Good: My family –
mother, father, me, and, for the last eight months, my new baby
sister – lived upstairs in a modest, three-family, red brick house.
My parents were close friends with the landlords, and my first
friend in the world was their daughter Gail, who is still my friend
today. Just inside the front door was a small vestibule, very small.
It was ringed with stained glass on the tops of the walls and in the
front door. I used to sit on the tile floor and feel the sun come
through in the morning and wash all those colors over me. The
neighbors got used to stepping over me. That little space became
primal, a touchstone without which I would be adrift in the world.
But I'll have to get used to that, as not only am I nearly 3,000
miles away, but the building was sold last year.
Bad: The
kindergarten teacher who made me stand behind a piano and recite the
Pledge of Allegiance because, as I'd heard my father say, I asked her
if I could “take a leak.” I never made the connection.
Miami/Miami Beach,
Florida (1958-1971, 1975-1977)
Good: My
second-grade teacher took the class on a field trip to the Museum of
Natural History. When we got back to the classroom, everyone had to
write a short essay about the experience. Instead of a grade, she
gave me a nickel. My first paying job as a writer!
Bad: Humidity.
Palmetto bugs – picture oversized cockroaches that can fly –
yikes!! I still try not to.
Good: (1) The
extraordinary white sands along Pensacola Beach. (2) The downstairs
apartment I shared offbase with two other Navy pals. It was on a
quiet street in an almost idyllic neighborhood, just one other
apartment upstairs. Two bedrooms, furnished, $125/mo. I drove there
more than a decade later to revisit the place, and the new downstairs
tenant was surly and suspicious until I convinced him I really had
lived there. I understood his hostility years later, when I could do
research on the Internet – at some point between '74 and '85, it
had been a crack house.
Bad: The racism of
a small city in the Deep South (at the time, anyway). We were
generally immune to it on our naval air station. But one Saturday
night our black race relations counselor went to a bar on the
outskirts of the city with a white enlisted woman and one other
couple, both white. They hadn't been sitting at their table for very
long when this white redneck at the bar walked up to him and said,
“You got more nerve than Jesse James.” In the chaos that
followed, the other guy and his date managed to get to their car with
the other woman and take off, which I understood, as they were all in
real danger. My black friend was beaten and badly outnumbered but
somehow managed to get away, with a bunch of goons behind him. He
ran for miles until he reached the base in the dead of night. He
resigned from his race relations position the next day, and the bar
was immediately put off limits to all personnel.
Good: (1)
Discovering that the apartment building with the vestibule has a
vacancy, and the landlords are the same folks my family had known
before. Reading poems aloud in Greenwich Village hangouts and church
basements around the city, trying to get my name known.
Bad: It was the
late '70s. One word: disco.
Good: (1) One of
my college students, Gino Salerno, used his chainsaw to make
beautiful sculptures out of dead tree trunks. A popular attraction
throughout the city's parks, until after a few years when vandals
started to notice them. (2) Knowing I could drive 15 minutes out of
the city in any direction and be in the middle of practically
nowhere.
Bad: Tornadoes, of
course. You never forget the way the clouds turn a kind of turquoise
and start roiling around overhead. The Andover Tornado killed 23
residents of a trailer park that basically wasn't there anymore. I
joined Mennonite Disaster Relief in trying to salvage whatever we
could for the survivors. Oh, and don't underestimate the hail. One
summer, a tornado heading straight for Wichita from the nearby city
of Hutchinson turned into a hailstorm en route and cost the city
three-quarters of a billion dollars. Sounds incredible, but that was
the stat I heard. For the rest of the summer, you could find
residents on any given block working on their roofs. Auto glass
repair businesses were booked up for months.
Seattle,
Washington (Eastside) (1992-2006)
Good: (1) The
Olympics to the west, the Cascade Range to the east, Mount Rainier
looming just to the south (on a clear day we'd say “the mountain is
out”) – like living in an IMAX nature documentary. (2)
Safeco Field, beautiful home of the Mariners! (I was there during
the Ken Griffey Jr. and the Ichiro years. Around that time, Alex
Rodriguez left Seattle for Texas and a bigger paycheck. When he
returned to Seattle for the first time and stepped up to home plate,
people threw Monopoly money from the stands.)
Bad: Traffic and
the occasional earthquake.
Good: Remote rural
community.
Bad: Remote rural
community.
Good: (1)
Unbelievably friendly people here. Smile at strangers and they might
tell you the story of their lives. (2) Skiing, hunting, fishing,
camping – it's hard to find friends in town between May and
October.
Bad: No hurricanes
or tornadoes, but every now and then a stray mountain lion will mosey
into town from the foothills.
It's amazing how much folks move around these days. All my stops have been in Oregon and Washington.
ReplyDeleteI know. Many of my Boise friends were born and raised here. I envy them for that.
ReplyDeleteI laughed right outloud at the good and bad of Glouchester Maine! Fantastic list.
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteWow Vince, you've been to some interesting places. The NJ/NY story that you read your poems aloud in Greenwich Village was pretty cool.That you have found unbelievable friendly people in Boise, ID is pretty cool too. I think they would find you pretty friendly too. Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the NYC poetry scene was pretty fabulous, but right now I'll take my Boise friends instead.
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