power to change the world. Every protagonist rose above his (or her) crappy situation, survived all manner of insult, and truimphed in the end.
I'm sorry to say, I blew through those wonderful tales like a kid goes through Halloween candy. I didn't take the time to enjoy them, and I don't remember most of them now. The ones I remember most vividly were the ones I had to put down because I didn't understand them yet. I didn't get sex and intimacy. I didn't get archaic phraseology. I didn't make it past the third page of War of the Worlds. The wording bored me to death. Maybe because I'm a bit dyslexic, some "classics" were nearly impossible for me to struggle my way through. It really frustrated me to return a book unfinished. I felt like the book had defeated me. "It was an epic battle, but Hard Words eventually won out against Simple Stubborness." I would get mad at the cheezy author who just assumed the reader would know what the hell he was talking about. Why would they never explain why Lessa and F'lar were strained after their dragons had mated? Why should I care about an 1800's version of creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water? These books weren't written for a just-turned-11 year old, and I had a lot more living to do before they would make sense.
-wow, went off on a tangent there, didn't I?-
The library closed at 4:30, so we would borrow whichever book we had been immersed in and wait outside for mom's bus to come by. Every ten minutes, we'd hear a bus coming and lift our heads, watching for any sign of mom's distinctive orange afro. The bus would pass, or stop to let off passengers, and we'd go back to reading. Eventually we'd see her, pressed up to the window, smiling and waving. We would ride the bus home with her, basking in her love of us. The hunger pangs would slip away as we fed our real hunger- the hunger for companionship.
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Wednesday is dumpster day
Every school morning, sis and I would leave the house and walk 3 blocks to Notre Dame Elementary, where we went to school. Every morning our route would take us past the place where men loaded their food trucks. My mom called them roach coaches. Doesn't that phrase whet the appetite?
These men would offload expired packaged food, take on fresh packaged food, and head off for their routes to feed hungry construction workers. Most days, the men would give the expired food to the line of homeless people waiting in the alley. (stale donuts and such, not rotten meat or anything)
Wednesday, however, was dumpster day. The manager would stand and watch while all that food went from the trucks to the dumpster. He would try to shoo off the homeless people by yelling at them. He would yell,"Get away from here! Get outta that dumpster! You're trespassing! I'm gonna call the cops!"
In the summertime, we would see them camped out in the alley waiting for the manager to go off-shift, while all that food rotted in the sun. There was a shift change at 11 o'clock, and the homeless people would help each other into the dumpster. We could hear the hollow echo of their voices coming from the dumpster, "This samwitch looks ok." or "Shit, all this crap's rotten."
By noon, they would have faded away to wherever homeless people go; but we would see them again at night staking out their turf, or riding the California (avenue) bus, which ran up and down our street until 2 am.
My sister and I started taking a longer route to school on Wednesdays. We would walk up California to Lynch, instead of taking Sidney Street and passing that dumpster.
When we walked across Lynch, we would pass the dairy, and once in a while we would see a young guy quietly "forgetting" a crate of fresh milk sitting by their dumpster. A few times this same guy would give milk to the students heading to school. It was a rare treat to have something filling in the morning, and my sister and I were afraid to press our luck by walking past too often. We understood he was breaking the rules and risking his job to feed hungry kids who's parents were trying to give their kids a decent education. A good education will take you a hell of a lot farther than a good meal, but there were a lot of nights where my mom said, "I'm not hungry, you girls eat up." to pay for the Catholic school I was fortunate enough to attend.
My mom taught me to find the good in everything. I saw a lot of harshness around me, and I saw a lot of good too. There was an unwritten code for my neighborhood. Children were protected from as much as possible. We roamed without fear. There were always strangers keeping an eye on us, keeping the predators at bay.
Every school morning, sis and I would leave the house and walk 3 blocks to Notre Dame Elementary, where we went to school. Every morning our route would take us past the place where men loaded their food trucks. My mom called them roach coaches. Doesn't that phrase whet the appetite?
