Number of entries: 3 Number of pages: 1
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| Name: Storie (Noopy, Moose) Mooser From: Portland, OR |
Oops, that rock arch on the property of the old St. Vincents Infirmary property was at its Southeast corner, not at the northwest corner as I mistakenly wrote. Also, the blue neon signage that was mounted on the arch, tracing its shape, did read "Infirmary", not "Hospital", as Jimmy Martin was kind enough to correct.
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| Name: Storie (Noopy - Moose) Mooser From: Portland, OR |
This is really strange stuff, .....maybe. But then maybe too you guys wake up in hazy, half awake reverie that seems completely random. Yesterday, just as morning light was coming on, into my half conscious mind floated up the nighttime view (as seen from the W. 9th bus headed downtown) of the rock entrance arch at the northwest corner to the old St. Vincents Hospital's property. I guess that to be at about W. 11th & High Street. Tracing the rock arch in illuminated blue was "St. Vincents Hospital", pulsing in that phosphorous, eerie neon glow. The hospital is now long gone, of course, and High Street is now Martin Luther King Boulevard. Even as a kid the bright neon over the arch seemed inconsistent with the hospital's otherwise seemingly under-illuminated hulk, like it was sulking in the shadows, seen mostly only as a silhouette against a backdrop of light scatter from city lights beyond. I guess I remember it so well because on my bus trips downtown before driving age it had become one of a number of particular scenes along the route that my mind used for indexing my bus trip's progress. Another was the illuminated Goldcrest 51 beer sign that stood high up on a steel post at the NE corner of Wright Ave. & High Streets, its hazy glow casting a pale light onto the earthen parking area that was the setback between the sign's post at the intersection corner and the tavern it heralded, a night spot for the local Blacks, just west and down the hill from the old Dunbar Negro High School. Tethered to these scenes (in a reel that switched back and forward like my mind was attempting to reorient itself to its own "ON STAR" coordinances based upon ancient landmarks) I then get view of the old city transit system lot and barns that occupied that full city block on the east side of High Street but south of the St. Vincents Hospital by a block or two. They were always over illuminated, much like a prison yard, standing in visually screeching contrast to the darkness that brooded over the hospital. My mind then bounced to the glimpse gotten of the nighttime outline of the huge Immanuel Baptist Church that set west beyond the hospital. Then, in whatever mysterious way my mind sees connection between these scenes, I'm presented with the oft times witnessed long-ago scene of the old Oak Forest route bus chugging very slowly in low gear up the 21st Street hill from High Street, having picked up the transferred passengers from the southbound W. 9lth bus after school. I can't recall the number of that bus, was it #8, or 18, or 21,.....what? They were the oldest, smallest and slowest buses of the city bus fleet and I never understood why that route got them instead of other routes. And for whatever reason, the transit authority saw fit to have those oldest busses on this route painted a different color from the rest of the fleet; a deep, dark green colored lower half topped off with pale white on the upper. Was it because it served so much of the Black and blue collar part of town? All I knew is that Sandra Hendley, Jo Lynn Hill, Betty Bernard and Jean Flake were riders of it, daily transferring between it and the W. 9th for their commute to West Side Jr. High. Everyday on my bus ride to school I anxiously awaited them to horridly climb onto the W. 9th bus, all gabbing and giggly, clutching their books and satchels close in front of them over their bosoms, purses strung off bent elbows as they made their way back to seats or to where ever other Westsiders were clustered on the bus. The old Oak Forest bus chugging away toward town. Then, after school, a reverse; my bus window would glide passed after they'd gotten off at W. 21st Street to make the transfer, me craning my neck to keep them in sight as long as I could. Now,......can you imagine parents today allowing their daughter of early teenage to take that commute, transferring at that same spot?
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| Name: Storie (Noopy, Moose) Mooser From: Portland, OR |
Remember the “vegetable men” that circulated through our neighborhoods during the growing season that ran from late April all the way through October? The one that routed through my neighborhood was typical; a local farmer who at the end of each day’s route would return back to his farm on the city’s outskirt to hand pick the crop he’d grown himself for sell fresh to our mothers the following day. “Our vegetable man”, as we referred to him, might well have been the one who served your neighborhood. On our street he came twice a week to park midway in the block, signaling his arrival there with a signature horn tattoo. The housewives would pour out of the houses to assemble around his truck, have him bag and weigh whatever vegetables they chose for the evening meal, but otherwise seemed glad to have the occasion to catch one another up on whatever was the gossip or recipe of the week. He was very polite, thirty-something, nicely built and an otherwise attractive man, always fastidiously clean down to his finger nails. His bib overalls -- of that twill of alternating vertical narrow lines of white and denim blue cotton -- seemed clean almost to the point gleaming. In later years I couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t attempting to polish the image of farmers, hoping to counter the stereotypes that had been so crudely popularized in comic strips. I had the idea that by each day’s end his coveralls were badly soiled with the evening harvesting, so now remember him respectfully for what must have been a very conscientious effort to present himself before his customers as no less worthy of respect than any banker in town. Sorry, but I don’t recall ever knowing his name other than as the “vegetable man”. I do know that the produce of crops he didn’t actually grow himself he purchased each morning at the farmers’ market that was over on the east side of Little Rock at the time, somewhere out near the airport. I’m intimate with this because my older brother’s wife was daughter of a “vegetable man”. Married in 1947, my brother even himself became a vegetable man for a couple of years, running a route over in southwest Little Rock, in and about the Oak Forest development. Once while accompanying him on his route I chanced to get to wave at Sandra Hendley and Betty Bernard who lived in that neighborhood. The days I accompanied my brother on his route we’d be at the farmers’ market before daylight and already the place was hectic with local farmers unloading and selling their produce. Long before most citizens were awakening the market’s business day was over, with all the farmers either off back to their farms to gather the crop for the market’s next day or off to run their “vegetable man” routes. Their days were hard and long. This all came back to me on reading a book that Judy’s “women’s book club” elected to read, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” by Barbara Kingsolver. Having heard all the excitement about it as a best seller and how much trouble Judy had in securing a copy I bothered to read the cover leaf. I’m glad I did. Unlike what I’d expected – a wistful novel about angst in exurbia America – it is one family’s account of “their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it”. In the author’s own words. “…adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.” This is a book for our children and grandchildren. Why? Because it is about us! That’s right, if you want to give your posterity a picture of what life was like for our generation you can’t skip telling them how different was what we ate compared to what they get today – and how they’re worse off for it. This book is not only a joy to read for the beauty of her prose in its telling, but Kingsolver gives us a critical examination of what has happened to food since we had it so good in our day; back when what arrived at our markets and on our dishes wasn’t grown 2,000 miles away but instead was local, was fresh, was mostly “heritage” crops (not GMO or hybridized for long freighting), and was essentially organic – neither a chemical or feed lot product. Your children and grandchildren need to know that not only are their foods loaded with toxins and have been altered out of balance with our species’ nutritional needs, but that what is essential as nutrients in today’s food typically has less than 50% as much as we had. As bad as all else is the fact that they, unlike us, don’t know how good food can taste!
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