Shifting Perspective in Everyday Ramblings

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is my favorite house in the neighborhood, at least for right now. I am going to place my second poem in the cycle here. It is on the corner of the big busy street across from where the railway was. There clearly was a shop downstairs at one time. It is now broken up into three small apartments and there is black and white cat that lives upstairs.

I also believe it was moved to it’s present location because the foundation is this funky concrete but I certainly could be wrong about that. It is on this narrow V shaped corner of a pretty steep hill.

For right now it is a mystery.

I have been told that it is owned by the woman that owns but does not live in the empty house across the street to the north of me and also that it is owned by the woman that owns the odd café next to the studio gallery down where I go to poetry readings about 8 blocks from here. For all I know this could be the same woman.

This will be the spark that gets me to the library looking at insurance maps and to the historical society, those next steps. I took photos of it from every angle a few days ago. I think this is going to give me an opportunity to write about the Italian part of the neighborhood.

In 1920 there were nine thousand Jewish folks living in Portland and six thousand of them lived in my neighborhood. There were about seven thousand Italians and fifty five hundred of them lived here. Forty-five percent of the Jewish folks were women, whereas only twenty-five percent of the Italians were women.

One of my poems is going to be about a prostitute of Italian origin that talks about how the boys and men wanted to hear a woman speak Italian as much as physical release.

From a recollection of a 91 year old man that grew up here…“Across the street on the corner was a house of prostitution. Women would sit in the window and men would knock on the door. On my way to school, these women would have me go get cigarettes and they would give me fifty cents.”

The Jewish population came in family groups and they shared their space with extended family. The Italians left their women and sometimes children behind and came first and worked mostly as laborers, though I understand most of the junk peddlers who stabled their horses at the barn where I live were Italian. And many of the truck farmers on the other side of the river were too.

The Italian families that managed to buy property would rent rooms to other single men, sometimes three or four to a house plus the family. This is an intriguing circumstance for a poet to contemplate. :)

As the Jewish families prospered they moved out to other parts of the city and the Italians moved into the center of the area from the outskirts and either bought or as with the students that live here now, rented from the descendants of the original owners.

There is a huge opulent Temple over in NW Portland that takes up a whole block that was built by those prosperous folks, mostly German.

On Friday after work I walked over there and then S and I went for a 6-mile ramble up to the well-heeled hills west of her place. We took Frieda her Standard Poodle with us, and a lot of water, as it was one hot day. Then we hung out in her wild and delightful garden for a time and chatted with her husband about formal poetry and air flight before the jet engine. It was a lovely way to spend a summer evening.

The trails in Forest Park were so dusty when I got home my feet were unusually dirty. Ah, climate change…

The latest round of dental work is done! Fini, complete. I am thrilled.

I am, however, expected to spend a lot more time on daily maintenance than any sane person would contemplate. I take good care of my teeth, do all the right things but now I am supposed to use all the tools available to keep them clean and free from particulate matter all day long?

It will be an interesting balancing act going forward until next year when I will need to address the next big issue.

I had a mom in my caregiver class last week that was missing about half of her teeth. Her English was not great and I am not even sure what language she speaks but still we had fun and she visibly relaxed. I can’t imagine what her life at home is like right now but she sure helped me put mine in perspective.

Oh and if Carlo and Diego weren’t totally crashed out right now they would thank you for all the recent compliments. They may be vain, but they are also polite.

Last updated July 19, 2015