These men would offload expired packaged food, take on fresh packaged food, and head off for their routes to feed hungry construction workers. Most days, the men would give the expired food to the line of homeless people waiting in the alley. (stale donuts and such, not rotten meat or anything)
Wednesday, however, was dumpster day. The manager would stand and watch while all that food went from the trucks to the dumpster. He would try to shoo off the homeless people by yelling at them. He would yell,"Get away from here! Get outta that dumpster! You're trespassing! I'm gonna call the cops!"
In the summertime, we would see them camped out in the alley waiting for the manager to go off-shift, while all that food rotted in the sun. There was a shift change at 11 o'clock, and the homeless people would help each other into the dumpster. We could hear the hollow echo of their voices coming from the dumpster, "This samwitch looks ok." or "Shit, all this crap's rotten."
By noon, they would have faded away to wherever homeless people go; but we would see them again at night staking out their turf, or riding the California (avenue) bus, which ran up and down our street until 2 am.
My sister and I started taking a longer route to school on Wednesdays. We would walk up California to Lynch, instead of taking Sidney Street and passing that dumpster.
When we walked across Lynch, we would pass the dairy, and once in a while we would see a young guy quietly "forgetting" a crate of fresh milk sitting by their dumpster. A few times this same guy would give milk to the students heading to school. It was a rare treat to have something filling in the morning, and my sister and I were afraid to press our luck by walking past too often. We understood he was breaking the rules and risking his job to feed hungry kids who's parents were trying to give their kids a decent education. A good education will take you a hell of a lot farther than a good meal, but there were a lot of nights where my mom said, "I'm not hungry, you girls eat up." to pay for the Catholic school I was fortunate enough to attend.
My mom taught me to find the good in everything. I saw a lot of harshness around me, and I saw a lot of good too. There was an unwritten code for my neighborhood. Children were protected from as much as possible. We roamed without fear. There were always strangers keeping an eye on us, keeping the predators at bay.
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
"And I'm keeping your stick, too."
1985. My sister and I were hanging out with friends on their front steps, when some guy who was fairly new to the neighborhood came running up to the cast iron fence. We had been watching the lesbians enter and exit the Kit Kat Club. Yes, another bar. We had three in a two block radius. I don't remember this guy's name, but I'll never forget his face. He was skinny, with thinning hair, and wire rimmed glasses. He didn't look like he could harm a flea. Skinny guy grabbed the front gate and shouted, "You've got to help me! He's trying to kill me!" I remember this part so clearly. His pupils were dilated and he had blood on the knuckles of his right hand. He was wearing tight blue jeans and a white striped button down shirt.
The eldest in our group ran for the phone to call 911. The rest of us saw T, a good friend and really upstanding guy, come running around the corner. He was in a rage, and he was moving fast. We could feel the anger radiating off of him like a fire. T ran up and popped Skinny upside the head with a broken baseball bat. The force of the blow spun him halfway around, spraying little droplets of blood across the sidewalk and out into the street. My eyes tracked his glasses as they flew off his face, tumbled twice, then skittered across the pavement. I remember thinking, "God, I hope a car doesn't come by and drive over those."
T kicked skinny guy into the street and started thrashing him with the bat, his fists, whatever was closest to the guy's skin. Even with drunken bar fights, I had never seen violence like this. There came a point where T paused for breath; the skinny guy crawling around at his feet, crying and pleading, "Please don't kill me, man. Please God, don't kill me." We thought T probably would. He pulled himself up on the bumper of a car and had almost made it to his feet, when T ran over and cracked that half a bat across the guy's back, knocking him to the ground again. He twitched, trying to get up, and vomited down the front of his shirt. T stood over him, chest heaving and covered in sweat. He hit Skinny guy in the head a few more times and then said, "There!...and I'm keeping your stick, too!" Then he walked away, leaving a mess of a human being lying unconscious in the steet. We thought he was dead, and didn't know what to do... but then he moved. We all crowded up to the gate and someone called out, "Hey, man! Are you o.k?"
None of us had the guts to cross the barrier of the 3 ft high cast iron fence. We were safe on this side. Crossing the barrier would make us participants. None of us wanted to get any closer to the brutality we had just witnessed. He staggered around for a while, then said, "Hey man, you seen my glasses?" I quietly pointed them out to him. One of the lenses was cracked. He put the glasses back on his face and started feeling around in his mouth. I guess he was counting his teeth. He sat down in the street and began sobbing softly. We knew that grown men don't cry, yet there he was; sobbing and feeling his teeth. We didn't know what to do. It was uncomfortable watching him sway back and forth, unable to get up - refusing to lay down.
