From the Orchard on the Street Named After a Union Army General in Everyday Ramblings

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I took this yesterday out in the neighborhood.

Like everywhere else we are having unusual weather, it has been dry hot and muggy and Sunday was a particularly miserable example of that pattern. There was this gloomy overcast and yet it was very warm. Actually, it was hot.

In the afternoon I put on running shorts and sandals and went out for a walk.

Because many of these older houses built in the 1880s are heat traps I discovered neighbors out front sitting on porches or in the street talking to other neighbors or relatives that I never have had the opportunity to talk to before.

And I had a list of questions. I got everybody talking about their houses, two of the oldest on the street, built even before the Baptist church across the way and the apartments. Between 1880 and 1884.

This is when in Germany, Brahms was complaining to his publisher that a particular postcard that has a picture of his, umm, big belly, was being circulated that was driving the vain composer mad.

So I didn’t actually get answers to any of my questions but I got a lot of wonderful stories about the neighborhood in many different iterations.

One family had interacted with the bottle digger fellow and actually knew his name. They think he has some rare disease that makes the bones unusually long, which would partially explain his unnerving appearance.

I heard this science piece last week on the radio about a study that shows that lonely people are actually much more sensitive to social nuance and more skilled at social interactions than non-lonely people. The problem is that they choke; the stress of being in social situations affects them like say a tennis player of golfer who chokes under pressure. So if they are at ease and feel comfortable as with family or close friends they are fine, but as soon as there are unknown variables they freeze and make a mess of it.

That would be me.

Because I have this enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity I was out there drawing my neighbors out. A couple of these conversations lasted more than an hour each.

And they were lively and fun.

There is some momentum to organize a community bulletin board or some sort of information sharing platform to take action to prevent further destruction in the area and do something about the absolutely horrid local traffic situation.

Oh and to attract a reasonable restaurant that serves breakfast on the weekends.

My oldest sister got to know practically everybody in her community by doing this. I know in me what people are responding to is my interest and the fact that I actively chose to live here. And I am no threat. I don’t even own anything.

Unlike the woman who made enough money selling handmade aprons door to door that she was able to open a dress shop in her basement and from that dress shop earned enough money to buy 8 houses, most of which her family still owns.

There was the pugilist that washed the walls of his house up as far as he could reach but no further so that when the property was sold in 1975 there was a strip of wood smoke saturated wall from the 12 foot ceiling down to about 7 feet from the floor.

And there was a completely corrupt group of city fathers who managed to alter all the existing property lines to benefit their personal interests. We had a bunch of fraternal organizations (including the Italian one that buried a human jawbone in one of the sidewalks) and that is where all the action happened in terms of business.

I am taking notes. Clearly this project is going to be a poem cycle with pictures, something more extensive than a single poem dip into the layered history of one corner.

My blood work all came back in the normal range.
I am, as they say, healthy as a horse. Now if I could just run like one!

Last updated July 01, 2015