Essays

Ahh- West End

Ahh – West End!

 

            Until I was in second grade we lived in an area of the city called West End. A fading grand dame that had been the first Atlanta suburb, many of Atlanta’s historical elite once claimed homes there. Atlanta Constitution Newspaper editor Clark Howell, his son and successor Captain Even Howell, and the author Joel Chandler Harris both had elegant mansions there in the early 1900s. Even more amazing, after becoming an adult and getting into genealogy research I would discover they were all distant relatives! West End’s decline as a posh suburb had begun by the 1950s and 60s, but it was still a solid middle-working-class neighborhood. Schools and churches anchored the residents even as the shops closed down. It was still nice a place to raise a family and most folks thought it was idyllic, even if it was only because we didn’t know any better. Perhaps the people who live there now also think that, but in the 1950s it was a different place, a different time, and a different world. Playing with sticks and dirt, chinaberries and roly-polies, tasting the inside of tiny acorns because it looked like cheese, trying to roller skate on sidewalks of octagonal cement pavers that were cracked and lumpy with tree roots, making up stories and games on the porch when it rained; such was the stuff of a magical and insulated childhood.

            My Aunt Lucille, Uncle Dorsey, and cousin Anne lived directly across the street from us. My Granddaddy and MaMa (Mama was my maternal grandmother, we called her that because our own Mama called her that!) lived in the upstairs of our two story house. There was always someone to dote on me, being the first baby in the family in eight years. I was just as at home across the street or upstairs as I was anywhere. My mother worked on and off I was a baby but she never lacked for babysitters, and I never lacked for attention.

            We lived in a two story wood clapboard house with a porch across the front, in the first block of There was flowery linoleum on the floors and huge cabbage rose patterned wallpaper on the walls. I slept in a bedroom with my brothers and my sister slept on a sofa bed in the living room. Sandra and Mike tell a story about how when I was much younger and still sleeping in a crib, they would stand me up and throw pillows at me to knock me down! I’m certain they never let on to Mama and Daddy about that. They also told about how they would have to babysit me all the time while Mama and Daddy went out partying to the American Legion Post just around the corner. No telling what all they did to me – we laugh about it and say that’s what’s wrong me!  There was a kitchen at the back of the house and a back porch where the wringer washing machine stood. My mama, or sometimes a maid (more later about the “help”) would stand at the ironing board and watch soap operas on the black and white television, dampening the clothes with a cork sprinkler top stuck in a Pepsi bottle full of water.  It seems like I had a black-and-white-photo childhood at that house.

The yard was dirt. I loved playing in that dirt! After a rain, there was a huge jigsaw effect in the drying mud. I was forever trying to pick up pieces of the dried, cracked mud, but alas, it would always crumble. Years later, after I was grown, Mr. Lackey, the man who pretended to buy my mudpies would say, “I’ll always remember Janet as a little bitty thing, trying to sell me mudpies from the yard.”

I don’t remember it ever being especially hot or cold, just dry or wet. The porch was my haven in the rain. Huge trees shaded our part of the street and storms would cause them to shudder and crack, showering down leaves, acorns, twigs, and occasionally a good-sized branch. One time, in a fierce storm, the electricity went out. There was no such thing as underground utilities back then. Uncle Dorsey took me in his car down to the corner of Lee and Gordon Streets where there was a florist shop to get candles. There was talk of a tornado, but at the time I didn’t know what that was. I just remember being afraid.

Across from us a dirt alley ran off of our street. Everyone I knew referred to the alley as n—-town. I didn’t know anyone who lived down there, but every so often my daddy would call out to a black man walking in front of our house towards the alley. “Hey Grady!” He’d holler. Grady would holler back some pleasantry but I don’t recall what he said.  At that age I never thought twice about hearing black people called n—-, and I did it too. But that would change.

Behind our house, our back yard abutted the yard of a man named Mr. Smith who had live chickens. At Easter time he would call me back to look in his chicken house, where I was delighted and awe-struck to see fluffy, peeping, baby chicks running around the dirt floor. The real enchantment came because these weren’t ordinary chicks – they were a rainbow of colors! Blue, pink, lavender, orange, green and yellow! How did he do that? I still can’t figure that out. He also had a bar across two posts where he would hang up chickens after their heads were cut off, letting the blood drain onto the dirt. It didn’t seem especially grotesque to me at the time, just a fact of life. In my child’s mind, I did not foresee the fate of those darling little fluffballs.

Mr. Smith’s house faced on Evans Street, the nearest corner to our house on Oglethorpe. Two small blocks north on Evans it dead-ended into Gordon Street, the commercial heart of West End. There were no shopping malls in those days. I suppose you could say the parade of stores on little community thoroughfares around the city were the precursors of today’s strip malls.