The eldest called the cops again, and not too long after that an ambulance showed up and took the guy away. we discussed what had happened for a long time, trying to bring some measure of security back to our world. We were pretty shaken. Once we had talked ourselves out, my sister and I headed for home. We almost jumped out of our shoes when we heard "Psst!" from a shadow-filled gangway. T was hiding there, terrified. He asked, "Are the cops gone?" We assured him they were. He came out of the shadows and asked if we knew what had happened. When we told him we had been sitting right there, he looked like he was going to throw up. He said, "Geez, guys, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean for you to see that. You're just kids!"
I asked if he still had the stick. He said, "What?" I said, "The stick...'And I'm keeping your stick too'???" And he said, "Oh. You know my sister's pregnant, right? Well he was her boyfriend, and tonight I came home and saw him beating her with this baseball bat."
He had taken it away from skinny guy, and paid him back in spades. It completely changed how we felt about the situation. 5 minutes before, we were ready to hear him out and then tell the cops where he was hiding. Now we were willing to take it to our graves. He had come to the rescue of his sister. He had (violently) righted a wrong. We were safe again and everything was right with the world.
1985. My sister and I were hanging out with friends on their front steps, when some guy who was fairly new to the neighborhood came running up to the cast iron fence. We had been watching the lesbians enter and exit the Kit Kat Club. Yes, another bar. We had three in a two block radius. I don't remember this guy's name, but I'll never forget his face. He was skinny, with thinning hair, and wire rimmed glasses. He didn't look like he could harm a flea. Skinny guy grabbed the front gate and shouted, "You've got to help me! He's trying to kill me!" I remember this part so clearly. His pupils were dilated and he had blood on the knuckles of his right hand. He was wearing tight blue jeans and a white striped button down shirt.
The eldest in our group ran for the phone to call 911. The rest of us saw T, a good friend and really upstanding guy, come running around the corner. He was in a rage, and he was moving fast. We could feel the anger radiating off of him like a fire. T ran up and popped Skinny upside the head with a broken baseball bat. The force of the blow spun him halfway around, spraying little droplets of blood across the sidewalk and out into the street. My eyes tracked his glasses as they flew off his face, tumbled twice, then skittered across the pavement. I remember thinking, "God, I hope a car doesn't come by and drive over those."
T kicked skinny guy into the street and started thrashing him with the bat, his fists, whatever was closest to the guy's skin. Even with drunken bar fights, I had never seen violence like this. There came a point where T paused for breath; the skinny guy crawling around at his feet, crying and pleading, "Please don't kill me, man. Please God, don't kill me." We thought T probably would. He pulled himself up on the bumper of a car and had almost made it to his feet, when T ran over and cracked that half a bat across the guy's back, knocking him to the ground again. He twitched, trying to get up, and vomited down the front of his shirt. T stood over him, chest heaving and covered in sweat. He hit Skinny guy in the head a few more times and then said, "There!...and I'm keeping your stick, too!" Then he walked away, leaving a mess of a human being lying unconscious in the steet. We thought he was dead, and didn't know what to do... but then he moved. We all crowded up to the gate and someone called out, "Hey, man! Are you o.k?"
None of us had the guts to cross the barrier of the 3 ft high cast iron fence. We were safe on this side. Crossing the barrier would make us participants. None of us wanted to get any closer to the brutality we had just witnessed. He staggered around for a while, then said, "Hey man, you seen my glasses?" I quietly pointed them out to him. One of the lenses was cracked. He put the glasses back on his face and started feeling around in his mouth. I guess he was counting his teeth. He sat down in the street and began sobbing softly. We knew that grown men don't cry, yet there he was; sobbing and feeling his teeth. We didn't know what to do. It was uncomfortable watching him sway back and forth, unable to get up - refusing to lay down.
