Apologies to my readers -and thank you for reading me! I hope you understand that these tales come to me in chunks. Sometimes it's hard to look back on my past, sometimes it's easy.
In the interrim, here's a joke I found recently...
How can you tell when a redhead has been using your computer?
There's a hammer stuck in the monitor.
Saturday, September 06, 2003
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
surreal moments (non-neighborhood story)
There are moments in my life when I know something is a bad idea, but I'm swept into doing it anyway. When this happens the world seems dark and surreal to me. This story is about one of those times. It's not related to my neighborhood, just a thing that happened to me. It's been sitting in the back of my head since I wrote "The Price of a Good Education".
We moved onto California Avenue when I was in the third grade. It was the first year girls were allowed to wear slacks during winter. The uniform pants were brown polyester, not comfy, but warmer than a skirt. I'm glad mom couldn't afford the more expensive wool ones because what happened was, I needed to go to the bathroom. My teacher gave me a hall pass to go potty, and when I stepped into the hallway I saw Mikey, who had also gotten a potty pass. He wasn't in the bathroom like he should be, he was swinging on his locker door. This was just bizarre. The hall was unusually quiet. I could hear the standard classroom noises, and I could hear Mikey's door squeak, but the air felt very still. It was alot like the feeling before a storm, when the area around you seems to be just waiting. I felt disconnected from the rest of the school. It was just me and the row of lockers, and Mikey didn't seem to fit the picture. He wasn't supposed to be there.
The hallway was dim. The school only turned on the hall lights when they absolutely had to. I really needed to go to the bathroom, but I thought, "I should get my books out of my locker first, it will make it easier when school lets out." (which was in about 15 minutes)
So, instead of going to the bathroom like a good little girl, I went to my locker. As I passed Mikey, I said, "You shouldn't be doing that. You'll get in trouble." He ignored me and continued swinging back and forth on his locker door. I opened my locker, and started rummaging in my book bag. I was really bothered by Mikey swinging on that door. Creak, creak... it wasn't right. I couldn't get my mind around him being there. He was moving the whole row of lockers with his stupid swinging, and it was hard to get my book bag out because of the motion.
I felt my back get all prickly, then suddenly I stood up and turned to walk away from the lockers. I wasn't even thinking, just moving. As I was rising, my eyes noticed the lockers leaning toward me. I tried to pivot and wind up in the open space as I realized the entire row of lockers was coming down on top of me. I sort of made it. I wound up with my upper body and head inside my locker, the rest was being weighed down my a lot of steel. Something was digging into the middle of my spine, and it hurt to breathe. On top of all that, I had the indignity of laying in a puddle of my own urine. (ew) I imagined Mikey stuck in his locker, like I was stuck in mine. I hoped he had made it all the way in; but if he hadn't, at least he was taking some of the weight off my back.
I called out, "Mikey? Are you in your locker?"
He said, "No, just my arm."
I waited for him to ask me if I was hurt, but he didn't ask. He started calling for help, and I just laid there trying to breathe. People came out in the hallway, and someone ran for Father Ross. I started thinking everybody would laugh when they pulled me out and saw all the pee. I willed my polyester pants to soak some of it up, but polyester isn't really absorbent. I couldn't feel my legs very well anymore, and I heard Mikey say, "Sharon's under there." So then they were afraid to move the lockers, and started shooing kids back to class.
Presently, I heard my teacher calling softly, "Sharon? Sharon? Where are you?"
I replied, "I'm in my locker."
She asked, "Are you hurt?"
So I said, "Yes. I can't move my legs, and there's something on my back. Could you get these lockers off me?"
I was scared, and trying not to cry. I thought maybe if I was super-nice and used my please and thank you's they would take these horribly heavy lockers off of me, so I added, "Please?"
She said, "We can't do that, Father Ross is getting help."
I started crying and said, "I'd really like to get out of my locker. It hurts."
Nobody had anything to say to that, then the bell rang for dismissal. I had been stuck for 15 minutes. It seemed like forever, but it also seemed like no time at all. I listened to the children being herded out the door, and wondered if they could smell my pee as they passed. I could sure smell it! I focused on their passage, and thought about the bright sunny day waiting for me. I imagined myself playing at the park. I used those images to calm myself down. Crying didn't do me any good, and it made my back hurt worse than ever. It had gone from a generally squished feeling to a small stabbing pain in my spine. Fr. Ross came back with a bunch of 8th graders, and the lockers shifted for a moment. Mikey had been crying on and off, but now that his arm was freed, he was fine. My teacher said, "Were getting you out next. Are you stuck anywhere?"
I said "I'm stuck under the lockers!"
I know she meant "is some part of you going to get hurt worse if we move these things" and I know I meant "no! now get them off me!" But that's not what either of us said. Father Ross counted to three, then he and five 8th grade boys lifted the lockers and pushed them against the wall. The hallway air never seemed so fresh! They all stared at me, and when I lifted my head to look around they told me not to move. Then the adults debated whether to move me or not. I had a back injury, it could be broken. They couldn't move me, but they couldn't leave me laying there, either. I thought perhaps we should wait for the ambulance, and said so. I don't even know if they heard me. I felt like a particularly difficult engineering problem, not a person. They finally decided the best way to do it would be to roll me onto my back and carry me by my arms and legs. My teacher fussed around the boys, telling them to be careful with me. One of them grabbed my forearms, the other my ankles; they carried me slung between them like a hammock. Every step they took hurt.
I looked back at the puddle of pee I had left, and wondered who would clean it up. Then I looked at the boy holding my ankles. He was trying to be careful, but not get his hands wet. I said to him, "I'm sorry." He replied, "I hope you're ok."
They laid me down in the back seat of Father Ross' car, and he drove me to Cardinal Glennon Hospital. I asked a lot of questions on the way there. "Why did the lockers fall down? Does my mom know? Is Mikey ok? Do you think I'll be ok? I think I'm ok. Did you ever get hurt like this?" and so on. Mom met me at the hospital, she was very calm while we waited for X-rays and such. Nothing was broken. I had bruised my back pretty badly, tho. They thought the thing I felt digging into my back was the handle of the locker next to mine.
There are moments in my life when I know something is a bad idea, but I'm swept into doing it anyway. When this happens the world seems dark and surreal to me. This story is about one of those times. It's not related to my neighborhood, just a thing that happened to me. It's been sitting in the back of my head since I wrote "The Price of a Good Education".
We moved onto California Avenue when I was in the third grade. It was the first year girls were allowed to wear slacks during winter. The uniform pants were brown polyester, not comfy, but warmer than a skirt. I'm glad mom couldn't afford the more expensive wool ones because what happened was, I needed to go to the bathroom. My teacher gave me a hall pass to go potty, and when I stepped into the hallway I saw Mikey, who had also gotten a potty pass. He wasn't in the bathroom like he should be, he was swinging on his locker door. This was just bizarre. The hall was unusually quiet. I could hear the standard classroom noises, and I could hear Mikey's door squeak, but the air felt very still. It was alot like the feeling before a storm, when the area around you seems to be just waiting. I felt disconnected from the rest of the school. It was just me and the row of lockers, and Mikey didn't seem to fit the picture. He wasn't supposed to be there.
The hallway was dim. The school only turned on the hall lights when they absolutely had to. I really needed to go to the bathroom, but I thought, "I should get my books out of my locker first, it will make it easier when school lets out." (which was in about 15 minutes)
So, instead of going to the bathroom like a good little girl, I went to my locker. As I passed Mikey, I said, "You shouldn't be doing that. You'll get in trouble." He ignored me and continued swinging back and forth on his locker door. I opened my locker, and started rummaging in my book bag. I was really bothered by Mikey swinging on that door. Creak, creak... it wasn't right. I couldn't get my mind around him being there. He was moving the whole row of lockers with his stupid swinging, and it was hard to get my book bag out because of the motion.
I felt my back get all prickly, then suddenly I stood up and turned to walk away from the lockers. I wasn't even thinking, just moving. As I was rising, my eyes noticed the lockers leaning toward me. I tried to pivot and wind up in the open space as I realized the entire row of lockers was coming down on top of me. I sort of made it. I wound up with my upper body and head inside my locker, the rest was being weighed down my a lot of steel. Something was digging into the middle of my spine, and it hurt to breathe. On top of all that, I had the indignity of laying in a puddle of my own urine. (ew) I imagined Mikey stuck in his locker, like I was stuck in mine. I hoped he had made it all the way in; but if he hadn't, at least he was taking some of the weight off my back.
I called out, "Mikey? Are you in your locker?"
He said, "No, just my arm."
I waited for him to ask me if I was hurt, but he didn't ask. He started calling for help, and I just laid there trying to breathe. People came out in the hallway, and someone ran for Father Ross. I started thinking everybody would laugh when they pulled me out and saw all the pee. I willed my polyester pants to soak some of it up, but polyester isn't really absorbent. I couldn't feel my legs very well anymore, and I heard Mikey say, "Sharon's under there." So then they were afraid to move the lockers, and started shooing kids back to class.
Presently, I heard my teacher calling softly, "Sharon? Sharon? Where are you?"
I replied, "I'm in my locker."
She asked, "Are you hurt?"
So I said, "Yes. I can't move my legs, and there's something on my back. Could you get these lockers off me?"
I was scared, and trying not to cry. I thought maybe if I was super-nice and used my please and thank you's they would take these horribly heavy lockers off of me, so I added, "Please?"
She said, "We can't do that, Father Ross is getting help."
I started crying and said, "I'd really like to get out of my locker. It hurts."
Nobody had anything to say to that, then the bell rang for dismissal. I had been stuck for 15 minutes. It seemed like forever, but it also seemed like no time at all. I listened to the children being herded out the door, and wondered if they could smell my pee as they passed. I could sure smell it! I focused on their passage, and thought about the bright sunny day waiting for me. I imagined myself playing at the park. I used those images to calm myself down. Crying didn't do me any good, and it made my back hurt worse than ever. It had gone from a generally squished feeling to a small stabbing pain in my spine. Fr. Ross came back with a bunch of 8th graders, and the lockers shifted for a moment. Mikey had been crying on and off, but now that his arm was freed, he was fine. My teacher said, "Were getting you out next. Are you stuck anywhere?"
I said "I'm stuck under the lockers!"
I know she meant "is some part of you going to get hurt worse if we move these things" and I know I meant "no! now get them off me!" But that's not what either of us said. Father Ross counted to three, then he and five 8th grade boys lifted the lockers and pushed them against the wall. The hallway air never seemed so fresh! They all stared at me, and when I lifted my head to look around they told me not to move. Then the adults debated whether to move me or not. I had a back injury, it could be broken. They couldn't move me, but they couldn't leave me laying there, either. I thought perhaps we should wait for the ambulance, and said so. I don't even know if they heard me. I felt like a particularly difficult engineering problem, not a person. They finally decided the best way to do it would be to roll me onto my back and carry me by my arms and legs. My teacher fussed around the boys, telling them to be careful with me. One of them grabbed my forearms, the other my ankles; they carried me slung between them like a hammock. Every step they took hurt.
I looked back at the puddle of pee I had left, and wondered who would clean it up. Then I looked at the boy holding my ankles. He was trying to be careful, but not get his hands wet. I said to him, "I'm sorry." He replied, "I hope you're ok."
They laid me down in the back seat of Father Ross' car, and he drove me to Cardinal Glennon Hospital. I asked a lot of questions on the way there. "Why did the lockers fall down? Does my mom know? Is Mikey ok? Do you think I'll be ok? I think I'm ok. Did you ever get hurt like this?" and so on. Mom met me at the hospital, she was very calm while we waited for X-rays and such. Nothing was broken. I had bruised my back pretty badly, tho. They thought the thing I felt digging into my back was the handle of the locker next to mine.
Monday, August 25, 2003
They wanted to burn down the Cup Factory
When I was 17, my boyfriend loaned me $800 to buy a car. This led to me working the only job I hated, but that's a different story. When the car was paid off, I became a delivery driver for Dominos Pizza. This was lots of fun, and profitable too. I could bring home $60 to $80 a night on weekends, and I received a paycheck for about $175 every other week. I earned enough for fast food, cigarettes and books with money left over to help mom pay the utilities.
