when the end of summer reminds you
it rained on saturday, a couple diff times, and yet the humidity still had not cleared. weeks and weeks of high 80s and above with high humidity had dominated ths summer, and supposedly the end was near on saturday. i sat, in the house with no central air, and waited for carl to get home from a full day of work. we've both been so tired, and out of sorts, as have the dogs - not too much time outside, our schedules are a mess, too hot for dog walks and our aching bodies have just not wanted to go on them anyway.
carl got home, and we had a drink. waited. lounged around. took the dogs on a short loop, and decided that yes - we could stay awake long enough to go across the street and visit with our neighbors, who were having a gathering to celebrate the coming change in weather, and our friendships.
our neighbors - our friends. we never knew what it was like to have such great people live near us till we moved here. 20 years in dearborn heights and the only real friends we had there became drug addicts and were killed by gunfire while delivering drugs......so this whole "neighbors as friends " thing was new to us. but these people - how did we get so lucky?
we were certainly late to the party, by only 10 pm, but still glad to be there. we laughed as we talked about the neighborhood "pteradactyl" that would make us call each other in feeble attempts to save the koi in back yard ponds. while a joyous thing to see blue herons coming in from the ford estate, we all knew they were only coming for free lunch at our backyard's expense. i told them "this is how i know you are my friends - you agree with me that this is a dinosaur and you don't make fun of me about it!!"
we laughed a lot. we had good coversations as the breezes finally brought in the cool dry air we had been waiting for for almost 2 months. our gardens were pitiful, the rabbits and squirells had stolen all that we grew, but we had each other, our dogs, and our health to be joyous about. it was the first time all summer we could spend time with them - as we'd been consumed for almost 3 months with having to relocate our business.
so much work. 7 weeks of getting ready, and then moving, and then putting it all back together. sore bodies, sore minds. an absolute disconnect from everything that is normal.
we bid good night to our friends, and went to bed, knowing that on our day off, our only day off, we had 2 house calls to make to look at records for store stock.
i love selling records - it is the only job i have ever done. 28 years now - something carl was just telling me i need to promote more - that i am the only female record shop owner in detroit, and most certainly the only woman who has been selling records for 28 years in the area. it's not about the money - and thank god - because there hardly is any....those of us in the biz are here because we love music, and to me the joy comes from helping people find a record they really want, to hear music they really love,and to help them find new music that will make their world a better place. i go to great lengths to make this happen, and put up with a lot of bullshit and weird stuff.
now it's sunday at noon. we're about to leave to go to fenkel and greenfield. i can hear my sisters in the back of my head - "do you have a gun? - you need to take a gun!!", "did you tell anybody where you are going, give them a phone number, make sure they call you to make sure you got home in one piece?", and i run though my thoughts of should i call a neighbor and tell them to check on us.....or at least come by and see if the dogs are okay......carl reminds me to charge my cell phone, and we take the hand drawn directions to the hood we're traveling to.
the phone call came in mid july. a man who had been in the service overseas in the 60s had 3 footlockers full of jazz and r&b - did we want to come see them? carl said yes, but we had to wait because we were moving the shop and simply could not do it right when he called. he said he'd wait. on the way to his house, we passed a lot of old, lovely, huge houses, brick houses, with gorgeous windows and big lots and houses next to them that had exploded, or been burnt out. we got to the block before his, and all the houses were boarded up and burned out. i was thinking about the gun my sisters said i should have.......and then we turned onto a block was that was lovely - beautiful well cared for homes with great landscaping and heavy wrought iron security doors. we parked in the drive and were ushered into the back door by the man selling his collection.
let's see - if you saw miles daivs in copenhagen in 1963, or there abouts, then you do the math and see that this man was near 80 years old. this tall man, with hardly any grey hair, and fewer wrinkles, and who stood tall and proud, was near 80 years old. seemed impossible, but by his stories it was true. and by his records it was also true. the collection was not as nice as we had hoped - lots of common things we could not use, or did not want to take with us, and some family members records thrown in too that were hard to find but unplayable blue notes and impulse lps........and we spent maybe 75 minutes talking with him and his wife - they were moving due to an inability to make it comfortably up and down the stairs these days - bad knees. they were nice people - kinda distant, kinda reserved, and at the end carl made them an offer.
