Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

When Una and I take a walk in our neighborhood, we always used to wave to an elderly man who sat on the front porch smoking his cigar. He always wore a button-down shirt and brown corduroy pants. He was a tightly compact man with a pale olive complexion, short white hair and intricate wrinkles.

He loved Una, whom he called "Brownie," and he used to flash us a big smile every time and mumble something I couldn't quite understand. It sounded like he had an accent, and I guessed he had been born in Italy.

The weather has been warm for a couple weeks now, and Una and I hadn't seen him on our walks. I was concerned. His wife was out mowing the lawn yesterday, and he wasn't anywhere to be seen. I wondered if something happened to him.

Today I found out. His wife was outside again, sweeping cut grass from the street. She was compact, as well, and looked so much like her husband she could have been his female twin. Her white hair, though, was longer, fluffing in wisps around her head.

I called out, "More yard work?" And she came over and talked to me for a long time, about everything under the sun.

Her name is Mary. When I told her my name was Alyce she said, "Oh, Alice in Wonderland!"

Mary was telling me about everyone in the neighborhood, and about how her husband is in a nursing home now because of dementia. I told her I was sorry and I hoped he was okay.

She also told me that he hadn't retired until age 80, and between age 80 and 88, he gambled away $72,000! Mary said that he didn't have an accent; his speech was slurred from falling down the stairs.

I was right, though, they are Italian. She was telling me that all of her grandchildren are half-Irish. She calls them "Halfies." I guess that I would be a "Quartie" or an "Eighthie," depending on which nationality you're talking about. She was complaining that none of her descendants know how to cook Italian food the way she does. She gave me her recipe for ravioli. I immediately forgot it.

Mary still had her broom, and she leaned on it and dropped her voice to a whisper whenever she said something bad about anybody. She told me that her next-door neighbors, hippie types who often blare Bob Dylan, have 10 cats and that the house smells like cat pee and she can't leave anything on her front porch or the cats will get it. Although she's called the board of health, nothing is ever done about it. She's going to go to the borough hall and try to get something done.

The neighborhood has undergone a lot of changes since Mary moved in 53 years ago. When I told her I wasn't from around here, she asked if I was from North Philly. For some reason, when you tell Philadelphians you're not from here, they think you just mean you're not from the neighborhood. And I'm not sure what type of ethnicities (besides African American) live in North Philly, but I guess I have an air of the stranger mixed with the air of the familiar. It would have taken far too long to explain that my family did come from Philadelphia, but that was more than 100 years ago and they were Quaker farmers and none of us had lived there since, until me.

I mentioned that I liked "this place" because it was so friendly. She assumed, immediately, I meant the neighborhood, again, and she said, "Oh, it wasn't always that way. When I moved in it was all Germans." She gave me a significant look. I guess I was supposed to know that Germans are standoffish. And while it's true that my home town was filled with people of Germanic descent and they were pretty tightlipped, I don't know if I can generalize. Because you see, I'm a "Quartie" when it comes to German (yes, and a "Quartie" when it comes to Scotch-Irish, too).

"But they kept their houses clean," she said, still referring to the Germans. Then she started complaining about her Irish and African American neighbors. First she was talking about how this one kid had all black friends and how they stole things from his mom. I said it wasn't related to their skin color but more related to being young and rebellious. I told her about my brother's friend, who was white, and who later snuck into the house and stole my mother's car.

She was telling me that three people on her street got cancer and how awhile back, they were checking soil in the neighborhood for contamination. Some of the houses had to be torn down and the soil cleansed. New houses were then built. This was something I didn't know. Mary told me she'd once grown a really large squash in her front yard and one of her grandsons joked it was because of the soil, so she wouldn't eat it.

Pointing to the houses around her, she told me which elderly neighbors were still there. She was listing all of their names. Her finger stopped on a brick double, where an African American woman and her daughter were on the porch. I like passing them because the little girl always says, "Doggie!" in an excited voice when I pass.

Mary dropped her voice to a whisper and said, "They always get the houses really cheap. Why is it that some people get a break and others don't?" Then she described how "they" were the only people moving in any more and how you could see "them" driving around in their cars whenever the "for sale" signs went up. I wanted to tell her that I've been friends with and dated virtually every ethnicity, and I'm a "Quartie" or an "Eighthie" of just about all of Europe, including a "Quartie" Polish. I wanted to tell her I like about this neighborhood's diversity; it's one of the reasons I feel so comfortable here. But I chickened out.

I have this image of her gardening in her small yard for 53 years, disapproving of everything that changed. She takes care of her little corner, she said. She likes to plant things in her back yard. Her sons used to help her paint the stucco mint green every year until they moved away, and she was only able to do the porch by herself. I told her it looked good.

She kept going and going, her speech an everlasting pattern, like a stream rushing over me. And I was a stick stuck in the stream bottom, fighting to get loose. Mary seemed to need to talk to somebody. She told me that friends used to ask her to dinner with them but she never went because she liked her own food better. "They don't ask me anymore," she said.

I wanted to get going, because I had things I wanted to accomplish today, but I felt guilty pulling away. Una had grown bored and was eating grass. "She must be hungry. Does she eat in the mornings?" Mary asked.

"Yes, she eats when I get home from my walk," I said, which was the truth. "I better get going so I can feed her."

"Nice meeting you, Alice in Wonderland," she called cheerily with a giggle as Una and I walked away.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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