Mom was still working at Royal Papers Inc. She did accounts payable, and was getting paid around seven dollars an hour. Royal Papers was a distribution warehouse for paper and plastic products. They bought from companies like Dixie, Fort and Georgia Paper, and resold it in smaller quantities to local businesses. They had recently been bought by Villa Lighting, and Villa had purchased 5 brand new trucks for the company. Those 5 trucks and the kindness of strangers saved my mom's job one winter night, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
One night I was working at Dominos in the middle of a bitter cold snap. Cold is good for pizza drivers, we get lots of orders in bad weather. I had been called into work even though it was my night off. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay home with my mom that night, although I had no reason and usually took every opportunity to earn money. I went to work because they needed me, and I went out on a delivery and saw the sky lit up with fire. Big fires are rare in St. Louis, so I turned on the radio to find out what could make that kind of blaze. I heard, "...on Vandeventer, near Choteau... Villa Lighting appears to be on fire. 80 firefighters are on location right now."
And I knew. It wasn't Villa, it was Royal Papers. Villa had nothing that would burn like that, but a warehouse full of paper products would. I rushed back to the store and asked my manager if I could go home, my mom's work was burning down, and she would need me. He said, "We need you here more." I spent that long, long shift trying to talk myself into quitting school so I could work full time. I could always get my GED, and go to college later, I thought. I can't describe how much that hurt to think about. At the time, I had already saved almost a thousand dollars for college. I had priced an associates degree at the community college, and checked out my options for St. Louis University for my Bachelor's Degree. I had it all planned. I needed about three grand to get started, and I could cover the rest with 30 hours a week and maybe a few student loans. I had long since learned that most plans go straight down the tubes when they meet with life, but I've always been an optimist.
My awesome co-workers gave me as many good tipping runs as they could find, and when I finally got off work it was with more than $120 on my pocket. My mom was in tears when I got home, and she wouldn't take the money from me. I insisted, she refused, and then we cried together in front of the television watching her life burn in a beautiful pyromantic display. The phone rang all night long. All the employees were calling each other to worry over their jobs, the company and the valiant firefighters who were trying to keep the blaze from spreading to other buildings. 200 firefighters, some from as far away as Chesterfield came to save what they could, and we prayed for each and every one of them.
Around 11 o'clock, mom got a call from one of the drivers. All the drivers lived in Illinois, and four of them had driven into St. Louis to try to save the brand new trucks. They arrived and told the firefighters they needed to get those trucks! The firefighters said it was too dangerous, they were butted up against the building, and the wall was going to collapse. One driver (who's name I sadly can't remember) said, "Please! You've got to let us in, that's all the inventory we have left!"
One of the firefighters said, "You've got 5 minutes. Save what you can." The drivers needed no more encouragement. They grabbed a tow chain to tie 2 of the trucks together, and hauled ass outta there! It must have been a beautiful sight. Four 18 wheelers smashing through the chain link fence, towing a fifth one behind. Not more than a few minutes later, five stories of brick wall came down where the trucks had been. That must have been a sight too. Royal Papers had inventory! And I could go to school!
Some time after midnight, mom got a call to show up at Villa Lighting for work the next day. It would be their temporary home while the bosses decided whether to try again or just give up. The next day, mom was very busy answering calls from customers. "Yes, that was us on fire. Yes, we are still in business." She stretched the inventory in those 5 trucks to include every customer who called. "The trucks were saved, so you'll get your products on X day." Meanwhile, others were busy talking to their competitors, all of whom gladly helped out. They sold their inventory to Royal at cost, letting Royal's trucks pick up from their warehouses. By the end of the week, management had found a new warehouse; and within 2 weeks, mom had an office to work from again.
The blaze was started by a pair of children, aged 7 and 9. They thought it would be fun to "burn down the cup factory" and they made malotov cocktails out of beer bottles and kerosene. I can't imagine how many of those bottles they must have thrown through the windows, because Royal had a damn good sprinkler system.
One wall survived, and you could see the twisted remnants of the iron elevator shaft.
When I was 17, my boyfriend loaned me $800 to buy a car. This led to me working the only job I hated, but that's a different story. When the car was paid off, I became a delivery driver for Dominos Pizza. This was lots of fun, and profitable too. I could bring home $60 to $80 a night on weekends, and I received a paycheck for about $175 every other week. I earned enough for fast food, cigarettes and books with money left over to help mom pay the utilities.
Mom was still working at Royal Papers Inc. She did accounts payable, and was getting paid around seven dollars an hour. Royal Papers was a distribution warehouse for paper and plastic products. They bought from companies like Dixie, Fort and Georgia Paper, and resold it in smaller quantities to local businesses. They had recently been bought by Villa Lighting, and Villa had purchased 5 brand new trucks for the company. Those 5 trucks and the kindness of strangers saved my mom's job one winter night, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
One night I was working at Dominos in the middle of a bitter cold snap. Cold is good for pizza drivers, we get lots of orders in bad weather. I had been called into work even though it was my night off. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay home with my mom that night, although I had no reason and usually took every opportunity to earn money. I went to work because they needed me, and I went out on a delivery and saw the sky lit up with fire. Big fires are rare in St. Louis, so I turned on the radio to find out what could make that kind of blaze. I heard, "...on Vandeventer, near Choteau... Villa Lighting appears to be on fire. 80 firefighters are on location right now."
And I knew. It wasn't Villa, it was Royal Papers. Villa had nothing that would burn like that, but a warehouse full of paper products would. I rushed back to the store and asked my manager if I could go home, my mom's work was burning down, and she would need me. He said, "We need you here more." I spent that long, long shift trying to talk myself into quitting school so I could work full time. I could always get my GED, and go to college later, I thought. I can't describe how much that hurt to think about. At the time, I had already saved almost a thousand dollars for college. I had priced an associates degree at the community college, and checked out my options for St. Louis University for my Bachelor's Degree. I had it all planned. I needed about three grand to get started, and I could cover the rest with 30 hours a week and maybe a few student loans. I had long since learned that most plans go straight down the tubes when they meet with life, but I've always been an optimist.
My awesome co-workers gave me as many good tipping runs as they could find, and when I finally got off work it was with more than $120 on my pocket. My mom was in tears when I got home, and she wouldn't take the money from me. I insisted, she refused, and then we cried together in front of the television watching her life burn in a beautiful pyromantic display. The phone rang all night long. All the employees were calling each other to worry over their jobs, the company and the valiant firefighters who were trying to keep the blaze from spreading to other buildings. 200 firefighters, some from as far away as Chesterfield came to save what they could, and we prayed for each and every one of them.
Around 11 o'clock, mom got a call from one of the drivers. All the drivers lived in Illinois, and four of them had driven into St. Louis to try to save the brand new trucks. They arrived and told the firefighters they needed to get those trucks! The firefighters said it was too dangerous, they were butted up against the building, and the wall was going to collapse. One driver (who's name I sadly can't remember) said, "Please! You've got to let us in, that's all the inventory we have left!"
One of the firefighters said, "You've got 5 minutes. Save what you can." The drivers needed no more encouragement. They grabbed a tow chain to tie 2 of the trucks together, and hauled ass outta there! It must have been a beautiful sight. Four 18 wheelers smashing through the chain link fence, towing a fifth one behind. Not more than a few minutes later, five stories of brick wall came down where the trucks had been. That must have been a sight too. Royal Papers had inventory! And I could go to school!
Some time after midnight, mom got a call to show up at Villa Lighting for work the next day. It would be their temporary home while the bosses decided whether to try again or just give up. The next day, mom was very busy answering calls from customers. "Yes, that was us on fire. Yes, we are still in business." She stretched the inventory in those 5 trucks to include every customer who called. "The trucks were saved, so you'll get your products on X day." Meanwhile, others were busy talking to their competitors, all of whom gladly helped out. They sold their inventory to Royal at cost, letting Royal's trucks pick up from their warehouses. By the end of the week, management had found a new warehouse; and within 2 weeks, mom had an office to work from again.
The blaze was started by a pair of children, aged 7 and 9. They thought it would be fun to "burn down the cup factory" and they made malotov cocktails out of beer bottles and kerosene. I can't imagine how many of those bottles they must have thrown through the windows, because Royal had a damn good sprinkler system.
One wall survived, and you could see the twisted remnants of the iron elevator shaft.
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
Bicycle Freedom
Before we moved onto California Avenue, my sister and I both had bikes. Mom bought them for us the Christmas after dad had left. Mine was electric blue, J's was pink and white. When we moved, J and I immediately set out to explore our new neighborhood. We found a small park 2 blocks to the North, and a candy store 3 blocks West of our new home. Given a choice, we would have biked to school too.
One day, we rode to the candy store with J's best friend D. We left our bikes parked in front like we always did, and when we came out they were gone. We ran to D's house and her mom called the police. I described my bike in detail to them, all the way down to the broken spoke and the scratches in the paint, but I never saw my bike again. A few days later D and her mom were called down to the police station. They had found her bright red Mongoose bike. My mom was livid. She seemed to take it as a personal affront that the expensive bike had been found, yet her children remained bicycle-less. She spent a lunch hour at the police station raising a stink about it, but they couldn't return what they didn't have.
The next spring, Hosea House opened it's doors and I got a replacement bike for $5. It was neon green and the bannana-seat was covered in hippie daisies. I hated the look of that bike. It was so ugly in comparison to my blue one. My sister told me to get over it, at least I had a bike again. She was right, so I took the ugly bike out in public expecting ridicule at every turn. (heh) It never happened. Nobody but me thought my bike was funny looking. I had forgotten how freeing it was to pedal as fast as I could, the air pushing against my body. It felt like flying. Within a month I had come to love that green bike.
Ahhh, freedom!
Before we moved onto California Avenue, my sister and I both had bikes. Mom bought them for us the Christmas after dad had left. Mine was electric blue, J's was pink and white. When we moved, J and I immediately set out to explore our new neighborhood. We found a small park 2 blocks to the North, and a candy store 3 blocks West of our new home. Given a choice, we would have biked to school too.
One day, we rode to the candy store with J's best friend D. We left our bikes parked in front like we always did, and when we came out they were gone. We ran to D's house and her mom called the police. I described my bike in detail to them, all the way down to the broken spoke and the scratches in the paint, but I never saw my bike again. A few days later D and her mom were called down to the police station. They had found her bright red Mongoose bike. My mom was livid. She seemed to take it as a personal affront that the expensive bike had been found, yet her children remained bicycle-less. She spent a lunch hour at the police station raising a stink about it, but they couldn't return what they didn't have.
The next spring, Hosea House opened it's doors and I got a replacement bike for $5. It was neon green and the bannana-seat was covered in hippie daisies. I hated the look of that bike. It was so ugly in comparison to my blue one. My sister told me to get over it, at least I had a bike again. She was right, so I took the ugly bike out in public expecting ridicule at every turn. (heh) It never happened. Nobody but me thought my bike was funny looking. I had forgotten how freeing it was to pedal as fast as I could, the air pushing against my body. It felt like flying. Within a month I had come to love that green bike.
Ahhh, freedom!
Monday, August 18, 2003
Envy Part One
There were many things I envied as a child. I wanted an Atari game system, and a Merlin. I wanted a vacuum cleaner and real gold earrings. I wanted a dad who would go off to work, so I could have my mom at home. Wanting these things wasn't going to bring them into actualization, and I did just fine without them. Sometimes it was painful to see my friends' birthday and christmas presents that far outstripped my own. It was the pain of a child who knows it's just the way things are, yet it still seems unjust. Sometimes I felt very isolated, more often I felt like I somehow wasn't good enough. I did a lot of good deeds hoping that just one more would put us over the top, and presents would flow my family's way.
I didn't get that we got Catholic school instead of expensive presents. I knew mom was making tough choices everyday, and that each choice was intended to give my sister and I a better future. I didn't know why we couldn't have school and an Atari. My sister's best friend had a lot of money, but I wouldn't trade with her for the world. The money came from her dad's pension, because her dad was dead. She had a lot of stuff, but she didn't have joy. I got to see firsthand the difference between earning your toys and having them handed to you on a silver platter. She seemed to get a new, pricey toy every month, and she didn't value any of them. I know she would have given it all up to see her dad's face just one more time.
I thought I knew envy, and then I went to public school. I met kids on welfare, living in section 8 housing with better clothes than me. When I transferred to Waring, it was in the middle of the school year. Mom had already spent her money on school uniforms, and we had very little left. She decided to skip the gas bill for a month and took me shopping for school clothes instead. We bought one pair of jeans and three shirts. The welfare kids teased me because I wore the same pair of jeans every day. We went to the laundromat every other week, so my jeans saw a lot of handwashing in the tub. I went to school with damp jeans quite a bit, because the only way to dry them was to hang them over the heater vent in the hallway. Mom went to the carnival supply store and bought hooks that looked like fingers, and screwed one into the plaster wall. She let me paint the fingernail red, and that became my "jeans hook". It was pretty cool.
One day in January, the seat of my jeans tore. They were so worn out there was no real way to patch them. The fabric wasn't strong enough to hold the stitches. The school wouldn't send me home, so I endured the teasing for the rest of the day and walked home from the bus stop with my winter coat tied around my waist so no one could see. It was one of those moments that still makes me squirm inside when I think about it. I'm a redhead, so I'm used to teasing. Yet, no amount of "carrot top" or "Woo! Red!" had prepared me for ripping my only pair of jeans.
My Aunt came by that night with an armload of clothes for me. She was very angry at my mom for not saying something sooner. All the clothes were hand-me-downs, and I didn't want to wear her bell bottom jeans with stars on the butt. The shirts were pretty cool, and she even brought me a blue fuzzy sweater. I wore the sweater the next day, along with the bell bottoms, and those unmerciful bastard children started calling me "Salvation Army Reject". They probably thought it hurt my feelings, but cast off clothes were better than holey jeans any day, and at least I wasn't on welfare. The first time I opened my mouth and said "Yeah, well, my momma works for a living," I almost got my ass kicked. They didn't want to hear that, and they went in search of easier prey.
I did envy the welfare kids for having things we couldn't afford, but it was still that kind of "somehow I'm not good enough" kind of envy. I experienced the true green-eyed monster when we had a dress-up day at school, everyone was supposed to dress like babies. A friend of mine, who weighed over 300 pounds, came to school in footie pajamas. He was 6'3", and his mother had made them by hand just for the occasion. I was so jealous, because that's the kind of thing my mom would have done for me, if she had had the time - if she weren't working all the time. Nobody teased him - they all thought it was as cool as I did.
There were many things I envied as a child. I wanted an Atari game system, and a Merlin. I wanted a vacuum cleaner and real gold earrings. I wanted a dad who would go off to work, so I could have my mom at home. Wanting these things wasn't going to bring them into actualization, and I did just fine without them. Sometimes it was painful to see my friends' birthday and christmas presents that far outstripped my own. It was the pain of a child who knows it's just the way things are, yet it still seems unjust. Sometimes I felt very isolated, more often I felt like I somehow wasn't good enough. I did a lot of good deeds hoping that just one more would put us over the top, and presents would flow my family's way.
I didn't get that we got Catholic school instead of expensive presents. I knew mom was making tough choices everyday, and that each choice was intended to give my sister and I a better future. I didn't know why we couldn't have school and an Atari. My sister's best friend had a lot of money, but I wouldn't trade with her for the world. The money came from her dad's pension, because her dad was dead. She had a lot of stuff, but she didn't have joy. I got to see firsthand the difference between earning your toys and having them handed to you on a silver platter. She seemed to get a new, pricey toy every month, and she didn't value any of them. I know she would have given it all up to see her dad's face just one more time.
I thought I knew envy, and then I went to public school. I met kids on welfare, living in section 8 housing with better clothes than me. When I transferred to Waring, it was in the middle of the school year. Mom had already spent her money on school uniforms, and we had very little left. She decided to skip the gas bill for a month and took me shopping for school clothes instead. We bought one pair of jeans and three shirts. The welfare kids teased me because I wore the same pair of jeans every day. We went to the laundromat every other week, so my jeans saw a lot of handwashing in the tub. I went to school with damp jeans quite a bit, because the only way to dry them was to hang them over the heater vent in the hallway. Mom went to the carnival supply store and bought hooks that looked like fingers, and screwed one into the plaster wall. She let me paint the fingernail red, and that became my "jeans hook". It was pretty cool.
One day in January, the seat of my jeans tore. They were so worn out there was no real way to patch them. The fabric wasn't strong enough to hold the stitches. The school wouldn't send me home, so I endured the teasing for the rest of the day and walked home from the bus stop with my winter coat tied around my waist so no one could see. It was one of those moments that still makes me squirm inside when I think about it. I'm a redhead, so I'm used to teasing. Yet, no amount of "carrot top" or "Woo! Red!" had prepared me for ripping my only pair of jeans.
My Aunt came by that night with an armload of clothes for me. She was very angry at my mom for not saying something sooner. All the clothes were hand-me-downs, and I didn't want to wear her bell bottom jeans with stars on the butt. The shirts were pretty cool, and she even brought me a blue fuzzy sweater. I wore the sweater the next day, along with the bell bottoms, and those unmerciful bastard children started calling me "Salvation Army Reject". They probably thought it hurt my feelings, but cast off clothes were better than holey jeans any day, and at least I wasn't on welfare. The first time I opened my mouth and said "Yeah, well, my momma works for a living," I almost got my ass kicked. They didn't want to hear that, and they went in search of easier prey.
I did envy the welfare kids for having things we couldn't afford, but it was still that kind of "somehow I'm not good enough" kind of envy. I experienced the true green-eyed monster when we had a dress-up day at school, everyone was supposed to dress like babies. A friend of mine, who weighed over 300 pounds, came to school in footie pajamas. He was 6'3", and his mother had made them by hand just for the occasion. I was so jealous, because that's the kind of thing my mom would have done for me, if she had had the time - if she weren't working all the time. Nobody teased him - they all thought it was as cool as I did.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Shopping
When we were children, back-to-school was an exciting time for us. We would take last year's uniforms out of storage and try them on to see if they still fit. Then we'd go to St. Francis De Sales church and buy used uniforms, if the old ones couldn't be let out any more. We would walk 8 blocks to Cherokee Street and buy our school supplies at Woolworth’s. Then we would wait.
While my child self is waiting, suspended in the airless void that is memory, let me explain about Cherokee Street. It's a 2 mile long stretch of road along which you can buy practically anything. The eastern third of the street is Antique Row. This meant "county people only" in my book. I used to dream about walking down Antique Row with pocketsfull of hundred dollar bills, buying tiffany lamps and hand woven rugs and solid wood furniture older than my grandmother. I shopped there as an adult, and was sorely disappointed. Most of the shops were nothing more than a high priced flea market. I did find, and buy a glorious shag rug covered in earth tone swirls and paisleys. It is without a doubt, the ugliest rug I've ever seen. It looks like psychedelic vomit that has begun to grow orange fur. My husband collects 70's kitsch, and absolutely loves it.
The Western 2/3rds of Cherokee Street held storefronts of all sizes selling anything from rolling papers to fur coats. There still is a store called Globe Drug. I assume at one time, they had a pharmacy, but they didn't when we shopped there. We bought loose leaf paper with printing errors, folders for a penny apiece and sometimes cheap underwear. Globe Drug was dimly lit, with narrow aisles and narrower shelves. The walls were yellow from decades of tobacco smoke, and everything was factory overstock or flawed, but it was all dirt cheap! Mom taught us how to find bargains amid the mountains of junk, how to check the expiration dates on their boxed food and where to draw the line between bargain and waste of money. It was fine to buy irregular towels or panties, but never irregular shirts or pants. If the price was very good, it might be worth your time to buy it and fix it at home. We didn't own a sewing machine; so all tailoring was done by hand.
We never went into the roller skate shop, or the custom T-shirt store. The Head Shops had beautiful hookahs and bongs, and feathers on alligator clips right in the windows. I wanted a hookah because it was pretty, and my child's mind thought it was for making coffee. I remember pleading with my mom, trying to convince her that she was good enough for that fancy coffee service in the window, and how neat it was that you could pour 2 cups at once. (those being the hoses coming off either side) She would smile, or laugh and say, "I really don't want that kind of coffee service. My percolator makes better coffee anyway." I don't know how she kept from bursting with laughter, but she always did.
When the end of the back-to-school season came, our waiting was done. We would get up at 6 in the morning, eat a good breakfast and take a bus to Cherokee street. Taking the bus signified the specialness of the occasion. It meant our time was too valuable to waste on walking. We'd get off the California bus at Cherokee and walk 3 blocks to the 2 story department store. There would be a small crowd of bargain hunters waiting outside and we would join them, sitting with our butts up against the front doors, staking out our turf. We would sing traveling songs or play word games while we waited the 2 or more hours for the doors to open. In hindsight, we were probably pretty annoying. When the doors finally opened we would rush in, along with all the other eager shoppers. We'd split up, Mom would head for whatever we had overheard our neighbors-in-waiting talking about, since she was biggest. J and I would head for other things. Generally one would go for jeans, one for shirts, and one for work clothes. We'd grab all we could then meet by the cash register and start trading. Having lived this experience for several seasons, I would never want to work on the trading floor of Wall Street. J and I would sit on our stash of clothes and Mom would pull an item from the pile. She'd check the size, and if it didn't fit she'd yell out, "I have a 12! Who's got an 8?!" And the bargaining would begin. Women would become convinced that we had already nabbed the best stuff, and do our fighting for us to get the sizes we needed. My sister and I got stepped on and shoved, but we came away with a few pieces of new clothes for each of us. We always checked for tears before we reached the cash register, and the clothes almost always had dirt and footprints on them, but clothes can wash.
When we were children, back-to-school was an exciting time for us. We would take last year's uniforms out of storage and try them on to see if they still fit. Then we'd go to St. Francis De Sales church and buy used uniforms, if the old ones couldn't be let out any more. We would walk 8 blocks to Cherokee Street and buy our school supplies at Woolworth’s. Then we would wait.
While my child self is waiting, suspended in the airless void that is memory, let me explain about Cherokee Street. It's a 2 mile long stretch of road along which you can buy practically anything. The eastern third of the street is Antique Row. This meant "county people only" in my book. I used to dream about walking down Antique Row with pocketsfull of hundred dollar bills, buying tiffany lamps and hand woven rugs and solid wood furniture older than my grandmother. I shopped there as an adult, and was sorely disappointed. Most of the shops were nothing more than a high priced flea market. I did find, and buy a glorious shag rug covered in earth tone swirls and paisleys. It is without a doubt, the ugliest rug I've ever seen. It looks like psychedelic vomit that has begun to grow orange fur. My husband collects 70's kitsch, and absolutely loves it.
The Western 2/3rds of Cherokee Street held storefronts of all sizes selling anything from rolling papers to fur coats. There still is a store called Globe Drug. I assume at one time, they had a pharmacy, but they didn't when we shopped there. We bought loose leaf paper with printing errors, folders for a penny apiece and sometimes cheap underwear. Globe Drug was dimly lit, with narrow aisles and narrower shelves. The walls were yellow from decades of tobacco smoke, and everything was factory overstock or flawed, but it was all dirt cheap! Mom taught us how to find bargains amid the mountains of junk, how to check the expiration dates on their boxed food and where to draw the line between bargain and waste of money. It was fine to buy irregular towels or panties, but never irregular shirts or pants. If the price was very good, it might be worth your time to buy it and fix it at home. We didn't own a sewing machine; so all tailoring was done by hand.
We never went into the roller skate shop, or the custom T-shirt store. The Head Shops had beautiful hookahs and bongs, and feathers on alligator clips right in the windows. I wanted a hookah because it was pretty, and my child's mind thought it was for making coffee. I remember pleading with my mom, trying to convince her that she was good enough for that fancy coffee service in the window, and how neat it was that you could pour 2 cups at once. (those being the hoses coming off either side) She would smile, or laugh and say, "I really don't want that kind of coffee service. My percolator makes better coffee anyway." I don't know how she kept from bursting with laughter, but she always did.
When the end of the back-to-school season came, our waiting was done. We would get up at 6 in the morning, eat a good breakfast and take a bus to Cherokee street. Taking the bus signified the specialness of the occasion. It meant our time was too valuable to waste on walking. We'd get off the California bus at Cherokee and walk 3 blocks to the 2 story department store. There would be a small crowd of bargain hunters waiting outside and we would join them, sitting with our butts up against the front doors, staking out our turf. We would sing traveling songs or play word games while we waited the 2 or more hours for the doors to open. In hindsight, we were probably pretty annoying. When the doors finally opened we would rush in, along with all the other eager shoppers. We'd split up, Mom would head for whatever we had overheard our neighbors-in-waiting talking about, since she was biggest. J and I would head for other things. Generally one would go for jeans, one for shirts, and one for work clothes. We'd grab all we could then meet by the cash register and start trading. Having lived this experience for several seasons, I would never want to work on the trading floor of Wall Street. J and I would sit on our stash of clothes and Mom would pull an item from the pile. She'd check the size, and if it didn't fit she'd yell out, "I have a 12! Who's got an 8?!" And the bargaining would begin. Women would become convinced that we had already nabbed the best stuff, and do our fighting for us to get the sizes we needed. My sister and I got stepped on and shoved, but we came away with a few pieces of new clothes for each of us. We always checked for tears before we reached the cash register, and the clothes almost always had dirt and footprints on them, but clothes can wash.
