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Day laborers picking cotton near Clarksdale, Mississippi, November 1940: Marion Post Wolcott
Photos by Arnold Rothstein, Louise Rosskam and Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)
11 comments:
Tom,
Yes, as Keats asks, "who can avoid these chances". . . .
8.13
light coming into fog against invisible
ridge, red-tailed hawk calling in right
foreground, no sound of wave in channel
surface co-ordinates, events
are otherwise arbitrary
at time of arrival, relative
to velocity, from which
grey-white of fog against top of ridge,
circular green pine on tip of sandspit
I was born in Washington, D.C.
in 1941...
we had a grocery store a DGS a "momma-poppa" store
very much like the corner-grocery store in the photo... except that our store was in the middle of the block between F Street and G Street ... on 7 th N.E.
now the area is called "Capital Hill" and is very trendy and very expensive..
my grandparents had the store during the depression... most of the customers were 'black' who were not called "blacks" back then or what was called "poor white trash"
my grand parents had a "fail safe" credit system for their struggling customers..
a FAMILY name on a #2 brown paper bag with, written in pencil, a running list of what each family owed
and the cash-register PAPER receipts signed by the customer stored in
the bag...
"What's my tab?"
"$4.73"
"Can you carry me until the end of the month?"
"NOT AGAIN!"
every Christmas my GRANDmother threw out what bags were left
many relatives aunts and uncles cousins had similar grocery stores even one I remember over on 1/2 Street in S.E.
similarly run...
my grandmother was once robbed
... she chased the guy down the street with a butcher knife
Floyd, an 4 other's
seeing what was happening
left their porch steps chased the guy jumped on him got him down got the money back
LET THE GUY GO
the all went back to the store for a cold Nehi Grape or Coke soda...
the would-be robber was Mr. Dingus' older son
Mr. Dingus made his living selling apples and pencils down on Pennsylvania Avenue... about three blocks from the white house...
(true story)
Steve,
Events do indeed seem all too arbitrary... and yet not.
It's like Milton's Three Choices: Freedom, Fixt fate, Absolute Foreknowledge.
Picking the first one allows you to proceed as far as the nearest one armed bandit, picking the second enables you to understand that anyway you were always bound to lose your shirt, picking the third at least allows you the satisfaction of knowing you saw all this coming, long, long ago.
And yet...
'Yes, as Keats asks, "who can avoid these chances". . . .'
Well, I suppose a migrant labourer or a sharecropper in the 1930s wouldn't have been able to afford the Vegas weekend package deal, especially as Bugsy Siegel and his "friends" hadn't yet carved it out of the alkali and silicates of our sacred landforms.
Ed, (and by the way, your friends here would be greatly relieved if you would sign yourself in as Ed, it's so much friendlier than Anonymous), I did know that you came from Washington, and when, and those were factors in my image selection here.
The look and the light of those row houses also brings to mind the similar urban 'scapes of Baltimore, brought over recently into the collective image mind by The Wire.
An intelligible America, impoverished in that special American Urban Impoverished Way, our gift to the historical reduction of the human.
Shelter is a really big issue for us, here, now, as we are old (actually born a little before you, I regret to admit), not well, without jobs, and literally helpless, as our ancient domicile collapses around us.
So the plight of those miserable people in the shacks and migrant housing really strikes to the heart. Having things like a roof, plumbing, wiring, it's odd how askew your whole vision of the world becomes when you lack these things. And of course a great deal of the work that has been done in this country was done by people who were systematically deprived of those amenities, which an American is meant to think of as birthright.
And that must mean that if you dwell in that state of lack you are not a proper American.
Ah, I think perhaps I have just wandered as far as my point.
how in the hell did y'all know that IT was me?
I try my damn-dest to remain..cuss-woord-free, politically correct, and a good speller, to.
my dad's family goes wayyyyyyyyyyyyy back into
Bal'imore... East Bal'imore...
Isac and Dena had a chicken farm on the out-skirts ... I recall chickens duruing my UTE that were REALLY CHICKENS... real food
not like to day's "faux chickens"
going to a wedding next month cousin Rebecca Simon Jablon
(Simon being mater's family name that side goes back into Lower Manhattan... By the Waters of Manhattan and Harlem's HOA)
the Wedding & reception at the George Peabody Library...
regarding these pictures I am amazed and like-wise amazed at that they are color photos!
and that the color gets me into a Caravaggio frame of mind.
and
speaking of FDR..
well I could tell you about the time ....