The eldest called the cops again, and not too long after that an ambulance showed up and took the guy away. we discussed what had happened for a long time, trying to bring some measure of security back to our world. We were pretty shaken. Once we had talked ourselves out, my sister and I headed for home. We almost jumped out of our shoes when we heard "Psst!" from a shadow-filled gangway. T was hiding there, terrified. He asked, "Are the cops gone?" We assured him they were. He came out of the shadows and asked if we knew what had happened. When we told him we had been sitting right there, he looked like he was going to throw up. He said, "Geez, guys, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean for you to see that. You're just kids!"
I asked if he still had the stick. He said, "What?" I said, "The stick...'And I'm keeping your stick too'???" And he said, "Oh. You know my sister's pregnant, right? Well he was her boyfriend, and tonight I came home and saw him beating her with this baseball bat."
He had taken it away from skinny guy, and paid him back in spades. It completely changed how we felt about the situation. 5 minutes before, we were ready to hear him out and then tell the cops where he was hiding. Now we were willing to take it to our graves. He had come to the rescue of his sister. He had (violently) righted a wrong. We were safe again and everything was right with the world.
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
More on Drunks From Across The Street
In 1978, air-conditioning was for county people. We were lucky we owned a fan. We slept with the windows wide open, and we rarely locked our doors. We had nothing worth stealing, and glass was too expensive to replace should someone really want to break in.
Once in a while, a drunk would forget where he lived and come walking into our house instead. One night I woke to the sound of a key in our lock.
Remember how I said we didn't lock our doors? Yeah.
Eventually Mr. three-sheets-to-the-wind tried the doorknob, and came face to face with a ten year old girl holding a shotgun almost as big as herself.
Geez, I was scared. It never occured to me to wake a grown-up. I was out of bed and to the gun before I had a chance to decide if I would pull the trigger. I did decide to shoot him, but when I saw it was just a drunk, I changed my mind. He could live if he went away. I told him he was in the wrong house. He asked me what I was doing in his house? I told him again that he had the wrong house, and he stood there with his hand on the doorknob, trying to think how to have this "pink elephant" of a girl disappear from "his" house. I then told him I would shoot him if he didn't leave. His reply? "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house."
When he left, I locked the door behind him.
When I woke Mom and told her what had happened, she showed me where Tom kept the shotgun shells. The gun wasn't even loaded!
In 1978, air-conditioning was for county people. We were lucky we owned a fan. We slept with the windows wide open, and we rarely locked our doors. We had nothing worth stealing, and glass was too expensive to replace should someone really want to break in.
Once in a while, a drunk would forget where he lived and come walking into our house instead. One night I woke to the sound of a key in our lock.
Remember how I said we didn't lock our doors? Yeah.
Eventually Mr. three-sheets-to-the-wind tried the doorknob, and came face to face with a ten year old girl holding a shotgun almost as big as herself.
Geez, I was scared. It never occured to me to wake a grown-up. I was out of bed and to the gun before I had a chance to decide if I would pull the trigger. I did decide to shoot him, but when I saw it was just a drunk, I changed my mind. He could live if he went away. I told him he was in the wrong house. He asked me what I was doing in his house? I told him again that he had the wrong house, and he stood there with his hand on the doorknob, trying to think how to have this "pink elephant" of a girl disappear from "his" house. I then told him I would shoot him if he didn't leave. His reply? "I'm sorry, I must have the wrong house."
When he left, I locked the door behind him.
When I woke Mom and told her what had happened, she showed me where Tom kept the shotgun shells. The gun wasn't even loaded!
Last bit of the prologue (I hope) We lived at Grandma's house for most of a year, then we moved to a 2 family flat several blocks away. A friend of a friend helps us move, and he just moved himself in too. His name was Tom, and he owned a shotgun which sat propped in the hallway. I learned guns have safety switches about 7 years later. Our new place was across the street from a bar. In South St. Louis there is a church or a tavern on every block. The dice roll of fate granted us a place with a Budweiser sign out front. Most warm nights we would be awakened by the sound of some drunk pissing on the side of our house. Tom would grab the gun, sneak outside and scare the crap out of the poor unlucky sod who mistook our wall for a urinal.
Monday, April 14, 2003
I have lots of memories from the first 9 years of my life, but things got REALLY interesting the last time I saw my dad.