Thursday, August 14, 2003
Walking
Whenever we had extra cash, it was always a toss up as to whether we should spend any of it on bus fare. When it was below 20 degrees, or above 90 degrees, we rode the bus to our destination. Any other time, we walked. (If you're interested in my old neighborhood, you can go to your favorite online map site and get a map centered on a single address. I just went to mapsonus.com, and it gave me a nice map of my old stompin' grounds)
We walked to the Tru-Buy grocery store (2 blocks) and the Free-Dry laundromat (9 blocks). We walked to church and school and Cherokee Street for shopping. As mom's pay scale rose, so did the distances we'd travel. Finally, we could afford to shop at K-Mart. Traveling on foot really broadens your perspective on the world. Distances were not marked by stoplights or main streets; they were marked by hills and houses it was best to avoid. To go to K-Mart, we'd leave the house and walk South to Gravois Ave. Gravois cuts diagonally through the city, so our route would then lead South West to Grand Ave. There was a flat stretch past the used car dealership and the Laclede Gas building. Then it was a slight rise past another used car place and the soft serve ice cream store. (now Cardinal Motors, yet another used car dealership) We went to the soft serve ice cream place every Monday night, during summer, and it always gave me a good feeling to pass it. Next came several blocks uphill, and we'd pass the public grade school (have to drive past it and remember the name) and Roosevelt High School. Then a beautiful downhill stretch that would quicken our pace and revive our flagging energies. This section had nice houses, and grass instead of weeds. People actually grew flowers in their front yards, and the air had a cool, fresh scent because there were huge shade trees here and there. From the bottom of that beautiful hill, you could look up and see the stoplights at Grand and Gravois. We were half way to our destination. Climbing the next hill took us away from the nice homes with their shady trees. The higher we climbed, the closer the houses grew to the street. From this point on, we actually zigzagged across Gravois. We would cross to the South East side to avoid the apartments with tenants, but no windows. The windows having been long since broken out, and the shards used as weapons. The drunken hoosiers who lived in these buildings used the same temperature scale we did, so any time we were out walking, they were out drinking on their steps. We could hear their catcalls from across the street. "Wooo! Baby! Whyn'tchoo come over here and sit on my face for a bit?" And such. This was far better than the alternative. My sister and I had walked this route a few times alone, and had occasionally refused to cross the street. We were tough, and no 300 lb drunken fool was going to have us running to the safe side of the street. The result was always the same. Walking past meant getting your ass grabbed as you went by. We'd pretend not to notice, our faces burning in shame, while the hoosiers would laugh and call out their tiny repertoire of "compliments". The first time this happened I was 10 years old.
I need to sidetrack here, for a moment. To the men that read these stories- Has any woman smiled and accepted a crude proposition from you? I don't know of any women who have. I can accept it as the compliment it is, you find me attractive... thanks! In a small minded way, it is a compliment, but it's never going to get you anything. The whole process seems like a waste of breath to me. OK, back to the story
So, we crossed the street. We'd cross again at the Velvet Freeze, to avoid the bored teenagers hanging out in front of the place, then half a block later cross again to avoid more drinkers. The ugly stretch was maybe 1/4 mile, probably less, but it was all up hill. So there we were, 2 small kids and one short adult, tacking our way uphill to K-Mart.
Sometimes we'd stop in at the White Castles at Grand and Gravois and enjoy a 20 cent burger and the colorful mix of homeless, shoppers and bus-people. The air conditioning was nice too. From there it was a 3 block hop to the K-Mart Plaza. The walk usually took about 40 minutes. We would spend all day shopping, waiting for the sun to go down. This served multiple purposes. By 7 o' clock, the drunks were usually passed out or gone to the nearest bar so we could travel home relatively unmolested. Also the walk home was cooler (in winter, this meant a rare and joyful bus ride) and shopping all day meant 5 hours of decent climate control. Nice!
Whenever we had extra cash, it was always a toss up as to whether we should spend any of it on bus fare. When it was below 20 degrees, or above 90 degrees, we rode the bus to our destination. Any other time, we walked. (If you're interested in my old neighborhood, you can go to your favorite online map site and get a map centered on a single address. I just went to mapsonus.com, and it gave me a nice map of my old stompin' grounds)
We walked to the Tru-Buy grocery store (2 blocks) and the Free-Dry laundromat (9 blocks). We walked to church and school and Cherokee Street for shopping. As mom's pay scale rose, so did the distances we'd travel. Finally, we could afford to shop at K-Mart. Traveling on foot really broadens your perspective on the world. Distances were not marked by stoplights or main streets; they were marked by hills and houses it was best to avoid. To go to K-Mart, we'd leave the house and walk South to Gravois Ave. Gravois cuts diagonally through the city, so our route would then lead South West to Grand Ave. There was a flat stretch past the used car dealership and the Laclede Gas building. Then it was a slight rise past another used car place and the soft serve ice cream store. (now Cardinal Motors, yet another used car dealership) We went to the soft serve ice cream place every Monday night, during summer, and it always gave me a good feeling to pass it. Next came several blocks uphill, and we'd pass the public grade school (have to drive past it and remember the name) and Roosevelt High School. Then a beautiful downhill stretch that would quicken our pace and revive our flagging energies. This section had nice houses, and grass instead of weeds. People actually grew flowers in their front yards, and the air had a cool, fresh scent because there were huge shade trees here and there. From the bottom of that beautiful hill, you could look up and see the stoplights at Grand and Gravois. We were half way to our destination. Climbing the next hill took us away from the nice homes with their shady trees. The higher we climbed, the closer the houses grew to the street. From this point on, we actually zigzagged across Gravois. We would cross to the South East side to avoid the apartments with tenants, but no windows. The windows having been long since broken out, and the shards used as weapons. The drunken hoosiers who lived in these buildings used the same temperature scale we did, so any time we were out walking, they were out drinking on their steps. We could hear their catcalls from across the street. "Wooo! Baby! Whyn'tchoo come over here and sit on my face for a bit?" And such. This was far better than the alternative. My sister and I had walked this route a few times alone, and had occasionally refused to cross the street. We were tough, and no 300 lb drunken fool was going to have us running to the safe side of the street. The result was always the same. Walking past meant getting your ass grabbed as you went by. We'd pretend not to notice, our faces burning in shame, while the hoosiers would laugh and call out their tiny repertoire of "compliments". The first time this happened I was 10 years old.
I need to sidetrack here, for a moment. To the men that read these stories- Has any woman smiled and accepted a crude proposition from you? I don't know of any women who have. I can accept it as the compliment it is, you find me attractive... thanks! In a small minded way, it is a compliment, but it's never going to get you anything. The whole process seems like a waste of breath to me. OK, back to the story
So, we crossed the street. We'd cross again at the Velvet Freeze, to avoid the bored teenagers hanging out in front of the place, then half a block later cross again to avoid more drinkers. The ugly stretch was maybe 1/4 mile, probably less, but it was all up hill. So there we were, 2 small kids and one short adult, tacking our way uphill to K-Mart.
Sometimes we'd stop in at the White Castles at Grand and Gravois and enjoy a 20 cent burger and the colorful mix of homeless, shoppers and bus-people. The air conditioning was nice too. From there it was a 3 block hop to the K-Mart Plaza. The walk usually took about 40 minutes. We would spend all day shopping, waiting for the sun to go down. This served multiple purposes. By 7 o' clock, the drunks were usually passed out or gone to the nearest bar so we could travel home relatively unmolested. Also the walk home was cooler (in winter, this meant a rare and joyful bus ride) and shopping all day meant 5 hours of decent climate control. Nice!
Saturday, August 09, 2003
The Price of a Good Education
My sister went to St. Elizabeth's High School. It was an all-girls Catholic school. It offered Latin as a language, that's how elite this school was. She bought her uniforms herself. She did charity work to help offset the cost. She worked as a coat check girl on the weekends and baby-sat weeknights and did all her homework and kept her grades up. Her eyes were fixed firmly on that most miraculous of prizes -College. She never wavered from that goal. She was proud of her school, and proud of herself... and she deserved it!
She saved her money and bought a St. Elizabeth's jacket, it cost $40. She wore it all the time. I think that jacket was a statement for her, but it was practical too. It was warm and it was weather resistant. She had earned the right to wear her bright red St. Elizabeth's jacket. Earned or not, it brought all sorts of trouble to her.
There was a girl in our neighborhood named S. S was tall and fat and filled with bitterness. Oh, and she was a slut too. She had no future and an ugly past, and she hated my sister. J was everything S was not. J was slender and petite and popular because she was fun to be around. S was only popular because she would beat you up if you didn't kiss her ass. The neighborhood kids breathed a collective sigh of relief when S came of age. Once you turn 18, if you beat up someone younger you go to jail. For about a minute, we all thought we were safe. Then S found people to do her fighting for her. She would go behind the scenes, spreading discontent and lies until it would erupt into violence.
Bitch.
She was the kind of person who would kick you when you're down and aim for your teeth or your uterus. She was one of the few people in this world that I actually pitied... Until she went after my sister.
She told my best friend (coincidentally the most vicious fighter in the neighborhood, after S) that my sister thought she was too good for the neighborhood. Everywhere I went, for weeks, S was chatting with C (my best friend) to the point where I hardly ever talked to her myself. All that time she was feeding the beast named Righteous Indignation. I'm actually surprised C held out as long as she did.
One night, we're sitting on our front porch, and S calls us down to her. It was a cool autumn evening, so of course J was wearing her Lizzies jacket.
We step onto the sidewalk, and see the whole neighborhood bunched up by the entrance to the Game Room. The air was filled with that particular kind of tension that signals a fight. The pack starts to move forward, and I have an internal conversation with myself about the wisdom of running for the house and hoping whatever it is this time blows over. C steps forward from the group and she's wearing her fighting clothes. Shit! This is gonna be bad.
She confronts my sister and starts to point out all the ways J supposedly rubs everyone’s nose in the fact that she's better than them. The jacket is the major bone of contention; J's snootiness is a more minor argument. The rant went something like this, "You walk down the street with your snobby-assed jacket and your nose in the air like you're too good for the world. You think you're better than us? You ain't better than anybody you fucking bitch. You ain't nothin' but trash like the rest of us and I'm gonna put you in your place!"
My sister calmly says, "I wouldn't sully my hands on you."
I started getting really afraid for her then. Before, my primary concern was for the jacket. That was her winter coat, and it was intended to last for four years. I was busy thinking of some way to help buy a new jacket for her, sure that this one was toast. Then she goes and opens her big, fat mouth. I don't know if C had ever heard the term "sully" before, and it certainly pissed her off. Her skin actually got all red and she punched my sister square in the face. I've been punched by C, she hits like a freight train.
I'm shaking with adrenaline and fear, my stomach is all fluttery and it's hard for me to think clearly. Every instinct I have is telling me to run, and there's not one friendly face around. They're all enjoying seeing my sister get her come-uppance. These are the same people she hangs with every day. How could they turn on her so suddenly?
Again my sister states, "I won't hit you. You're not worth the effort."
"Jesus Christ! She is a snob!" I think. C punches her again and almost knocks her down. It was well past time to put a stop to this. One of the mottoes of my neighborhood is "blood is thicker than water" meaning you can hate your family as much as you want in private, but you put your neck on the chopping block to save them in public. I met the guillotine by getting between then and saying, "You have to go through me first." I had hoped that this would bring some sense to her. I hoped in vain. C said, "My fight's not with you, and she's had this commin' for a long time." I replied, "Blood is thicker than water. You have to go through me first." C knows the rules as well as anybody else. She was psyching herself up to hit me when some guy grabbed me and put something cold against the side of my head.
An interesting thing happened then. My fear was gone. There was no nervousness or anger. I thought, "NO." And then I was facing him, staring down the barrel of a tiny little handgun. While my brain was thinking, "You are not allowed to decide (when I die)", my mouth said, "Shoot me, or put it away." I was very calm about this. And I meant it with every fiber of my being. I looked straight into his eyes, calmly expecting death at any moment, not caring, doing nothing but looking into his eyes. I must have stared him down for a whole 2 seconds. During that time, he broke out in a sweat, his eyes flickered to the gun, then to the wall of the Bar, and then he blinked. I knew in that instant that he was not going to shoot me.
He stuffed the gun in his pocket, it was probably unloaded anyway.