I googled you and see that you were also born.
...before the Atomic Bomb..
which gets me back to FDR but more precisely Mr. Harry (but that's another (..)
someone who wanted to publish some poems of mine (Imagine t h a t)
asked for my bio to go along with the poems..
born Washington, D.C.
April 19, 1941
here Washington, D.C.
April 19, 2010
everything in-be:tween... a blur
i have 10,000 photos here
my grandmother gave me here box camera and when i was about 12 years 3 months 4 days 16 mins old she gave me one of those Kodak plastic black Brownie Hawkeyes...
used a 3 inch Or so wide paperish film on a spool
now I got me a camera that is about as big as a postage stamp (remember postage stamps? used to put them on letters. I once sent a letter to Humphrey Bogart 1952 AND he replied with a post-card picture of himself and a nice note... in his own hand!)
now? what to do. with. all. of. these. photographs. how to store, identify subjects/content/dates/ etcs?
Cid once told me
"Ed, after you're dead someone's going to have
fun going through all of your stuff."
I replied:
"yeah. and after I'm dead I'll be worth more than I am now."
HEY DIG THIS! REALLY..
http://www.capitolhillhistory.org/interviews/2004/hais_sidney.html
here what I just found Sid's grocery store was up the street from my parent's store
we were at 621 7 th Street
between F and G
at the time Sydney was the president of the DGS my dad was it s vice-president.
the market that they shopped at is still there The Florida Avenue Market
next to Galluedette College
I used to play in Stanton Park
etc.
OHHHH WWOOOOWW!
http://www.capitolhillhistory.org/interviews/2004/hais_sidney.html
Sydney's grocery was named Hais Market
my dad's grocery was Herb's market
both DGS es.
now DIG THIS Mr. Hais graduated Stuart Junior High in 1928
I GRADUATED STUART JUNIOR HIGH IN 1954! the year after Ike integrated the schools 1953
and the blacs-only shool tha Mr. Hais mention LUDLOW ELEMNTRY was on the corner of 7 th and G a half block from our store.
AND DIG THIS when Reb Jolson (Yolson)'s son ran away from his home he (Al Jolson) moved in with my
grandparents (and my greatgrandfather on Keefer Place
that's where my grandmother got to know Sophie Tucker, and others.
there was/is also a connection by them before my grandmother and father moved to D.C. in the 20's as my dad was born in B-more in 1916
etc
WOW!
Sydney Hais!
I remember Sydney when we went to visit him at Drum Point my dad bought a tract of land a lot there must have been late 50's Sydney and his wife moved there..sold lots.
Ed,
"...the color gets me into a Caravaggio frame of mind."
__
Yes, that rich "American Renaissance" Kodachrome colour, with no need for photoshopping or "enhancement", just the real deal.
The real New Deal.
paraphrasing
"you're never far
enough away from
where you once
were"
Robert Creeley
still today
similar domiciles
and traps of
poverty
but there are many
who everyday lend
a helping hand
a leg up
raise expectations
in the schools
push literacy
promote public
health(harder than
you think)
the Shulman grocery
was I think owned by Max Shulman, or his brother...
http://www.shorpy.com/node/119?size=_original
http://www.shorpy.com/node/117?size=_original
the posters? Mussolini, Hitler and Yamamoto...
OHHHH now I remember Buddy Shulman owned the store.. one of my mother's cousins... about a 3 rd cousin... could have been a "cousin"
originally the Shulman's from a shtetl in either Poland or Russia!
they lived like we did... over the store
check this photo out:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5388?size=_original
I grew up 6 blooks from Union Station
played baseball on this field prior to about 1951.. I don't remember the chain-link fence.
we used to "swim" in that fountain.. Columbus Fountain
that street in front of Union Station was until a wider one was built in Moscow was the widest street in the entire world!
long about 1951 or so a run-away-train crashed through and landed inside the terminal on top of the news-stand in the concourse... the lady who was operating the stand went to the bathroom just minuets before the wreck
I betcha that there are lots of photos 'out there' it was front page on The Daily News, The Times Herald and The Washington post
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/GG1/prr4876-crash.jpg
here is the story:
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/GG1/prr4876-crash.shtml
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