Renaissance Man - Part 1

Scene 05 _ Birdseye View of Drullins

Scene 05 Rev H

         Hi. Jonathan here. While Torey ponders where to buy soccer cleats, I'm going to interrupt to tell you about where he lives.
         Have you ever visited an inner-city neighborhood where poor folks live? Probably not. No reason, unless you know someone and have to go.
         The big cities of northeastern US boast some famous chic neighborhoods. Places like Beacon Hill in Boston or the Rose Hill neighborhood in Manhattan. You might even consider Mt Adams in Cincinnati or Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. They may be getting old and showing some cracks, but they are definitely not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about places like the Drullins neighborhood of Allerford.
         A city block is an area between four major streets. The block will usually be one-tenth of a mile on a side. The major streets are wide, run for miles, and carry a lot of traffic. Within a block will be two narrow residential streets with about 30 houses on each side of each street. Counting one side of two of the major streets means a city block will contain 180 homes. You better like your neighbor. The problem is, most don't.
         Houses are small, and the walls between them are just one course of bricks. It's easy to hear your neighbor snoring, fighting, and doing other things. Each house is about twenty-four feet wide. On the first floor is a living room, dining room, and kitchen. A stairway to the second floor takes up part of the living room. The second floor has a master bedroom in front, the only bathroom, and two small bedrooms to the back. The hallway and stairwell take up much of second-floor space.
         The single room basement, with stone walls and a ceiling of exposed rafters, holds a furnace and a water heater. At the front is a space close to a single small window where a furnace oil tank sits. The furnace heats the house through a hot water system circulating hot water through radiators in each room. These houses began their life with the basement home to a coal furnace and a coal bin. Replacing coal with oil, eliminating coal delivery, shoveling coal and ashes, is about the only change to these houses in the last hundred years.
         Living in Drullins presents some depressing lifestyle features. But people adapt because they have to; they know nothing different.
         There are very few cars here. There is no safe place to park. So, using an auto you can't park at home to get to and from a job with no parking space makes no sense. In winter, when a big snow storm hits, these small residential streets are the last to be cleared, if at all. Cars are buried under snow, then buried even deeper by the snow plow when it finally gets there. There is no place to put cars or snow.
         Not owning cars and using public transportation to move about the city is the most common solution. Children become comfortable with public transportation at an early age and use buses, streetcars, and the subway without a thought. Having streetcar "tokens" in your pocket is as natural as pocket change. Using tokens and transfers makes it easy to get almost everywhere.
         Each house has no front yard, and a postage stamp size backyard, bounded by an ironwork fence about four feet high. Some yards have been finished with concrete, paving stones, or bricks. But most are a patch of absolutely dead soil about four by eight feet. A few folks try unsuccessfully to grow some flowers or vegetables. Come mid-June, the little patch of dirt has returned to weeds – half natural, half planted. The natural ones always seem to do better. Here and there a potted plant does well. An alley separating these yards is the width of a sidewalk – not wide enough for a garbage truck.
         Trash and garbage are different. Trash, household waste, is picked up once a week, by a truck from the street in front of the houses. Garbage, which is food waste, is picked up, maybe twice a week, at the back of the houses, manually. A strong, husky man, always black, with a large galvanized steel trash can goes through the alley dumping garbage from small five-gallon cans (with lids) sitting in each yard. The lids clang hitting the ground as he removes and drops them. These cans remain open until the owner replaces the lid sometime later. The man can pick up garbage from four to six houses at a time. Then, hoisting the big can onto his back, he carries the garbage back to the main street to a waiting truck. Imagine the smell in that alley on a garbage collection day in August. Flies abound.
         Garbage collection has an important symbolism here. That brute of a man, always black, sweating under fifty to sixty pounds of garbage, all day, every day, through heat of summer and snow of winter; proves to the citizens of Drullins they are not the very bottom layer of society. While never spoken, it is clearly understood by all and is the only proof they have. They cling to it desperately.
         In Drullins, walking along any street lets you separate Haves from Have-Nots. Well-to-do families have a window air conditioner sticking out the front bedroom window.
         Lawn furniture is plastic chairs sitting on the front sidewalk beside the stoop. On hot summer evenings, they put the TV on the windowsill facing out and watch it from outside sitting in their plastic lawn chairs. Folks often get together and share a couple beers. If it's a gathering of guys, a baseball game will be on TV. If wives are involved, it will be a sitcom.
         Like all big city neighborhoods, Drullins has its institutions: the corner store and the neighborhood bar.
         The corner store in our story is Kopischke's Market at Archer Boulevard and Fletcher Avenue. Mr. and Mrs. Kopischke have owned and operated the store forever and live in the apartment above. Kopischke’s Market, like most small neighborhood stores, carries a little of everything and not much of anything. Except in this case, the store holds a meat section with a reputation for excellence that reaches far beyond the neighborhood. Friedrich Kopischke learned the trade and worked his early years as a Butcher. He prides himself on his meat and on his skill as a Butcher.
         The front sidewalk is the hangout for the neighborhood kids. Mr. Kopischke tolerates it because the kids buy plenty of soda and junk snacks. The neighbors don't like it, but if Kopischke were to crack down, he would lose the revenue and certainly would be vandalized. The kids hang around, like flies on garbage, constantly spitting and flicking cigarette butts, while they plan their next great adventure which will never happen or talk about the beautiful girl in their class they will never date. Sometimes they talk about the future where they will be rich and famous, without a clue how to make it happen.
         Duffy's Tavern is the neighborhood bar. Situated at Archer Boulevard and Commerce Avenue, it is one bus stop away from Kopischke's Market. The owner, Duffy, is never there. The bartender, Archie, pours drinks and presides over the social aspects. The bar is closed from 2 AM to 6 AM as required by law. Otherwise, it is open for the morning pick-me-up before boarding the bus, the afternoon belt for workers making their way home, and for the miserable drowning their sorrows through the evening.
         There are many weekend drunks in Drullins. Coming home from work on Friday, they get off the bus at Duffy's and stop in for one or two drinks. That is the start to the weekend. They go home, where the drinking continues. They fight with their wives and yell at their kids. In winter, some of it can be heard through the walls. In summer, with the windows open, all of it is heard, like it or not. This goes on until Sunday when they sober up in time for work on Monday morning.
         Drullins is Torey's world. Except for what he sees on TV and reads in books, he knows nothing else. Somehow, he knows there must be something better. But today he is trying to figure out where to buy soccer cleats.

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Word Count: 1,390
Readability Consensus (based on 8 readability formulas)
         Grade Level: 7
         Reading Level: fairly easy to read.
         Reader's Age: 11-13 yrs. old (Six and Seventh graders)