He had broken a cardinal rule about neighborhood fighting. You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. When all is said and done, you don't kill a member of your community. We were all in this together, and you don't decrease the numbers. Taking out one person drags the whole neighborhood over that invisible line between decency and scum. You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. Ever. When I turned away from the idiot with the not-so deadly weapon, most of the audience was gone. The rest were standing around chatting like nothing had happened. Some were even approaching my sister to talk with her and express their support for her. They were praising her for boldly standing up to C, and laughing over her soon to be infamous words- "I wouldn't sully my hands on you".
I went and sat in the shadows of my front step and waited for the world to snap back to reality. Ms. Bitch walked away, up the street, her only companion the fool with the gun in his pocket. I found out later that he was her boyfriend, and not from our neighborhood.
C came over and tried to apologize for wanting to beat up my sister, even though she had it coming. I told her she was not allowed to beat up J. If she had a problem with any member of my family, she had best take it to me first, because I'd be watching my sister's back every time.
The up side to it was that my sister escaped relatively unscathed, and her jacket lived to be worn another day.
My sister went to St. Elizabeth's High School. It was an all-girls Catholic school. It offered Latin as a language, that's how elite this school was. She bought her uniforms herself. She did charity work to help offset the cost. She worked as a coat check girl on the weekends and baby-sat weeknights and did all her homework and kept her grades up. Her eyes were fixed firmly on that most miraculous of prizes -College. She never wavered from that goal. She was proud of her school, and proud of herself... and she deserved it!
She saved her money and bought a St. Elizabeth's jacket, it cost $40. She wore it all the time. I think that jacket was a statement for her, but it was practical too. It was warm and it was weather resistant. She had earned the right to wear her bright red St. Elizabeth's jacket. Earned or not, it brought all sorts of trouble to her.
There was a girl in our neighborhood named S. S was tall and fat and filled with bitterness. Oh, and she was a slut too. She had no future and an ugly past, and she hated my sister. J was everything S was not. J was slender and petite and popular because she was fun to be around. S was only popular because she would beat you up if you didn't kiss her ass. The neighborhood kids breathed a collective sigh of relief when S came of age. Once you turn 18, if you beat up someone younger you go to jail. For about a minute, we all thought we were safe. Then S found people to do her fighting for her. She would go behind the scenes, spreading discontent and lies until it would erupt into violence.
Bitch.
She was the kind of person who would kick you when you're down and aim for your teeth or your uterus. She was one of the few people in this world that I actually pitied... Until she went after my sister.
She told my best friend (coincidentally the most vicious fighter in the neighborhood, after S) that my sister thought she was too good for the neighborhood. Everywhere I went, for weeks, S was chatting with C (my best friend) to the point where I hardly ever talked to her myself. All that time she was feeding the beast named Righteous Indignation. I'm actually surprised C held out as long as she did.
One night, we're sitting on our front porch, and S calls us down to her. It was a cool autumn evening, so of course J was wearing her Lizzies jacket.
We step onto the sidewalk, and see the whole neighborhood bunched up by the entrance to the Game Room. The air was filled with that particular kind of tension that signals a fight. The pack starts to move forward, and I have an internal conversation with myself about the wisdom of running for the house and hoping whatever it is this time blows over. C steps forward from the group and she's wearing her fighting clothes. Shit! This is gonna be bad.
She confronts my sister and starts to point out all the ways J supposedly rubs everyone’s nose in the fact that she's better than them. The jacket is the major bone of contention; J's snootiness is a more minor argument. The rant went something like this, "You walk down the street with your snobby-assed jacket and your nose in the air like you're too good for the world. You think you're better than us? You ain't better than anybody you fucking bitch. You ain't nothin' but trash like the rest of us and I'm gonna put you in your place!"
My sister calmly says, "I wouldn't sully my hands on you."
I started getting really afraid for her then. Before, my primary concern was for the jacket. That was her winter coat, and it was intended to last for four years. I was busy thinking of some way to help buy a new jacket for her, sure that this one was toast. Then she goes and opens her big, fat mouth. I don't know if C had ever heard the term "sully" before, and it certainly pissed her off. Her skin actually got all red and she punched my sister square in the face. I've been punched by C, she hits like a freight train.
I'm shaking with adrenaline and fear, my stomach is all fluttery and it's hard for me to think clearly. Every instinct I have is telling me to run, and there's not one friendly face around. They're all enjoying seeing my sister get her come-uppance. These are the same people she hangs with every day. How could they turn on her so suddenly?
Again my sister states, "I won't hit you. You're not worth the effort."
"Jesus Christ! She is a snob!" I think. C punches her again and almost knocks her down. It was well past time to put a stop to this. One of the mottoes of my neighborhood is "blood is thicker than water" meaning you can hate your family as much as you want in private, but you put your neck on the chopping block to save them in public. I met the guillotine by getting between then and saying, "You have to go through me first." I had hoped that this would bring some sense to her. I hoped in vain. C said, "My fight's not with you, and she's had this commin' for a long time." I replied, "Blood is thicker than water. You have to go through me first." C knows the rules as well as anybody else. She was psyching herself up to hit me when some guy grabbed me and put something cold against the side of my head.
An interesting thing happened then. My fear was gone. There was no nervousness or anger. I thought, "NO." And then I was facing him, staring down the barrel of a tiny little handgun. While my brain was thinking, "You are not allowed to decide (when I die)", my mouth said, "Shoot me, or put it away." I was very calm about this. And I meant it with every fiber of my being. I looked straight into his eyes, calmly expecting death at any moment, not caring, doing nothing but looking into his eyes. I must have stared him down for a whole 2 seconds. During that time, he broke out in a sweat, his eyes flickered to the gun, then to the wall of the Bar, and then he blinked. I knew in that instant that he was not going to shoot me.
He stuffed the gun in his pocket, it was probably unloaded anyway.
He had broken a cardinal rule about neighborhood fighting. You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. When all is said and done, you don't kill a member of your community. We were all in this together, and you don't decrease the numbers. Taking out one person drags the whole neighborhood over that invisible line between decency and scum. You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. Ever. When I turned away from the idiot with the not-so deadly weapon, most of the audience was gone. The rest were standing around chatting like nothing had happened. Some were even approaching my sister to talk with her and express their support for her. They were praising her for boldly standing up to C, and laughing over her soon to be infamous words- "I wouldn't sully my hands on you".
I went and sat in the shadows of my front step and waited for the world to snap back to reality. Ms. Bitch walked away, up the street, her only companion the fool with the gun in his pocket. I found out later that he was her boyfriend, and not from our neighborhood.
C came over and tried to apologize for wanting to beat up my sister, even though she had it coming. I told her she was not allowed to beat up J. If she had a problem with any member of my family, she had best take it to me first, because I'd be watching my sister's back every time.
The up side to it was that my sister escaped relatively unscathed, and her jacket lived to be worn another day.
Public School
When I was young and went to Catholic school, there was never a question about whether I would actually go or not go. School was school. It was the way of the world. Mom went to work and we went to school. Then one day I overheard mom stressing about our tuition payments. It was going to cost $3000 next year, and she wasn't sure she could get enough assistance. This was in the early 80's and Reaganomics hadn't trickled down to our neighborhood yet. The church didn't have much money to pass around to the hundred or so families that used the school.
My sister had chosen her high school when she was in the fifth grade, and was working her butt off to get a scholarship. She took her entire set of textbooks home every night to study. She sweated every detail of every report she had to write. A mediocre grade could mean the difference between St. Elizabeth's High School and public high school. Saint Lizzies was $4000 a year. There was no way mom could pay for that and my education too. So I made a sacrifice and turned it into a "brilliant idea".
I have always had a talent for art, and FAME was a big hit on T.V., so I decided I wanted to go to Visual and Performing Arts public school. I was confident that I was good enough to get in, and going there would ensure my sister's ability to attend St. Elizabeth's. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't think saving $1500 a year would cover the expense. I fully expected my sister would get at least a partial scholarship, and she had been working part time jobs since she was 12. I really believed that me going to public school would be best for everybody.
The St. Louis City Magnet (read: public) School system sucks. It was intended to promote integration without encouraging black people to move into white neighborhoods. They called this "desegregation", and it was a disaster. In order to get into the magnet school system, I had to take whatever was available, then work my way up the list to the school of my choice. So I left my 20 or so classmates behind and went to Waring Academy of Basic Instruction. Each magnet school had a specialty. Some offered foreign languages, some offered the arts, some specialized in math and science. Waring offered a no-frills education, and two history books. We had history and (I'm not kidding you here) Afro-American history. This was a thick black textbook with silver drawings of people with afro's on it. I asked my teacher why we needed two versions of history segregated by color? Didn't we all live through the same things? In Catholic school, this may have earned me half an hour of kneeling in the corner. At Waring, my teacher told me "because" and kept her eye on me for the rest of the year.
I came to dread the 45 minutes each day we spent with that awful black book. All I learned from it is that history book writers are terribly biased. I started looking for bias in our "white" history book, and I found it. That one was titled "American History" and really was a white book with an eagle and a flag in it. It had 2 paragraphs on the Korean conflict, and referred to Vietnam as an ongoing police action. That's how old this book was. I changed schools in 1981. Our class never made it past the great depression, however, because we opened the white book on Tuesdays and Fridays only. The other 3 days a week were devoted to PE or double math.
At Notre Dame Elementary, lunch was cooked by neighborhood moms who worked in the cafeteria to help pay the tuition for their children. We had a food mom, a milk mom, a money mom and a playground mom. At Waring Academy of Basic instruction, lunch came in a little paper box with no lid. It was served to us by 2 nice ladies with hairnets, and we paid with tickets we had bought Monday morning. You could not go back for seconds and you could not buy extra milk. I would sometimes swipe my mom's cigarettes and trade them for extra food tickets. Apparently our government thought a microwaved chili dog and 5 fat french fries constituted a balanced meal. We never knew what would be served until we smelled it. There was a 6th grader who would sell counterfeit tickets on pizza day. The school tried to outsmart him by changing the colors each week, but he made up food tickets in all 4 colors we used. The lunch ladies didn't care either way. Perhaps they were doing their part to fill the bellies of hungry kids everywhere, and went home happy. I don't know.
Recess was spent on an acre of blacktop with no shade and very little to play with. The school had 5 double dutch ropes and 2 dodge balls. This was our playground equipment. Everyone went out at the same time. Kindergarten through 8th grade spread out across the pavement, the little ones huddled in defensive groups, the big ones running roughshod over them, while the eldest smoked cigarettes on the side of the building. We were sent out in rain or shine. The only time we weren't let out was when there was snow.
It took 2 1/2 years for me to get out of this armpit of education, but I finally reached my dream and went to Visual and Performing Arts Middle School. VAPA middle was like a breath of fresh air after Waring. It was cleaner and rigorous and history was history, not pap about the history of oppression that put you where you are today. My Afro-American history book had 2 chapters on Malcolm X, but only one for Dr. Martin Luther King. Every chapter had something inflammatory in it, and whoever wrote it needs to be publicly flogged.
When I was young and went to Catholic school, there was never a question about whether I would actually go or not go. School was school. It was the way of the world. Mom went to work and we went to school. Then one day I overheard mom stressing about our tuition payments. It was going to cost $3000 next year, and she wasn't sure she could get enough assistance. This was in the early 80's and Reaganomics hadn't trickled down to our neighborhood yet. The church didn't have much money to pass around to the hundred or so families that used the school.
My sister had chosen her high school when she was in the fifth grade, and was working her butt off to get a scholarship. She took her entire set of textbooks home every night to study. She sweated every detail of every report she had to write. A mediocre grade could mean the difference between St. Elizabeth's High School and public high school. Saint Lizzies was $4000 a year. There was no way mom could pay for that and my education too. So I made a sacrifice and turned it into a "brilliant idea".
I have always had a talent for art, and FAME was a big hit on T.V., so I decided I wanted to go to Visual and Performing Arts public school. I was confident that I was good enough to get in, and going there would ensure my sister's ability to attend St. Elizabeth's. Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't think saving $1500 a year would cover the expense. I fully expected my sister would get at least a partial scholarship, and she had been working part time jobs since she was 12. I really believed that me going to public school would be best for everybody.
