Our 'hood

I was walking home from the Park yesterday afternoon when J. spotted me. J. is one of those cats who is always hanging around the neighborhood. He loves to talk because most of the time he has nothing else to do. He yelled my name and ran across the street to shake my hand and walk with me. J. looks very young despite his graying hair and beard. He wears NBA tank tops and jean shorts, and is well-muscled like most guys who make their money scraping and fixing and painting. J is in his late fifties and lives in some local basement. When I first met him I took J. for 30. Now that I know his real age I can see it in his eyes. They have dark circles around them, and the flesh droops there, particularly under those sleepy yellowing orbs.

J. is always looking for a new basement to move into because he pays his rent by doing odd jobs around the houses he lives in. Once those odd jobs dry up J. knows he has got to git soon, or come up with some cash. Often he is pestering neighbors about the trim around their windows, or refinishing their doors. “I can fix that there mess right up fer ya,” he says. “Just call.” He has a scratchy deep voice, very expressive. He also carves chess sets out of wood bits he gathers walking around the Park, and he participates in the Sunday drum circle held near one of its pagodas.

We hung out on my stoop for a while, talking shit. E., my neighbor, came out with his bulldog Bodhi. Bodhi looks like W.C. Fields. E. tried to feed Bodhi a spoonful of ice cream, but it dripped down onto Bodhi’s flat sloped forehead, too high up for him to lick it. His long tongue kept lapping halfway up his face trying to reach the ice cream, but could not make it, poor puppy Tantalus. E. and J. and I laughed at Bodhi, who finally rubbed his forehead on a sheet of cardboard somebody left on the sidewalk. This he licked the now fuzzy ice cream off happily.

Somehow or another J. said something about smoke during our conversation, and I said something in return, and he jumped up off the stoop and hugged me. “A real person!” he said, and actually called me his “nigga.” We talked about smoke for a while. I told J. about Snydely Whiplashed and the Dorito bubble-language. J. told me about Senor Squeaky and the slow-motion Rice Crispy bounce. J. said he was a devotee of the drum circle because “them cats fires up a primo load” to warm up ahead of time under the “tree of life.” “And they shares it too.”

J. was obviously trying to feel me out about a package he has coming in, but I maintained my retirement from such activities was durable and suggested to J. that such behavior for me was long past, with only the most occasional disciplinary lapses.

“Well next time you got yourself a disciplinary lapse,” he intoned, drawling out the words and somehow chuckling deep inside his chest at once, “you call J. And when the fuck you gonna let me scrape and paint that fire escape for you? Shit, man, I will fix that mess right up.”

A Beautiful Day

We finally met the neighbors directly across the street from us. Other neighbors we've met have referred to them as The Mayor and First Lady, a title earned after 6 decades living there.

Returning from the park we saw Mr. and Mrs. P. out on the stoop, where they held court in the warm evening air. He stood to the side of the marble steps, leaning over with his elbow on the top. She sat just outside the door on the threshold, stooped herself. They looked to be in their sixties but are in fact 85 and 83. We rushed over and introduced ourselves and promptly formed up into pairs. Cha and Mrs. P. chatted about the neighborhood and Cha's work as Mr. P. told me stories about being a cook in the Army and going ashore at Normandy and moving through France into Germany. He told me about each house on the block, and which ones he'd helped restore during a previous revitalization in the 1960s. What Mr. P. must have seen, as Reservoir Hill moved from its lofty top-tier economic status into a racially mixed middle class region, then following a short period of white flight it became a black middle class neighborhood, and following the deaths of many long-term residents Reservoir Hill descended sadly into a struggling ghetto with pockets retaining mere hints of past dignity.

I was awed and humbled by the arc of their lives. Mr. P. overheard Cha mention art teaching and mentioned that he himself was not only a painter of houses, but also a self-taught painter of pictures. At his suggestion Mrs. P. gave us a tour of the first floor of their charming old house, where several of his paintings hang. They were impressive, including several accomplished family portraits, a clever oil featuring two Jewish men drinking beer ("Them's his Jews," Mrs. P. said in explanation), a lovely portrait of a rooster and two hens, a colonial or Revolutionary-era parlour scene of three gentlemen seated in a grand library with mugs. Mr. P. had also done extensive murals on the walls of the house, but sadly these had decayed into disrepair, with grandchildren's artwork taped over top. "He don't paint no more because he done got lazy," Mrs. P. said and laughed. When she laughs she claps and then throws her hands in the air, a gesture particularly endearing to me, as my paternal grandmother also did so.