The reigning grand dame store in West End was Sears Roebuck & Company. At the intersection of Gordon and Ashby Streets, it was every kid’s dream, and probably some grownups’ dreams too. The first thing that hit you when you walked in was the smell. Popcorn! There was an old fashioned candy counter in the middle of the first floor. Yes, this was a two story building and it had the first escalators I ever rode. You could get popcorn and candy by the bag. There was nothing like those double dipped chocolate covered peanuts or the jelly orange wedges.. In the back was the toy, lawn, garden, and automotive departments. That part of the store always smelled like rubber. Upstairs was the furniture, sewing machines, appliances, and the customer service where we would go to pay the lay-a-way or credit bill. Even after moving away from West End in 1961 we’d often go back to the Sears store.

    Gordon Street in West End and the Sears store on Gordon Street where fairies danced in the rain!

My favorite memory of Sears was not the candy, the toys, or the lay-a-way clothing. It wasn’t even actually inside the store. It happened in the parking lot. It is amazing how just a few brief seconds in time can be etched in a child’s mind forever just like a stone carving. I was sitting in the car with my Aunt Lucille. We were waiting while someone had gone into the store for something. I don’t remember if it was my mama and daddy, or maybe Uncle Dorsey, but I do know it was just me in the car with her, and it was pouring down rain. Something about rain seals memories in my mind like a coat of resin. The porch, the mudpies, the tornado, and the magic that happened in the Sears parking lot.

Anyway, I was looking out the rolled up car window at the rain hitting the puddles of the asphalt parking lot.

            “Do you see them?” asked Aunt Lucille.

            “See what?”

            “The fairies!” she said.

            “Fairies? I don’t see any fairies!”

            “Look real hard, right where the rain hits the ground. When it rains this hard, the fairies come out to dance.” she said.

             I did look hard, and sure enough, in my child’s mind and eye, there were the fairies! Dancing, leaping, twirling in their silvery ballerina-like dresses! To this day I would swear I saw them. Now, I love to have my granddaughters look for the fairies in the rain. Occasionally they tell me they see them too! Oh, how I pray they will recall a childhood as magical as I do.

My grandmother MaMa would walk up to Gordon Street pulling her wire grocery cart. It wasn’t the kind of cart stores have these days – it had two wheels and was taller than it was wide. I would walk with her up the two short blocks where we would turn left and go down a little ways to the Colonial Grocery Store where the baggers would put the brown paper bags of groceries in her wire cart. Then we’d cross the street and head back down a ways to a little produce stand squeezed between some larger stores. I was always intrigued because they had live chickens there, but I never connected them with our neighbor Mr. Smith.. Mama would scoop up shelled butter beans or stuff a mess of turnip greens in a paper sack then we’d head back home with the wire buggy full.

Sometimes I would go to Woolworth’s with my sister, brother, or cousin. We would buy a goldfish for a dime and the salespeople would put it in a folding white cardboard box (that looked like what I now know is a Chinese food take-out container.) By the time we walked the two blocks home the water had all leaked out and the fish was dead. I probably spent $20 buying dead goldfish! Sometimes I’d go with my Mama to the Gold Bond stamp redemption store, on Ashby Street across from Sears. I still have the card table set my mother got with her Gold Bond stamps. And many an Easter Dress was bought in the nearby Robert Hall clothing store.

 Some other places I remember in West End were near the intersection of Lee and Gordon Streets. Lunsford’s drugstore was one I will never forget. I don’t know what that awful medicinal odor was, but it smelled horrible to me. Maybe cod liver oil?  Across from there was Stalling’s Florist and Jackson’s Music store. I loved to look at pretty flowers and shiny instruments in their windows. But best of all was the Krsipy Kreme donut store on the other corner. It had a big window running the length of the building on the Lee Street side where you could stand on the sidewalk and watch donuts go down the conveyor and under the glaze sprayer. After the sickening cod liver oil smell of the drugstore the warm sweet scent of donuts was heavenly. To this day, they still display a Hot Donuts Now sign when fresh ones are coming off the line, even though the store moved down the street. There is still nothing like a melt-in-your-mouth hot Krispy Krème donut.

Just down from there, on the same side of Lee Street, was a white painted brick house that was Dr. Redd’s office. Dr. Redd was the local pediatrician. It’s funny how places in our memory have distinctive smells, and this was true of Dr. Redd’s office too. I will never forget that awful alcohol smell. I must have been about five years old when I got terribly sick. My mama had to take me up to Dr. Redd’s every day for about a week to get a shot. The nurse would get those glass and metal syringes out of a sterilizer and attach the needles. I remember asking the nurse not to give the shot in the same place! I learned from my Mama later that I had scarlet fever and the shots were daily doses of penicillin. There was no such thing back then as long-acting antibiotics; you had to get a fresh dose every day.