The St. Louis City Magnet (read: public) School system sucks. It was intended to promote integration without encouraging black people to move into white neighborhoods. They called this "desegregation", and it was a disaster. In order to get into the magnet school system, I had to take whatever was available, then work my way up the list to the school of my choice. So I left my 20 or so classmates behind and went to Waring Academy of Basic Instruction. Each magnet school had a specialty. Some offered foreign languages, some offered the arts, some specialized in math and science. Waring offered a no-frills education, and two history books. We had history and (I'm not kidding you here) Afro-American history. This was a thick black textbook with silver drawings of people with afro's on it. I asked my teacher why we needed two versions of history segregated by color? Didn't we all live through the same things? In Catholic school, this may have earned me half an hour of kneeling in the corner. At Waring, my teacher told me "because" and kept her eye on me for the rest of the year.
I came to dread the 45 minutes each day we spent with that awful black book. All I learned from it is that history book writers are terribly biased. I started looking for bias in our "white" history book, and I found it. That one was titled "American History" and really was a white book with an eagle and a flag in it. It had 2 paragraphs on the Korean conflict, and referred to Vietnam as an ongoing police action. That's how old this book was. I changed schools in 1981. Our class never made it past the great depression, however, because we opened the white book on Tuesdays and Fridays only. The other 3 days a week were devoted to PE or double math.
At Notre Dame Elementary, lunch was cooked by neighborhood moms who worked in the cafeteria to help pay the tuition for their children. We had a food mom, a milk mom, a money mom and a playground mom. At Waring Academy of Basic instruction, lunch came in a little paper box with no lid. It was served to us by 2 nice ladies with hairnets, and we paid with tickets we had bought Monday morning. You could not go back for seconds and you could not buy extra milk. I would sometimes swipe my mom's cigarettes and trade them for extra food tickets. Apparently our government thought a microwaved chili dog and 5 fat french fries constituted a balanced meal. We never knew what would be served until we smelled it. There was a 6th grader who would sell counterfeit tickets on pizza day. The school tried to outsmart him by changing the colors each week, but he made up food tickets in all 4 colors we used. The lunch ladies didn't care either way. Perhaps they were doing their part to fill the bellies of hungry kids everywhere, and went home happy. I don't know.
Recess was spent on an acre of blacktop with no shade and very little to play with. The school had 5 double dutch ropes and 2 dodge balls. This was our playground equipment. Everyone went out at the same time. Kindergarten through 8th grade spread out across the pavement, the little ones huddled in defensive groups, the big ones running roughshod over them, while the eldest smoked cigarettes on the side of the building. We were sent out in rain or shine. The only time we weren't let out was when there was snow.
It took 2 1/2 years for me to get out of this armpit of education, but I finally reached my dream and went to Visual and Performing Arts Middle School. VAPA middle was like a breath of fresh air after Waring. It was cleaner and rigorous and history was history, not pap about the history of oppression that put you where you are today. My Afro-American history book had 2 chapters on Malcolm X, but only one for Dr. Martin Luther King. Every chapter had something inflammatory in it, and whoever wrote it needs to be publicly flogged.
Wednesday, July 09, 2003
Summertime Brownouts
Eventually, as the years passed and I grew closer to adulthood, more and more of my neighbors acquired air conditioners. This would have been great if the electricity had been up to handling the increased load. Unfortunately, it was not. So we would get brownouts.
We would be sitting inside with a fan blowing 85 degree heat on us when all of a sudden the TV would snap off with a click! The lights would go out and the fan would wind down. Then we would hear our neighbors one by one coming out onto their front porches to discuss this latest power failure. The weird thing about a brownout it that it's small. Sometimes we would have power while the people across the street were in darkness. Sometimes the brownout would extend all the way to Fox Park. On those nights I would go out wandering. I would explore the darkness like it was a new toy, wandering down alleys sending out feelers, looking for danger. Being a teenager, I was totally convinced that I could handle anything. After all, I had seen a biker almost die. I had sniped at my friends with a homemade pull-tab gun. I had walked through the projects alone at one in the morning... I could cope with anything lurking in the humid blackness that engulfed my neighborhood from time to time. Riiiight.
One night, I decided that I needed to go get cigarettes in the middle of one of these brownouts. The streetlights were out almost all the way to the Vicker's Gas station, so I strutted through 4 blocks of murky night, totally unafraid. The lights were on at the station, and there were 4 adolescent boys hanging out by one of the pumps. I sized them up; decided I could take out any two of them if need be, and went inside to buy my cigarettes.
When I came back out of the store, the boys appeared to be talking themselves into something... and I started to smile.
I sauntered slowly into the darkness, mentally egging them on, "Are you gonna be chicken, or will you dare to follow me?" They took the bait and started after me. Heh. I extended my senses and heard one of them whisper, "We really gonna do her?" That was all I needed to hear. My adrenaline shot up and I broke out in goose bumps. This was danger, and I was so riding that rush. I heard them quicken their pace, their cheap tennis shoes slapping the sidewalk behind me, so I sped up myself. I could almost feel their breath on my neck when I broke into a run. My brain had kicked into over-drive. I thought, "I can outrun them!"
Instead I dashed around a corner into an alley. I ran past an empty glass bottle, rejected it as a weapon, thought about scaling the cast-iron drainpipe to my right, decided it would take too much time, debated running the length of the alley to the glowing street beyond, and did none of it. This all flashed through my head in a split-second as I picked the darkest spot I could find and turned to face my would-be attackers bare handed.
They came around the corner and lost their nerve. All the shit that I had seen and experienced and kept quiet about came welling up inside of me, and I yelled at them, "You want to rape me!? Come on! Not one of you will be walking out of here, I guarantee it!"
The little bastards went back to the Vicker's station. I was left shaking from head to toe, stunned with myself and stunned at the world in general. These boys were probably around my own age of 16. I don't think any of them could have talked themselves into actually raping me, and I'll bet I scared the hell out of them. They probably thought I had a gun or something; after all, it was dark in that alley.
Eventually, as the years passed and I grew closer to adulthood, more and more of my neighbors acquired air conditioners. This would have been great if the electricity had been up to handling the increased load. Unfortunately, it was not. So we would get brownouts.
We would be sitting inside with a fan blowing 85 degree heat on us when all of a sudden the TV would snap off with a click! The lights would go out and the fan would wind down. Then we would hear our neighbors one by one coming out onto their front porches to discuss this latest power failure. The weird thing about a brownout it that it's small. Sometimes we would have power while the people across the street were in darkness. Sometimes the brownout would extend all the way to Fox Park. On those nights I would go out wandering. I would explore the darkness like it was a new toy, wandering down alleys sending out feelers, looking for danger. Being a teenager, I was totally convinced that I could handle anything. After all, I had seen a biker almost die. I had sniped at my friends with a homemade pull-tab gun. I had walked through the projects alone at one in the morning... I could cope with anything lurking in the humid blackness that engulfed my neighborhood from time to time. Riiiight.
One night, I decided that I needed to go get cigarettes in the middle of one of these brownouts. The streetlights were out almost all the way to the Vicker's Gas station, so I strutted through 4 blocks of murky night, totally unafraid. The lights were on at the station, and there were 4 adolescent boys hanging out by one of the pumps. I sized them up; decided I could take out any two of them if need be, and went inside to buy my cigarettes.
When I came back out of the store, the boys appeared to be talking themselves into something... and I started to smile.
I sauntered slowly into the darkness, mentally egging them on, "Are you gonna be chicken, or will you dare to follow me?" They took the bait and started after me. Heh. I extended my senses and heard one of them whisper, "We really gonna do her?" That was all I needed to hear. My adrenaline shot up and I broke out in goose bumps. This was danger, and I was so riding that rush. I heard them quicken their pace, their cheap tennis shoes slapping the sidewalk behind me, so I sped up myself. I could almost feel their breath on my neck when I broke into a run. My brain had kicked into over-drive. I thought, "I can outrun them!"
Instead I dashed around a corner into an alley. I ran past an empty glass bottle, rejected it as a weapon, thought about scaling the cast-iron drainpipe to my right, decided it would take too much time, debated running the length of the alley to the glowing street beyond, and did none of it. This all flashed through my head in a split-second as I picked the darkest spot I could find and turned to face my would-be attackers bare handed.
They came around the corner and lost their nerve. All the shit that I had seen and experienced and kept quiet about came welling up inside of me, and I yelled at them, "You want to rape me!? Come on! Not one of you will be walking out of here, I guarantee it!"
The little bastards went back to the Vicker's station. I was left shaking from head to toe, stunned with myself and stunned at the world in general. These boys were probably around my own age of 16. I don't think any of them could have talked themselves into actually raping me, and I'll bet I scared the hell out of them. They probably thought I had a gun or something; after all, it was dark in that alley.
Saturday, July 05, 2003
Independance Day
You would think that a neighborhood living under the crushing weight of poverty would not spare any money for fireworks, wouldn't you? That might be so for other areas, but my neighborhood was full of Hoosiers, (see glossary) so our 4th of July would start in mid-June.
Most kinds of pyrotechnics were illegal in the city of St. Louis, so getting ahold of some meant a daring run out to Molly Brown's Fireworks, and a stealthily circuitous route back into the city. You couldn't ride a bus with a bag full of explosives, even back in the 80's, therefore a car was your only option. Molly Brown's sat right outside of St. Louis County, and the cops would sit up on a hill watching people pull out of the lot, just waiting for someone to be stupid enough to cross the county line. They would pull you over, confiscate your entire stash, and generally laugh at you to boot. It sucked. My neighbors would try to time their runs to periods when the cops would be busy elsewhere. They would drive out there every week and buy a small assortment, then dash back. The hope was that the cops would let you keep your stuff if it was a small enough collection. They usually did let you keep it, if what you had bought seemed reasonable.
Trust me, there was nothing reasonable about the quantity of fireworks set off in my neighborhood.
The all-time favorites were bottle rockets and m80's (which you can't buy anymore). Bottle rockets were cheap, so you could buy hundreds for a pittance and keep yourself occupied all night long. My neighbors didn't buy bottle rockets by the hundreds, they bought them by the thousands. Every weekend for a month, the sky would be lit with crappy little bursts of sparks, and every morning afterward the street would look like Barbie's war zone. Countless blackened beer bottles would be lying in the gutter, and little cardboard tubes on little red sticks were all over the place. How attractive.
As the 4th drew nearer, people would become more and more careless with their hoards of things that go bang in the night. By the time the first weekend in July rolled around, you could actually sleep through the noise. Then the hoosiers would break out their guns. I tell you there's nothing like hearing drunken fools firing rounds into the air, and wondering if any of those little balls of lead would finally punch through your already leaky roof and hit something. It always struck me as terribly wasteful. Ammunition is meant for killing things. It doesn't even make sparks. It just goes way up, then comes back down again. Stupid.
Of course, smart people understand the theory of gravity. Perhaps those idiots think their bullets are, even now, orbiting the planet.
Believe it or not, trying to murder clouds was not the most idiotic thing they'd do around Independance Day. Remember those M80's I mentioned earlier? Those would be placed under holey coffee cans, dropped into the sewers, stuffed into newspapers, flung at passing vehicles or flung at your friends.
Bottle rockets had endless uses also. You could shoot them at your pals and have "bottle rocket wars". You could break off the stick and toss them in the air, just to see which way they'd go. And, best of all, you could twist a bunch of the fuses together, then light them. Wow! Flaming projectiles going every which way but up. This would go on for a month. Mom was afraid to send us to the store after dark. She had a genuine fear of us being maimed by fireworks. All we were allowed to buy were those stupid black snakes and sparklers.
I'm amazed my friends still had all their digits. Guys could prove their toughness by holding a firecracker in their fingers and setting it off, the bigger the better. These are the same guys who spent a summer raiding their dad's stash of rimfire .22 rounds and setting them off with a hammer, so you know they put very little value on safety.
When we finally moved out of our neighborhood, it was over the 4th of July weekend. We would pick up a load of boxes with all the windows rolled up on the car, then drive them to our nice peaceful new neighborhood. It was so quiet there, we wouldn't want to go back. We would go back, of course, rolling up the windows again as we entered "the danger zone" (as we started calling it). The last load was packed at 1 in the morning, and small children were still out in the street setting off fireworks. I was 19 when we moved off of California Avenue, and it made me sick when I saw those children who were still stuck there in a place I had come to think of as Hell on Earth. They were blissfully unaware of the horrors lurking around them as they played with their explosives. Just as I had been when I was their age.
Innocence is more beautiful than a sunset, and it lasts longer. ;)
You would think that a neighborhood living under the crushing weight of poverty would not spare any money for fireworks, wouldn't you? That might be so for other areas, but my neighborhood was full of Hoosiers, (see glossary) so our 4th of July would start in mid-June.
