OBSERVATIONS FROM BLYTHE STREET

A Story by Willys Watson

Home to gangbangers, hookers, nuns and cops, sandwiched between the young and old, the poor and the very poor. Each adding depth of character to the sketchbook from which life’s lowered expectations are drawn.

As I turn my old truck onto Blythe Street I wonder if anyone else has pondered the irony of the name’s original meaning, an old English name that means joyous, and what it represents now?

Graffiti flags every building on the street except the police sub-station and the apartment units housing The Church’s Out-Reach Program, structures left unmarked by fear or by superstitious respect. Or both.

Like a dog pissing on a wall or a tree or a bush to mark his territory, the Bangers have staked out their turf. Imagine! Dogs and Bangers speaking the same language!

Because few white people, except the sisters, cops and occasional drug buyers, ever venture into this area, it is almost impossible to find anyone to do any electrical maintenance or basic repair work on these older apartment buildings. I take the jobs because I need the money. The owners offer me the jobs because they know I’ll take them. And take them I have because I just got back from probably my twentieth visit to the street.

The unnatural truce I’ve formed with the Bangers is probably more interesting to me than it is to them. At first they thought I might be a buyer. Then they suspected me of being a plant, perhaps even a narc. After two attempted to rob me with disastrous effect they’ve pretty much kept the distance a respected truce allows.

Poverty speaks across language barriers. The more one has to lose the more one has reason to gamble with foolish acts. Had I a million dollars in the bank I doubt if I would have gambled my life to save the few hundred in my wallet. Perhaps the Bangers understand the common bond we shared? Or perhaps it was kicking the s**t out of the two who tried to rob me? Either way, I managed to keep my hard earned money and an unspoken truce exists between us now.

Walking into the courtyard of one of the apartment complexes, I see two young children, a boy and a girl, sitting on the steps leading up to their door. They smile at me from behind the crimson grins of popsicle-stained mouths.

The boy calls out, "Senior Pipa!"

I call back, "Que acontecimiento, Oscar?"

He waves at me and proudly holds up his half-eaten popsicle. As I walk past them I say a silent prayer that those smiles will still be found on these kids ten years from now, twenty years from now.

The children on this street accept me easily into their world. The pipe was an oddity at first because I am the only man they had ever seen smoke a pipe that wasn’t designed to hold marijuana. Now familiarity allows me to simply be part of their landscape.

Children are easy to befriend, even if you have language obstacles. All you have to do is pay attention to them, listen to the young boys exploits on the soccer field or admire the latest addition to a young girl’s doll collection.

But in a different world adults are always a different story.

The Cops still view me with distrust. The Nuns, these somber, purposeful women going about God’s work, nod politely but instinctively know I’m not buying their religion either. The hookers must either think I’m gay or married or too poor to respond to their wares. The Bangers must think I’m one bad-assed dude or just plain crazy. Or both.

For the job I am sent to three families are sharing a two-bedroom apartment. They have complained to the owner that a breaker has tripped and can’t be reset. First glance tells me the problem is obvious and my multi-meter can stay in it’s case.

Two refrigerators, two microwaves, a toaster and broiler oven are all plugged into the same 20 amp kitchen circuit and the poor ol’ circuit has been fried. After spending a half-day snaking out and replacing the burnt wires and replacing the cooked breaker, I tried to explain how they should plug half their appliances into a different circuit, perhaps moving a fridge and microwave into one of the bedrooms or at least over into the dinning room.

I left their apartment feeling discouraged because I don’t know how well they understood what I was trying to say to them to help.

Poverty knows no boundaries and speaks all languages. Hopefully they understood.

An interesting thing about cockroaches is how well they also understand poverty. What is it that is built into their biological systems that lets them know that resistance to their very existence will be minimal? Do they understand poverty so well that they know they can ignore their normal fears and boldly appear with lights turned on, barely making any effort to hide when you enter a well-lit room? Do they know that they do not have to fear being bug-bombed back into the stone age while living and breeding here?

Perhaps the priorities of poverty are more profoundly projected on this level. When you have to choose between feeding your kids and hiring an exterminator, the food wins out.

Walking back across the courtyard as evening encroaches, my ears are bombarded by angry rap music pouring from an apartment. Fighting the anger for airspace is a romantic Latino love song coming through another door.

Love and anger within crying distance of each other.

As I’m about to leave I see Blanco sitting in her doorway, reading to her kids. Blanco is in her late twenties, has two young children, a husband in prison and an eviction notice on her front door. Still she reads lovingly to her kids.

They are sitting in the open door because their electricity has been shut off and the natural daylight is waning.

While there is still some daylight I hurry to my truck, grab an extension cord and return to her apartment. It only takes a few minutes to run a ‘back-feed’, stealing power from the building’s house meter. I quickly explain how to unplug the ‘back-feed’ and hide the cord each morning before the owner has a chance to come around and notice the cord. I can’t keep her in the apartment past the 1^st. or get her husband out of jail or set her up in a new apartment somewhere, but at least she’ll have lights for a few more weeks.

Two things you can depend on here is: That the owner of the building would never show up except during the day. And the building’s manager will say nothing about the ‘back-feed’ because he and his family also speak the language of poverty.

Do I walk away feeling like a saint? No. I walk away understanding that there is poverty and then there is near poverty and I’ve lived the language of both.

As I climb into my truck to leave I can hear a hymn being sung from the makeshift Church classroom on the other side of the wall.

Good for you, Church! Good for you, Sisters! You are doing you’re selective best to alter the world.

But don’t call out to me until you’re ready to come over this wall and turn the lights back on. Until you can come carrying baskets of food, bug-spray and hope.

Until then, I’m heading home.