As we returned to the stoop their daughter arrived, herself in her fifties and a former principal in the City school system. "I'm typically the docent on the tour," she lamented. "Mother is not an entirely incapable stand-in, but omits much of the vital history. Some day I'll take you through with more context." As her father resumed telling me house and family histories, she corrected him from time to time, gently but with a teasing tone. He said someone had died twenty years before, and she said "More like 45 years ago. I was a young girl when he left us."

"You're still a young girl," Mr. P. replied, and she stroked his wispy hair. The entire P. clan is full of humor and thus they retain a remarkable youthful vigor, a twinkling in the moist bright eyes set in sagging faces.

The daughter told us her father and deceased brother were at one time amateur magicians of some renown. Mr. P. had constructed his own illusion machines, including a guillotine, a sword-box, and a "lady-sawn-in-half" table. "They violated child labor statutes by forcing me to work as an unpaid magician's assistant. The worst part was rehearsing every night in the basement for weekend birthday parties."

"You wasn't unpaid," Mr. P. said. "You got ten percent of the proceeds for each show."

"Ten percent of five dollars!" she protested.

Is there anything Mr. P. had not done? Electrician, painter, artist, teacher, magician, soldier, contractor, unofficial Mayor...

At this point we met another neighbor, three doors down from us. A slight man with Einsteinian bushy black hair, dressed all in black himself, and effecting, dare I say, dare I use the cliche? Pourquoi pas? He was effecting a certain je ne sais quoi.

"Here's another of your nice neighbors," Mrs. P. said. "And all the way from Paris, France. This is M."

"I move here because in France I read the name Reservoir 'Ill and knew I had to come," M. said with a sneer. We spoke French briefly, but were chided by the others, who began teasing us and yelling random words of European origin, like "cappuccino."

M. mounted a convertible sports car after announcing he was due in Providence, RI for a date in seven hours. "The drive will take six and a half, so I must leave now!" he shouted, waving and winking.

And thus we add more good folks to those we've met already, and we learned that for two decades our house had no roof, and no rear wall.

The Neighbors

I've met some of our neighbors already. The house just north of us is home to A and B. A is English and blond and is always carting her toddler around. Her politeness is typically intense. Sometimes I hear the baby laughing and gurgling through our TV room wall, which is much more acceptable than lame techno beats and Busch-drenched frat boys shouting over fussball. B operates an antique store in Hampden, and we'll likely be shopping there soon for a dining room set. The house just south of us is home to E, who is a hoot. He's got dreads down to his ass, and when he saw me Saturday he put his hands in the air and yelled:

"Oh I have WAITED for this day! I have WAITED for a neighbor for 15 years, that old empty house raggedy for years and I have a NEIGHBOR AT LAST!" (vigorously shaking my hand and patting my shouler) "I'm a snowboarding instructor and I'm orginally from West Baltimore--love your hat, man!--and I am LATE FOR WORK but YOU WILL BE LOVED here, just watch out because somebody will probably slash your tires. They don't mean nothing by it, just kids you know--that is one NICE spoon back chair--man I got to go get PAID but thank you Jesus this City needs a HUG you know and it will HUG YOU BACK. I'm already planning a welcoming neighborhood brunch for y'all, ask anyone they'll tell you old E knows his way 'round in the kitchen, someday I'm going to run a hostel or B&B out of this house you know if I can get my shit TOGETHER. BLESSED BE I am so glad TODAY."

I was moving stuff around in the basement and the back patio two nights ago and wafting over from E's yard was a most intriguing smell, redolent of Dutch coffee houses and 1970's Econoline vans. Mental note: E has access to some primo.

Two houses north of us are L and her son G. She's Puerto Rican from Harlem, and he's half-black. They are extremely nice, and we actually met them the first time we viewed the house. Theirs was rehabbed by the same people, and she invited us in and showed us around so we could see if their work was holding up under habitation. It was.

Across the way I've met J, who told me the neighborhood is safe so long as you stay inside after nine pm, but I think (hope) he was joking. There are three more houses being rehabbed on our block, including both enormous turreted end units at the corner of Whitelock and Madison. Those will likely run more than half a mill when done.

I'll have pictures up as soon as I can get Verizon to turn on the damn phone and internet at home.