Most kinds of pyrotechnics were illegal in the city of St. Louis, so getting ahold of some meant a daring run out to Molly Brown's Fireworks, and a stealthily circuitous route back into the city. You couldn't ride a bus with a bag full of explosives, even back in the 80's, therefore a car was your only option. Molly Brown's sat right outside of St. Louis County, and the cops would sit up on a hill watching people pull out of the lot, just waiting for someone to be stupid enough to cross the county line. They would pull you over, confiscate your entire stash, and generally laugh at you to boot. It sucked. My neighbors would try to time their runs to periods when the cops would be busy elsewhere. They would drive out there every week and buy a small assortment, then dash back. The hope was that the cops would let you keep your stuff if it was a small enough collection. They usually did let you keep it, if what you had bought seemed reasonable.
Trust me, there was nothing reasonable about the quantity of fireworks set off in my neighborhood.
The all-time favorites were bottle rockets and m80's (which you can't buy anymore). Bottle rockets were cheap, so you could buy hundreds for a pittance and keep yourself occupied all night long. My neighbors didn't buy bottle rockets by the hundreds, they bought them by the thousands. Every weekend for a month, the sky would be lit with crappy little bursts of sparks, and every morning afterward the street would look like Barbie's war zone. Countless blackened beer bottles would be lying in the gutter, and little cardboard tubes on little red sticks were all over the place. How attractive.
As the 4th drew nearer, people would become more and more careless with their hoards of things that go bang in the night. By the time the first weekend in July rolled around, you could actually sleep through the noise. Then the hoosiers would break out their guns. I tell you there's nothing like hearing drunken fools firing rounds into the air, and wondering if any of those little balls of lead would finally punch through your already leaky roof and hit something. It always struck me as terribly wasteful. Ammunition is meant for killing things. It doesn't even make sparks. It just goes way up, then comes back down again. Stupid.
Of course, smart people understand the theory of gravity. Perhaps those idiots think their bullets are, even now, orbiting the planet.
Believe it or not, trying to murder clouds was not the most idiotic thing they'd do around Independance Day. Remember those M80's I mentioned earlier? Those would be placed under holey coffee cans, dropped into the sewers, stuffed into newspapers, flung at passing vehicles or flung at your friends.
Bottle rockets had endless uses also. You could shoot them at your pals and have "bottle rocket wars". You could break off the stick and toss them in the air, just to see which way they'd go. And, best of all, you could twist a bunch of the fuses together, then light them. Wow! Flaming projectiles going every which way but up. This would go on for a month. Mom was afraid to send us to the store after dark. She had a genuine fear of us being maimed by fireworks. All we were allowed to buy were those stupid black snakes and sparklers.
I'm amazed my friends still had all their digits. Guys could prove their toughness by holding a firecracker in their fingers and setting it off, the bigger the better. These are the same guys who spent a summer raiding their dad's stash of rimfire .22 rounds and setting them off with a hammer, so you know they put very little value on safety.
When we finally moved out of our neighborhood, it was over the 4th of July weekend. We would pick up a load of boxes with all the windows rolled up on the car, then drive them to our nice peaceful new neighborhood. It was so quiet there, we wouldn't want to go back. We would go back, of course, rolling up the windows again as we entered "the danger zone" (as we started calling it). The last load was packed at 1 in the morning, and small children were still out in the street setting off fireworks. I was 19 when we moved off of California Avenue, and it made me sick when I saw those children who were still stuck there in a place I had come to think of as Hell on Earth. They were blissfully unaware of the horrors lurking around them as they played with their explosives. Just as I had been when I was their age.
Innocence is more beautiful than a sunset, and it lasts longer. ;)
Friday, June 27, 2003
Hanging Out
A favorite pasttime in my neighborhood was "hanging out". This meant being anywhere with nothing to do. We would hang out at the gas station and giggle over the mechanic's cute butt. We would hang out on a porch and stare at the bus people. We would hang out at the used car lot and pretend to be bus people ourselves, but the best place I ever found to hang out was a house that was being renovated. Whoever was fixing the place up never locked the door, so at 3 in the afternoon, I'd meet my "boyfriend" there and we'd sit and talk about growing up. I was maybe 10 years old, so we never kissed or held hands, we would just talk.
It was so wonderful to sit on a new hardwood floor, surrounded by sawdust and fresh plaster, talking about things you could never say outside in the real world. We'd say things like, "When I grow up, I want to go to college and be a -insert white collar job here-." I used my boyfriend to work out an entire business plan, that would culminate in me owning a horse ranch. He used me to work out a plausible way to get a scholarship and become a doctor.
Let me explain why we couldn't express those kinds of dreams outside of our safe house, and why a scholarship was every child's hope.
Poor people don't get student loans. Period. (yes, I know this is a falsehood, and I dare you to walk into any inner city neighborhood and ask a kid how you get to college.) Any suggestion of college within hearing range of an adult always yeilded the same results-
Me: "I'm smart, and I'm going to college!"
Adult: "Really? How do you plan on getting there?"
Like it's some far off country surrounded by man eating wildebeasts, not some achievable goal
Me: "Well..."
Adult: "Because let me tell you something, little missy, We don't go to college."
Me: "But"
Adult: "College is for people with money. Do you have money? Do you have the kind of money it takes? You think you can just get a loan? Like for a car? Well you Can't! Give it up kiddo, it ain't gonna happen. Ain't nobody in his right mind gonna give you any cash to go to college, no matter how smart you think you are. You ain't good enough, you got nothin' they want, and they ain't gonna invest in you."
If I was lucky, the adult in question had vented enough, and would shut up. If I was unlucky, they would keep going until I would finally cry. I hated crying in front of adults, especially because tears would usually bring a look of contrition to their face and they'd say, "Well, you might get a scholarship. But you're white, so don't count on it."
My mother never ranted at us that way. When we brought up college to her, she would sigh and say, "Well, we'll just have to work extra hard on getting you a scholarship. You can do it, you're both smart. God blessed you with a good head on your shoulders, it's up to you to use it."
Sometimes we'd have to hear about how she gave up her scholarship so she could get a job, and help put her brothers and sisters through school. Sometimes she'd talk about how when dad left, he took our college money. That one always gave me an empty pain in my chest.
Once upon a time, I had a dad and a house, and my own back yard where we grew vegetables. I was 5. We would get a dollar a week for the chores we did, and half would go into our college fund. We'd go to the bank and put 2 quarters every week into a book with a chipmunk on it, and mom would match it. We also put away half of any other money we received. This meant birthdays, Christmas, Easter and the kindness of strangers sent us to the bank to stash some cash for college.
In the 2 and a half years we lived there, we put away better than $700. When dad left, he emptied our college fund. I didn't know about it until I told mom to take some of my college money to pay the bills. That's when she told me we didn't have a penny for schooling, because our bastard father had taken it all. I felt like I had been kicked in the stomache. All that money... all that saving instead of buying toys or candy... gone? I didn't want to believe her. Gone??
What kind of person takes college money? What kind of person thinks it's ok to steal a child's hope for her future? I spent days wandering around feeling cheated, for once seeing the world as an ugly place where nothing is safe. It was just... gone. Poof! Sorry, start over. What the hell?
How do you resolve "your dad just couldn't handle the responsability" with "he took everything"? There is no resolution, you just have to suck it up and move on, which is what I did.
A few years later, when mom broached the idea of filing for divorce, my sister and I said in unison, "Good. It's about time."
We did both eventually go to college. I went for art, and J became a physician's assistant. (the kind of PA that requires residencies, not the thing you can earn at a tech school.) She got student loans and a scholarship, I paid out of pocket and took only the classes I wanted. I'm terribly proud of my sister.
A favorite pasttime in my neighborhood was "hanging out". This meant being anywhere with nothing to do. We would hang out at the gas station and giggle over the mechanic's cute butt. We would hang out on a porch and stare at the bus people. We would hang out at the used car lot and pretend to be bus people ourselves, but the best place I ever found to hang out was a house that was being renovated. Whoever was fixing the place up never locked the door, so at 3 in the afternoon, I'd meet my "boyfriend" there and we'd sit and talk about growing up. I was maybe 10 years old, so we never kissed or held hands, we would just talk.
It was so wonderful to sit on a new hardwood floor, surrounded by sawdust and fresh plaster, talking about things you could never say outside in the real world. We'd say things like, "When I grow up, I want to go to college and be a -insert white collar job here-." I used my boyfriend to work out an entire business plan, that would culminate in me owning a horse ranch. He used me to work out a plausible way to get a scholarship and become a doctor.
Let me explain why we couldn't express those kinds of dreams outside of our safe house, and why a scholarship was every child's hope.
Poor people don't get student loans. Period. (yes, I know this is a falsehood, and I dare you to walk into any inner city neighborhood and ask a kid how you get to college.) Any suggestion of college within hearing range of an adult always yeilded the same results-
Me: "I'm smart, and I'm going to college!"
Adult: "Really? How do you plan on getting there?"
Like it's some far off country surrounded by man eating wildebeasts, not some achievable goal
Me: "Well..."
Adult: "Because let me tell you something, little missy, We don't go to college."
Me: "But"
Adult: "College is for people with money. Do you have money? Do you have the kind of money it takes? You think you can just get a loan? Like for a car? Well you Can't! Give it up kiddo, it ain't gonna happen. Ain't nobody in his right mind gonna give you any cash to go to college, no matter how smart you think you are. You ain't good enough, you got nothin' they want, and they ain't gonna invest in you."
If I was lucky, the adult in question had vented enough, and would shut up. If I was unlucky, they would keep going until I would finally cry. I hated crying in front of adults, especially because tears would usually bring a look of contrition to their face and they'd say, "Well, you might get a scholarship. But you're white, so don't count on it."
My mother never ranted at us that way. When we brought up college to her, she would sigh and say, "Well, we'll just have to work extra hard on getting you a scholarship. You can do it, you're both smart. God blessed you with a good head on your shoulders, it's up to you to use it."
Sometimes we'd have to hear about how she gave up her scholarship so she could get a job, and help put her brothers and sisters through school. Sometimes she'd talk about how when dad left, he took our college money. That one always gave me an empty pain in my chest.
Once upon a time, I had a dad and a house, and my own back yard where we grew vegetables. I was 5. We would get a dollar a week for the chores we did, and half would go into our college fund. We'd go to the bank and put 2 quarters every week into a book with a chipmunk on it, and mom would match it. We also put away half of any other money we received. This meant birthdays, Christmas, Easter and the kindness of strangers sent us to the bank to stash some cash for college.
In the 2 and a half years we lived there, we put away better than $700. When dad left, he emptied our college fund. I didn't know about it until I told mom to take some of my college money to pay the bills. That's when she told me we didn't have a penny for schooling, because our bastard father had taken it all. I felt like I had been kicked in the stomache. All that money... all that saving instead of buying toys or candy... gone? I didn't want to believe her. Gone??
What kind of person takes college money? What kind of person thinks it's ok to steal a child's hope for her future? I spent days wandering around feeling cheated, for once seeing the world as an ugly place where nothing is safe. It was just... gone. Poof! Sorry, start over. What the hell?
How do you resolve "your dad just couldn't handle the responsability" with "he took everything"? There is no resolution, you just have to suck it up and move on, which is what I did.
A few years later, when mom broached the idea of filing for divorce, my sister and I said in unison, "Good. It's about time."
We did both eventually go to college. I went for art, and J became a physician's assistant. (the kind of PA that requires residencies, not the thing you can earn at a tech school.) She got student loans and a scholarship, I paid out of pocket and took only the classes I wanted. I'm terribly proud of my sister.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Charity Work
During the early years of living on California Avenue, it seemed that every month we went to the St. Vincent De Paul Society. They would give us food and toilet paper. They would also give Mom a check to help pay the bills. She hated asking for help. It was just one of those odd parts of life for us. Every Sunday we'd drop a dollar into the Vincent De Paul poor box, then once a month we'd go ask them for food and money. I know that my Mom's hope was that she wouldn't have to ask, and our meager offering was her way of trying to pay them back. To this day I still drop whatever spare cash I have into any charity box I come across.
Those wonderful men at Vincent De Paul never judged us, they never looked down on us, they just helped.
A few years later, the De Guire family opened Hosea House and started giving away clothing to the neighborhood kids. It started off in their home, but it quickly moved to the nearby church. St. Francis De Sales had a highschool on their grounds. The highschool had long since closed, so they turned it into Hosea House. You could go to them for food, toiletries and assistance with your bills.
