From these anecdeotes, the question remains, what would have happened if the colonists learned from the indigenous how to plant the three sisters rather than showing them how to write treaties? What would have happened if the slaves would have remained on the land to show white city folks how to farm rather than joining those white people in the segregated factory conditions? And what if at 13, I would have suggested, “Hey, let’s go climb some trees or fish rather than trying that first joint?”
I realize questions like that can be futile, for the past still rests somewhere in the grand scheme, but those questions are still not asked in vain, for they raise the point, how does any culture, country or person form a character. For me, all I can do is realize it is my story and hopefully from tonight, other stories can help answer these questions, because they aren’t pointless. Their meaning is found in each country person who comes to the city to start a farm, and each city person who comes to a farmer’s market or installs a farm technique in their house to save energy and help the environment. In a strange way, we are reconciling those past mistakes that have hurt societies so much. In a way, each time you plant anything in the city, you are vindicating those oppressed indigenous people, those disenfranchised blacks, and those confused thirteen year olds.
For me, I just feel extreme ease as I sit here, on my back porch, writing this story, looking at my garden, thinking about the potluck I’m going to later, and knowing that a whole city buzzes around me. I feel ease in knowing that these words I write down were not born out of my own self importance, or will only be available to those qualified enough to read it. But that they are going right back into that great Philadelphia story telling tradition from which they were born. And even as I sit here, retelling story after story of my childhood, or my experiences in the city, I still can’t really determine how each chapter connects, how I got from the conventional confines of suburbia to the experiment in insanity that is sustainable city living. And as insane as it may seem at times, as hard it is to get land from the RDA or hide from L&I my compost pile in the backyard, I’m happy to be a little crazy. For in this craziness is where I find my garden, and in this garden is where I find the peace of mind that everything I need is not waiting for me in some far off ideal of adventure and desire, but that it’s growing right here.
-Nic Esposito
See,
My father is this South Philly mystery,
And in order to understand me
You must know him.
He wears Fila sweat pants everywhere he goes
He knows everyone everywhere that we go
Talks with his hands
And lives six blocks from where he grew up.
But, there is a difference between him
And his comrades
He has enough.
It is suffice to say this detail
Makes for a spirit
That is alive.
As a child I sensed a longing in his heart
One that affectionately remembers
The days of stick ball in the yard
I learned after awhile:
Every park has a story to Dad:
Every storefront a name, every block an old friend
Everywhere in South Philly holds a place in his heart
For family, for the past, for what is now gone.
He lovingly allows me to enter his South Philly;
a place from our past.
III
Then,
Somewhere along the line
Through the years,
His stories became mine.
His past
Entangled me.
The stories of my great-grandpa
Passed down to me
The stories of my dad are
Me.
My story goes back to the neighbors on my block
Who have there for over
Sixty, seventy, eighty years now.
They’re are
Sweethearts still together
96-year-old mothers
and 63-year-old daughters
living across the street from one another.
Hell, I live across the street from my mother!
Nothing has changed.
Last week I read in the South Philly Review (you know what the Review is, right?)
Called The Gentle Deception
A short, opinion piece.
I’m ebarressed I actually read the Review
But, sometimes it does have good news,
And for laugh I skim the social scence and classic Italian recipes.
The article went on to describe a time from my dad’s era when:
“In South Philadelphia, the world was all about neighborhoods.
You found a house you liked in a neighborhood that was safe
And you settled there for the next 40 or 50 years.
All of life was contained in those communities.
The merchants knew you by name,
So did the local pastor.
The policeman directing traffic in front of the nearby school was your friend
Friends were friends for life
Love was gained and sometimes lost
Within just a few blocks of your home.”
Still,
I wanted to escape South Philly so many times
I’d run around the world
But return to find myself still here
I’d run towards the edges on all sides
But blocked by a bubble
I’d always seem to bounce back inside.
Some days I’d wait
Sit,
In a state of a of alienate
Outside the bubble
Still chocked by the air within.
Some search for a way out
Thank god I found a drafty back door.
-Jaime Hunter
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