Another place we frequented was the little grocery on the corner of Lee and Oglethorpe, called Bishop’s. I suppose it was like what we call convenience stores today. I could walk up there by myself because I didn’t have to cross busy Lee Street. I would buy a sucker or bubblegum or some other little piece of candy. We didn’t buy groceries there, it was just for if we needed some little something.  Those small mom and pop stores were okay, but Sears remained the queen, anchoring the commercial district like a rich but kind great-aunt.

This West End is no more. Streets have closed, a mall replaced the little shops, and apartments were built to replace the shabby clapboard houses. The ancient trees are gone. Alleys have been paved into new streets. It’s not even called “West End” anymore. It is now officially known as “THE West End.” Just as well, because my West End does not exist, except in my memories and those of untold numbers of other children who grew up there. As Thomas Wolfe said,

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood,…to singing just for singing’s sake…away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Something about September 

There was a time when I did not think of September as sad. In fact, I looked forward to it. September meant returning to school. As a kid, I loved school. It meant being with friends, having things to do and places to go. It meant the weather would be cooling off, and in those days of no air conditioning, at home or school, that was a good thing. It meant an annual trip to the mountains to see the leaves in their splendor and glory. It meant Halloween was just weeks away, and an unlimited bounty of candy would be mine to devour.

There were no leaf blowers in those days.  Curses on those loud horrid-sounding machines! The scritch-scratching of raking leafs was made worthwhile because we could jump into the piles as a reward. Then, like a cherry on top, we were allowed to burn the piles. What could be more pungent-pleasant than the scent of fall leaves burning? And, if we very, very, fortunate, and our mommas and daddies were in a good mood, we might even get to roast marshmallows on straightened-out wire coat hangers.  Sitting at night, watching the orange embers fly away into the darkened sky like some kind of strange fall lighnin’ bug born of the flames, was truly a child’s purest fancy.

Then when I’d outgrown trick-or-treating and jumping into piles of leaves and raking leaves was an odious chore, I still did not mind September. It meant high school football games! The delicious excitement of hoping for a date to the game, then ending up going with a bunch of girlfriends and having more fun anyway. September meant pep rallies and snake dances, buying programs and spirit ribbons. Those were the days of trying different routes from one class to another, sometimes a whole floor up or down from the shortest, quickest path, just for a glimpse of him, whoever he happened to be that week. Passing notes with girlfriends in class, faking hall passes to get out of class, claiming cramps in order miss PE. Nothing really bad, just basic teenager mischief.

September also meant finally getting to wear my new school clothes. The standard was a pleated plaid skirt, sweater in a coordinating color, knee socks the same color as the sweater, and saddle oxfords or penny loafers. I can remember exactly the combinations I had.  The navy and green Wexford plaid with navy sweater and socks was a favorite since blue was one of our school colors.  The cream, brown, and rust Burberry with brown sweater and socks was a bit different because the skirt was straight instead of pleated.  The yellow and gray Cologne plaid with yellow socks and sweater made do for the gold and white colors of Georgia Tech, the hometown college team. The black and white Hathaway Glen plaid with black sweater and socks, was the most adorable with the black and white saddle oxfords, but the red tartan plaid with a red sweater and socks was cute with the saddle oxfords too and was perfect around Christmas time. In early September, it would be cool enough in the mornings for these outfits, but by afternoon in our three story 1920s era brick high-school building with no air conditioning, it was entirely too warm. No matter, teen aged girls will suffer heat or cold in order to look “cute.”

There was not much to look forward to that September of 1970. Suddenly, high school was over and I had no idea what was coming, having skipped my senior year by attending summer school and being handed my high school diploma in the school office with a handful of other students. I had no frame of reference for what September would be like without school. As it turned out, I ended up going to a local college, living at home, and working part time. I kept a tow-hold in the high school crowd, but it was not the same. As the college quarters droned on, with no break in the summer, September lost its significance as a positive experience for me.

Somewhere in the course of getting married, working, and raising children, September just became a symbol of the passing years. Even after I became a school teacher it held no special appeal. Gone were the carefree days of summer, sleeping in, days by the pool, and going on vacation. Eventually it became more than a symbol of passing years, it became a symbol of sadness. Children left home for college, signifying a monumental change in my role as a parent. A few years later, my health declined and I was no longer teaching. September was just a reminder of what should have been and was now a hollow emptiness.

September, the beginning of the end of the year. Getting older, the year as a metaphor of life, entering the autumn of numbered days. The full richness of summer that I love so much, time spent with family and friends. The pool, the beach, the warmth of sun on my back, riding with the top down. Warm nights outside, lightnin’ bugs and butterflies, all topped up with the bliss of air-conditioning.

There is just something about September. Those first few leaves that fall in the pool, the different slant of the sun’s rays, the shifting shapes of the shadows all announce the coming of the end. The end of the year, and possibly the end of life. Yes, there is something about September. I see it. I feel it in my bones and in my heart. It is, and I am, sad.

j. chapman

September 2016