My dad wasn't very good at responsibility, but he was great at having big aspirations. In '76, when we lost our house, we moved in with Grandma, and Dad moved in with a friend. We saw him for a while, then he moved to Pennsylvania to live with his family. I remember the Easter he was going to visit, where we got a phone call instead. At least he called.
Anyway, in the Spring of 1978, Dad called and told us he was coming back for us. When school let out, we all moved to Crestwood. (a nice suburb of St. Louis) We had a 2 bedroom home with a big back yard and real grass.
This was how I spent my summer vacation.
We went to summer camp for a week. The last day of camp we waited and waited for mom and dad to take us home. All our new friends left with their parents, and we waited.
A very angry camp counselor told us in the afternoon, that he would be taking us home. He had brown hair with sideburns and he was wearing a blue shirt. I could see the muscle in his cheek bulge from gritting his teeth every time I looked at him.
-I know now, he was pissed at my dad, but as a child I thought I had done something wrong.-
I never saw the house in Crestwood again. He drove us to our grandma's house, and I told him we didn't live there. That that was my grandma's house. That we lived in a big house in the county. He said, "You live here now." and I shut up.
My father left a day after we went to camp. He took the car, the TV, his recliner and all but one of the checkbooks.
My mother, gods bless her, gathered her family to move the beds and loveseat. She moved everything else by public bus. -Let me emphasize this- a quarter of a mile walk to catch the Chippewa bus, a transfer to the Broadway bus, and a 6 block walk to our new "home".
She moved every scrap we had, in whatever she could carry, the whole week we were at camp. I admire the hell out of my mom. She didn't break down. She didn't give up. She did what she felt she had to, under the most outrageous circumstances. She never told us. My extended family shared that bit of trivia.
We all lived in one of the upstairs rooms, we all slept on the same bed. There was no space to play in, so we played outside. My sister and I had a lot of fun pretending the bed was a wrestling ring. Start at a corner, ring the imaginary bell, Ding!Ding! Come out and grapple, then take turns falling down and yanking your opponent's legs out from under them. We would lay on that bed and stare at the ceiling and laugh 'til we hurt, then we'd take a corner and start over.
My dad wasn't very good at responsibility, but he was great at having big aspirations. In '76, when we lost our house, we moved in with Grandma, and Dad moved in with a friend. We saw him for a while, then he moved to Pennsylvania to live with his family. I remember the Easter he was going to visit, where we got a phone call instead. At least he called.
Anyway, in the Spring of 1978, Dad called and told us he was coming back for us. When school let out, we all moved to Crestwood. (a nice suburb of St. Louis) We had a 2 bedroom home with a big back yard and real grass.
This was how I spent my summer vacation.
We went to summer camp for a week. The last day of camp we waited and waited for mom and dad to take us home. All our new friends left with their parents, and we waited.
A very angry camp counselor told us in the afternoon, that he would be taking us home. He had brown hair with sideburns and he was wearing a blue shirt. I could see the muscle in his cheek bulge from gritting his teeth every time I looked at him.
-I know now, he was pissed at my dad, but as a child I thought I had done something wrong.-
I never saw the house in Crestwood again. He drove us to our grandma's house, and I told him we didn't live there. That that was my grandma's house. That we lived in a big house in the county. He said, "You live here now." and I shut up.
My father left a day after we went to camp. He took the car, the TV, his recliner and all but one of the checkbooks.
My mother, gods bless her, gathered her family to move the beds and loveseat. She moved everything else by public bus. -Let me emphasize this- a quarter of a mile walk to catch the Chippewa bus, a transfer to the Broadway bus, and a 6 block walk to our new "home".
She moved every scrap we had, in whatever she could carry, the whole week we were at camp. I admire the hell out of my mom. She didn't break down. She didn't give up. She did what she felt she had to, under the most outrageous circumstances. She never told us. My extended family shared that bit of trivia.
We all lived in one of the upstairs rooms, we all slept on the same bed. There was no space to play in, so we played outside. My sister and I had a lot of fun pretending the bed was a wrestling ring. Start at a corner, ring the imaginary bell, Ding!Ding! Come out and grapple, then take turns falling down and yanking your opponent's legs out from under them. We would lay on that bed and stare at the ceiling and laugh 'til we hurt, then we'd take a corner and start over.
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