"hmmmm, i expected more than that. what are you giving me per record? i expected more than that, becuase the man who came to buy them before you did took fewer records and paid me far more........"
god damn it. i mean - really? you said you'd wait for us till we could come out and see them, but then you called someone else and sold the best part of your collection to someone else.
and when his wife described the guy - we just shook our heads.
again, because of having to move the store, we got screwed out of something we should have had first crack at. should have had the ability to make happen. should have. and didn't.
we explained that had we known someone else had been there we woudl have never come. that our offer stood, and if he did not want to sell he did not have to. he ended up agreeing, and we took the records and left. frustrated and stirred up all over again about how our summer turned out.
then we drove down greenfield to dearborn. damn - i'm glad i do not live north of warren off greenfield. the road is utter hell to drive on, and the side streets all look abandoned. it's all so tired and neglected. and then you literally cross a set of tracks and it all changes. as you come up to warren - everything changes. the building signs are in arabic, and the streets are clean. eveything is painted calm colors, and the grass is mowed. it looks lived in.
we made jokes at the corner of warren and greenfield - that we needed to take pictures for those times we are dragged into ridiculous conversations about "is dearborn under sharia law?", because we sat at the light looking at an adult novelty shop, a tattoo parlor named mary janes that had rastafarians painted on the walls, and diners touting meat sandwiches. there may have even been a topless bar. but - it was all clean, and was a far cry from what we had just driven through.
we made our way to michigan ave, and then down to clark. we were on our way to mexicantown, but even then, just a little north of it......thankful to be going in the day time on a sunday when most people are in church or sleeping it off. we were going to see a woman who had too many records to put in the car to bring to us......
the streets are narrow. they are one ways. if you squinted just a tiny bit you were sure you were in chicago, south end chicago. no driveways, houses on top of each other. 7 foot high fences around them, including the front yards. we stopped at the address we were given (our phone calls were not returned - we were winging it) and a little hispanic woman, probably in her late 50s early 60s holled from across the street - "you the record people? i'm on my way!!".
she had come out of one of these houses covered in dust, and hauling stuff from out of the house to a huge pile of debris sitting along the curb. she had on a yellow shirt, which i found out later was polysester, since we talked a lot about how all clothes from all years are the same, just with new colors and new patterns on them. she introuduced herself and took us up a flight of stairs to a back bedroom full of stuff.
oh yeah, there were records. at least a thousand of them. in boxes, on shelves, on a table. there was a window that was cracked open a little, but no other airflow. she explained the records were from all sorts of people, family, renters, djs. we started looking and realized we truly should have brought gloves and a mask.
i told carl i was bringing extra allergy pills in case there was a cat, but somehow i had blanked on what condition these things might have been in. and the lady who called us - she had no idea. as in, there are things in this world you do not touch and you do not handle or move - and she was just grabbing them and throwing them around. we had to stop her from probably sending us all to the hospital.
i say all because her husband would come "babysit" us, and then her cousin, and then she would return. one of them would stand in the doorway while we looked through records. stacked like pancakes. so many good tiles warped beyond repair - kept in piles in hot rooms, or stacks that were red and purple with mold, and we carefully and slowly moved them to the side to keep looking.
do you see - do you understand now - what i mean when i say i do this job for the love of music and for the love of helping others? who would do this just for money? oh yeah - i forgot - people like the shark who got those other records before us......
i seperated piles by what i thought we could use. mold, glenn miller, glenn cambell and tito puente went in the we don't need it piles. van halen, ac/dc, and booty bass went in the other. and while we sorted and checked condition, the story unfolded.
this woman had recently buried, if i remember correctly, 3 brothers, both parents, 3 cousins, and a niece and nephew. it had started with her youngest brother, who was only 45 at the time, and then like clockwork, she said, every 3 months another one of them died. she said it was like some weird horror story or tv show - every three months. and now she was the only one left. she had a daughter who wanted her to move out of the ghetto and come live in a suburb, but she said she was born and raised inthe ghetto, and would stay there.
in between discussing clothing styles and the lack of insurance her cousins had, she told me about how members of her church come to her for psychic readings. coming from the background i do - i had no reason whatsoever to question this. she told us that she could tell right away she could trust us - that her gut said we were good people, and that if her gut had said otherwise, esp when we met out front of her house - she would have told us to leave. we talked about gut instinct, and the importance of family and friends, and then she broke down. it was the first time she cried - talking about how her mom died in her arms, and that she saw the last look and she heard the last breath and suddently was so afraid for the end of her own life. about how fast life goes, and she cried.
