Pushcart Stories

Who doesn't find hope in pushcart stories, America's best? Pasquale took Will and me on a tour of northeast Bronx where he has made a home for 35+ years. As we crossed the Bronx River Bridge, we stopped for the raising of the draw in order for a barge to pass. Then we went on City Island to go to Sammys (no apostrophe) Fish Box which has been a huge enough success that Sammys Shrimp Box was added across the street. Sammys is a pushcart story as he started out with simple fare and built the cart into an enterprise. Lee, the waiter, happily recounted his odyssey from Thailand as a teen with ten dollars in his pocket. First stop Germany. No, he didn't speak German, only a little broken English. America, the land of dreams fulfilled, came next. He proudly showed us the I.D. cards of his daughters': University of Chicago, MIT, Cal Tech, and UC Berkley. Lee had wanted to be a physician. Instead, he worked seven day/14 hour shifts to help his daughters achieve. His wife stayed home and assisted the family in her motherly, wifely ways. The girls' names translate to Blessing and Peacefulness. The paper placemats had a map of City Island with drawings of signal flags, ships--Yawl, Brig, Sloop, Schooner, Cat Boat--but the map didn't give a hint of the winsome cottages with exuberant window boxes and container laden steps. A church called Star of the Sea captured the nature of the place. Singular and beautiful.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...May the blessings of good friends ad tucked away surprises be yours...

A Friday in Chapel Hill

I was thinking today of a story in Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, about the "Merry Pranksters." In it was a repeated line comparing the bus to Life. You were either on the bus!!!!or not. My excursion to Carrboro, which is across the street from Chapel Hill, involved 4 buses with short rides. It's only about a mile but the bus from Fairoaks goes to town and then I catch the bus to Carrboro around the corner. I knew it was going to be a good day when the two classics profs got on and sat behind me. One of them knows I like to eavesdrop. He was talking to a quieter prof about travels in Italy. The phrase I liked was, "You can get anything at the Vatican pharmacy. The Holy Spirit and all that." Waiting for the bus coming back I started a conversation with a woman who had a page turner mystery in her hand but she wasn't reading it. That intrigued me so I commented on her bookmark, the magnetic kind that saves the place right at the paragraph one leaves. Sure enough, she wanted to talk, not read. We had a lot in common. She liked thrift stores, wondered why we have to hear endlessly about sordid news, asked why people ran for office and why they didn't say, "See this forehead? It's out the door!" when critics circled like sharks. Just as I got on the bus, a woman I can only call Slinky dashed up yelling at a homeless man that she'd be back in an hour. She must have been 5'9" and weighed 105 pounds most of that being the weight of tattoos. She was loud. Her dress was to the floor in shiny fabric unknown in Chapel Hill and backless. She sat opposite me and yelled at the bus driver, "Can we eat on the bus?" Bus Driver said, "No!" Slinky said, "I can't wait for my French fries." I leaned in and sang five words on five notes, "You'll justhavetowait." Her eyes popped open. An audience! She said, "I sing, too!!!!! I have an event on Friday. Can you come? I just got out of jail because when I sang last week my skirt was too short and a wind came up." The police noticed she had no underclothes. This time, though, she was properly attired but admitted she still had no underclothes. Then she said, "I can do pullups, too!" and proceeded to do about 15 on the bar above her. Bus Driver began sighing. A young black woman on the other side of me sat quietly observing. I said to Slinky, "Say! You could join Cirque d' Soleil!" I didn't know if she knew what that was. She brightened. She said, "I could sit on the moon! You have given me a dream! What's your name?" I said, "Mimsey." She said, "I'm Donna. I call myself MyDonna Remax." Suddenly she discovered she was on the wrong bus and tried to get Bus Driver to let her out in the middle of a five lane road. Bus Driver said she could get off at the next stop. I reprised, "You'll justhavetowait." When she sallied off the bus, she waved and said she would see me on Friday. I said to the air, "It's already Friday." I turned to the young woman and commented, "We should have asked for an autograph." Young Woman didn't smile or respond in any way but when it was my turn to disembark, she said, "You have a beautiful day!" as though she also was a friend. One never knows whom one might be influencing. Which reminds me of the car repair shop I saw in Carrboro. The sign read, "Gates of Beauty Body Shop. Peacemaker-Owner."
~~~~~~~
....may the road rise to meet you as they say in old Ireland and may the travelers along the way be of good cheer...

Gardens I Have Known

from a 15th century tapestry

Oto's garden

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lucille noticed something I had not. She took me on a picnic to the rose garden in front of the UNC planetarium. I hadn't known there was a rose garden. I've only been there how many hundreds of times?? When I saw it, I said, "That's landscaping, not a garden." We got into a philosophical discussion about what the definition of a garden is and what our first impressions of gardens were and how these showed the differences in our personalities. My introduction to gardens was in Bahia where I was put out to nap behind the stone house amidst dense foliage, chattering monkeys, songbirds, exotic flowers, and cool shade.There was an element of danger, secretiveness, too. The next garden to impress me was the Garden of Gethsemane when we lived on the Mount of Olives. I told Lucille the cloisters and atriums of the various schools I attended, paintings such as "The Unicorn in the Garden" which was the cover art for a book of poetry by Anne Morrow Lindbergh seem to add up to some kind of clue to why I like small beautiful spaces, set apart places. Lucille needs the freedom of open expanses. I said, "In California when everybody else was marveling at the sunsets on the ocean, I was delighting in the tide pools. Once when at Air Bellows Gap on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Douglas asked what I was doing. He said I was missing the view. I couldn't comprehend such a remark because I was viewing something wonderful--a tenacious tiny wildflower struggling to grow out of a wall of crackling boulders." Lucille mentioned the idea of this being a political bent to see the local rather than the global, to need a purpose as well as a pleasure, to enclose myself to guard against the destruction of beauty. We discussed what I think of as garden material. Yes, I like fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables. Randy Walker of Roanoke asked me to write two lines of his four line poem. He started with a carrot scene. My reaction was, "What in the world could I have to say about this poor doomed carrot??" But we did our assignments. Lucille pointed out two things. One was that, once again, it echoed of a political statement. "It shows what will happen to the other vegetables if they ignore what happened to the carrot." Also, it reflects my contemplative mentality. My gardens have to have a purpose, a boundary; they are guarded in the same way as what I said about being an islander. An island, after all, is the perfect garden. I see now that the Garden of Eden was my most lasting influence--bounded by angels, incomparable, with the purpose of naming the animals and being good stewards of the Earth. I'm back to why I like short stories, aren't I? On the bus today I was thinking about the unicorn and I added something else to my garden definition. It differs from landscaping because of the creatures who live in it--the faeries, gnomes, slitheries, chatterers, and small beings who sing and croak. There is a quality of magical kingdom to my gardens. Whether it's the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, the Shakespeare Garden in Central Park, or Oto's garden as seen above, "my" garden is the "detail" in the larger artwork.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Randy's poem:
The silent scream of a carrot being diced
could be heard from the vegetable bin.
And yet, amid the ruckus and the din
All looked away, left her, unaided, sliced.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
.....the blessings of secret flowery nooks or panoramic vistas, whichever or both appeal to you, be yours....