I remember the winter they were selling shoes for dirt cheap. It was late in the day when we got there, so the shoes had been pretty thoroughly picked over. We each had fifty cents to buy shoes with, but nothing really fit. Mom spotted some boxes with our sizes marked on them. Size 8 for me, size 7 for J... perfect! She pulled down the boxes and said, "Oh, these are heavy," so we resigned ourselves to wearing hiking boots to school. She opened the top box and inside were a brand new pair of snow white ice skates. The other box held new skates too. I held my breath, wishing that I could have those beautiful skates. I wanted them so badly, and I was so very afraid to ask.
We used to take several busses to get to Stienberg rink in Forest Park, just to go skating. Ice skating was one of my freedoms. I'd go around and around the edge, trying to gain the confidence to do a spin. I never got up the courage to try a jump, so I settled on speed skating. I used to do my best to keep up with the men in their fancy snow suits, whizzing around the track on their razor blade skates. I got to where I could go just as fast, but not for very long. I'd close my eyes and think about going to the olympics and maybe, just maybe, bringing home some money for my family.
They were asking a dollar for the skates. We had fifty cents each. Our mom looked at the skates and sighed, then she put back the work shoes she had found and gave us each a quarter. She said, "It's fate that these were here in your sizes. It's late, ask them if they'll take 75 cents." I argued with my mom and told her she needed shoes, I did not need ice skates.
I was putting them back when a woman who worked there came over and said magic words, "It's after 5, everything is free."
I swear, I floated home. Heh, I never did go to the Olympics, but I got a chance to dream.
Oddly enough, that wasn't the story I was going to tell. Here's that story...
In 1982 we got hit with a blizzard of immense proportions. The California bus ran that morning, but mom had to hitch a ride home, because the busses couldn't make it through the snow. She had told us, "There's a big snow storm comming, so run to Hosea House and get some food for Mrs. P, you know she needs it, and she can't get out in this weather." We saw Mrs. P in the spring and fall, the rest of the time she laid in bed. It was always too hot or too cold for her, and we had gone with Mom to bring her food before. We had never gone alone, though. We fretted about what we would do if they didn't believe us, but mom had asked, so we had to go.
We got out the sled and bundled up... and walked out the door into a wall of white. I don't really remember how we made the 3 block walk to Hosea House. I remember seeing a guy on skis, and I remember being so cold my knees didn't want to bend. The sled kept getting bogged down in the snow, and we would stop to clear it, then lift it atop the snow again. It would be all covered again in 5 minutes, but we kept trying, and eventually we made it to Hosea House.
Ah, the blessed warmth that awaited us! We were greeted cheerfully. Mom had called from work, and they were expecting us. They let us sit and dry our mittens while they loaded our sled with food. I was almost warm by the time they were done.
The snow wasn't nearly as heavy on the way home, but the sled sure was. It kept tipping to one side and spilling the boxes, so one of us would pull, while the other walked alongside and kept the sled steady. We took turns all the way to Mrs. P's apartment, then we carried the boxes to her door and knocked. When she opened the door and saw 2 little girls between a mountain of food, she cried -and it made the whole trip worthwhile.
I understand now that Mrs. P was a very sick old lady, with chronic pain and a lot of depression. I know now that she was all alone in the world, and the blizzard had terrified her. But all I could think at the time was, "Please God, don't make me have to carry this stuff to her kitchen, I can't fit the boxes through."
She was a serious pack rat, and there were little 6 inch pathways through her heaping stacks of old clothes and older newspapers. Her house always scared me a little. I was always afraid something would move, and I'd have to face down the biggest cockroach in the world. Or worse yet- be covered in lots of little roaches. Ew.
We did not have to carry the food to the kitchen. She had set up a hot plate on the windowsill, so we made some room near her bed and left the boxes of food there. She tried to pay us, but we wouldn't take it. We knew she didn't work, and in our world work=money. If someone didn't have a job, you never, never take money from them. We told her thank you for the offer, but our mom had asked us to do this, and her smile was reward enough, thank you.
During the early years of living on California Avenue, it seemed that every month we went to the St. Vincent De Paul Society. They would give us food and toilet paper. They would also give Mom a check to help pay the bills. She hated asking for help. It was just one of those odd parts of life for us. Every Sunday we'd drop a dollar into the Vincent De Paul poor box, then once a month we'd go ask them for food and money. I know that my Mom's hope was that she wouldn't have to ask, and our meager offering was her way of trying to pay them back. To this day I still drop whatever spare cash I have into any charity box I come across.
Those wonderful men at Vincent De Paul never judged us, they never looked down on us, they just helped.
A few years later, the De Guire family opened Hosea House and started giving away clothing to the neighborhood kids. It started off in their home, but it quickly moved to the nearby church. St. Francis De Sales had a highschool on their grounds. The highschool had long since closed, so they turned it into Hosea House. You could go to them for food, toiletries and assistance with your bills.
I remember the winter they were selling shoes for dirt cheap. It was late in the day when we got there, so the shoes had been pretty thoroughly picked over. We each had fifty cents to buy shoes with, but nothing really fit. Mom spotted some boxes with our sizes marked on them. Size 8 for me, size 7 for J... perfect! She pulled down the boxes and said, "Oh, these are heavy," so we resigned ourselves to wearing hiking boots to school. She opened the top box and inside were a brand new pair of snow white ice skates. The other box held new skates too. I held my breath, wishing that I could have those beautiful skates. I wanted them so badly, and I was so very afraid to ask.
We used to take several busses to get to Stienberg rink in Forest Park, just to go skating. Ice skating was one of my freedoms. I'd go around and around the edge, trying to gain the confidence to do a spin. I never got up the courage to try a jump, so I settled on speed skating. I used to do my best to keep up with the men in their fancy snow suits, whizzing around the track on their razor blade skates. I got to where I could go just as fast, but not for very long. I'd close my eyes and think about going to the olympics and maybe, just maybe, bringing home some money for my family.
They were asking a dollar for the skates. We had fifty cents each. Our mom looked at the skates and sighed, then she put back the work shoes she had found and gave us each a quarter. She said, "It's fate that these were here in your sizes. It's late, ask them if they'll take 75 cents." I argued with my mom and told her she needed shoes, I did not need ice skates.
I was putting them back when a woman who worked there came over and said magic words, "It's after 5, everything is free."
I swear, I floated home. Heh, I never did go to the Olympics, but I got a chance to dream.
Oddly enough, that wasn't the story I was going to tell. Here's that story...
In 1982 we got hit with a blizzard of immense proportions. The California bus ran that morning, but mom had to hitch a ride home, because the busses couldn't make it through the snow. She had told us, "There's a big snow storm comming, so run to Hosea House and get some food for Mrs. P, you know she needs it, and she can't get out in this weather." We saw Mrs. P in the spring and fall, the rest of the time she laid in bed. It was always too hot or too cold for her, and we had gone with Mom to bring her food before. We had never gone alone, though. We fretted about what we would do if they didn't believe us, but mom had asked, so we had to go.
We got out the sled and bundled up... and walked out the door into a wall of white. I don't really remember how we made the 3 block walk to Hosea House. I remember seeing a guy on skis, and I remember being so cold my knees didn't want to bend. The sled kept getting bogged down in the snow, and we would stop to clear it, then lift it atop the snow again. It would be all covered again in 5 minutes, but we kept trying, and eventually we made it to Hosea House.
Ah, the blessed warmth that awaited us! We were greeted cheerfully. Mom had called from work, and they were expecting us. They let us sit and dry our mittens while they loaded our sled with food. I was almost warm by the time they were done.
The snow wasn't nearly as heavy on the way home, but the sled sure was. It kept tipping to one side and spilling the boxes, so one of us would pull, while the other walked alongside and kept the sled steady. We took turns all the way to Mrs. P's apartment, then we carried the boxes to her door and knocked. When she opened the door and saw 2 little girls between a mountain of food, she cried -and it made the whole trip worthwhile.
I understand now that Mrs. P was a very sick old lady, with chronic pain and a lot of depression. I know now that she was all alone in the world, and the blizzard had terrified her. But all I could think at the time was, "Please God, don't make me have to carry this stuff to her kitchen, I can't fit the boxes through."
She was a serious pack rat, and there were little 6 inch pathways through her heaping stacks of old clothes and older newspapers. Her house always scared me a little. I was always afraid something would move, and I'd have to face down the biggest cockroach in the world. Or worse yet- be covered in lots of little roaches. Ew.
We did not have to carry the food to the kitchen. She had set up a hot plate on the windowsill, so we made some room near her bed and left the boxes of food there. She tried to pay us, but we wouldn't take it. We knew she didn't work, and in our world work=money. If someone didn't have a job, you never, never take money from them. We told her thank you for the offer, but our mom had asked us to do this, and her smile was reward enough, thank you.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Eating
If you haven't guessed from previous writings here, we were poor. We were not destitute, we were the kind of poor where you make $100 a year too much, so you can't get food stamps or AFDC. Practically every meal was home cooked, and dinner fell into 3 basic categories- 1/2 lb hamburger with noodles, Rice a Roni stuffed into green peppers, and Totino's party pizza. We had Totino's once a week. We could buy 2 pizzas for a dollar, and we would each get 2/3's of a pizza. Mom always picked the smallest, plainest slices. She would carefully pick the pepperoni cubes off of her slices, and make 2 equal piles for us. There were quite a few nights where she would say she wasn't hungry, and she wouldn't eat at all. We would try really hard on those nights to not be hungry also, so that she could have some left over. We would eat very slowly, and exclaim loudly about how good it was. We'd ask her over and over, "Are you sure you're not hungry?" Then the plates would be clean, and there was no food left for mom.
As we got older, and roamed farther from home, we learned ways to fill our bellies before dinner time. The walk to the grocery store took us past a mulberry tree, so we would stop stuff our mouths with berries -run to the store -run back to the tree, and stuff ourselves again. In a pinch, grass makes a good filler. Yes, I ate grass. I ate bark and leaves and orange peels too. A little bit of bitter goes a long way toward supressing an appetite.
During summer vacation, we could always bum some crackers off our friends. We learned how to make Halloween candy last 'til Christmas. Christmas candy can stretch to Valentine's Day, and those chalk-like conversation hearts could float us through Easter.
Where did her $120 a week go, you ask? Well, taxes knocks it down to about $95. There were bills and rent to pay, and our tuition for Catholic School was almost two thousand dollars. (mom got a grant to help pay for it) Plus, there were foods my Mom refused to do without. We always had milk, provided we drank no more than 3 cups a day. We always had whatever fruit was in season. We had meat 4 times a week -if you count those pepperoni cubes on the Totino's pizzas, and once a month or so, Mom would buy cheese. So, we weren't starving, by any means. We were just very hungry.
If you haven't guessed from previous writings here, we were poor. We were not destitute, we were the kind of poor where you make $100 a year too much, so you can't get food stamps or AFDC. Practically every meal was home cooked, and dinner fell into 3 basic categories- 1/2 lb hamburger with noodles, Rice a Roni stuffed into green peppers, and Totino's party pizza. We had Totino's once a week. We could buy 2 pizzas for a dollar, and we would each get 2/3's of a pizza. Mom always picked the smallest, plainest slices. She would carefully pick the pepperoni cubes off of her slices, and make 2 equal piles for us. There were quite a few nights where she would say she wasn't hungry, and she wouldn't eat at all. We would try really hard on those nights to not be hungry also, so that she could have some left over. We would eat very slowly, and exclaim loudly about how good it was. We'd ask her over and over, "Are you sure you're not hungry?" Then the plates would be clean, and there was no food left for mom.
As we got older, and roamed farther from home, we learned ways to fill our bellies before dinner time. The walk to the grocery store took us past a mulberry tree, so we would stop stuff our mouths with berries -run to the store -run back to the tree, and stuff ourselves again. In a pinch, grass makes a good filler. Yes, I ate grass. I ate bark and leaves and orange peels too. A little bit of bitter goes a long way toward supressing an appetite.
During summer vacation, we could always bum some crackers off our friends. We learned how to make Halloween candy last 'til Christmas. Christmas candy can stretch to Valentine's Day, and those chalk-like conversation hearts could float us through Easter.
Where did her $120 a week go, you ask? Well, taxes knocks it down to about $95. There were bills and rent to pay, and our tuition for Catholic School was almost two thousand dollars. (mom got a grant to help pay for it) Plus, there were foods my Mom refused to do without. We always had milk, provided we drank no more than 3 cups a day. We always had whatever fruit was in season. We had meat 4 times a week -if you count those pepperoni cubes on the Totino's pizzas, and once a month or so, Mom would buy cheese. So, we weren't starving, by any means. We were just very hungry.
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