i cannot stand next to woman, a human being, who is obviously in such pain, and not react. i reached over and grabbed her shoulder and squeezed it, and her arm came up and she grabbed ahold of my arm and held on to me while she cried for a minute or two. carl had his back to us. these are the hardest situations to be in - this is business - we need stock for the shop - but so so many times it comes from the situation i have described - people die and leave things behind. everyone of those records had memories attached to them.....every box in that room had memories attached to it. there were 8 track tapes, boxes of spools of yard, glass ware, who knows what else.
the shelves were heavy and leaning. the table had a broken leg. we tried to balance the records in ways that they would not cause anything to collapse or give way, and in that same balancing act i talked with our host and carl finished up looking and deciding on a price. she accepted our offer, and thanked us for being good people. i asked her if she had enough support from the people in her church - because i could tell she was in need of support. some good people to lean on.
the whole place was in disarray. boxes everywhere. she had several houses to clean to get ready to re-rent, and some of them were places her family had lived in. as carl took the boxes of records down the stairs, i saw 2 beautiful wrought iron chairs in the living room. they were painted white and blue. and before i could stop myself i said "my mom had those chairs - she left them to me when she passed....." and this woman said "those were my momma and papas chairs - take them - you were so kind to me today - take them - i know they will have a good home and i have so much more stuff to deal with........." and then she talked again about her mom, and she sobbed like a baby, and i hugged her and told her she had to let it out sometimes or it would eat her alive.
i am standing, in a derelict house, in a run down and poverty stricken area of detroit, and i have in my arms the maybe 60 year old woman whose records i've just gone through, and she is shaking like the world is ending. i know that fear - i know that pain......i can feel it, again, like when it was new to me. and then she tells me that time magazine is coming to interview her, because of her psychic abilities, because of how everyone in the hood comes to her for readings, and that is ia god given gift. i'm standing in the mix of voodoo - church going crystal ball reading witchcraft. carl comes up the stairs, looks at the chairs that are now near the doorway and can tell they are now ours, and says "wow, usually we ask out turtles and frogs and planters" and the lady says she has lots of those - she will dig them out and call us back.
as we get ready to leave, she invites us to a coming bbq, and tells about the great food they will have. she says she considers us friends now, and knows she will see us again. and we shake her hand and thank her and go on our way.
i think, now, that i have written all of that out - i understand why when i got home i was drained. i revisited some extremely raw emotions i have not let myself feel in a long time. it explains why last night, all night long, i had nightmares - horrific, hollywood movie style nightmares, that scared me so badly i actually tried to stay awake to avoid them. i knew the instant i fell back alseep i'd be back in the midst of them. i thought, through most of today, tha tthey were caused by the proximity of this woman and her experiences, or by the mold i know we breathed off those records, and to some extent i'm sure they were........but i see now that i let myself FEEL something i had not felt in a long time, and my brain had trouble processing all that all over again. only this time there was no lead up - it was just an immediate face to face with the loss that has so greatly changed my own life. having your mother gone - one of life's lowest points.
we drove back on lonyo, through metal scrap yards and filthy streets. i saw arabic ladies and their children playing ball - and thought about how to me this place seemed like hell but to someone who has come frm a country of constant death and bombing the calm and stable life must be a god send, and we slowly got back to the world we are used to. michigan ave seemed so peaceful and serene, and damn - when we got home i said to carl that i had no right to complain about a single thing ever - because compared to what we jsut experienced - we live in heaven.
after the nightmares, and trying to clear the sleep from my eyes, this morning the mail came, with the letter from ford land about the upcoming informational session next week - where they will tell us all about how they are going to build 75 foot tall parking decks out our front door.......and the anxiety and fear washed back over me. we made it through the store move, and now it is time to focus on our house move. we have to go - i cannot mentally or physically live across from 5 years of construction, from buildings that will block my view of the sky and vibrations that will cause my vertigo to go wild. it's time - time to go.
life is never a steady path, never an easy course to get on and follow through. in the midst of all the plans and hopes you have, and things you think you will do so easily - life happens. and you deal with the shit as it comes. just like losing my own mom. just like having to move the shop so unexpectedly. we had a night to spend with our friends, to remember why we have loved it here so much for 6 years, and now we have to go, hopefully not so far that we won't see them, hopefully not so far as to forget a wonderful cool evening in the end of summer with people we really love.
life is short. it's time to move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment