Donkeyland, a Side Street Saga, 1960s
Grandpa's House [The Old House on Cayuga Street]
The house needed painting
Sun-blistered and flaking
Grandpa started to have us
Boys-start
Doing some scraping-
While he, pealed off the ole
Paint, and started painting...
Just a humble wooden house
With several rooms, but
Strong enough to keep the
Winds and winter snows out!
How he loved that ole house!...
An' his well-kept yard, which
Contained lilac bushes, and
Big shade trees; where birds
And squirrels lived-season
To season, scattered on...
Branches-they looked like
Play things
(back in the 50s)
#807 8/18/05
1
Something Had Ended
(Part of: Donkeyland, a Side street Saga)
The old man came back to Donkeyland as, one evening he was coming home from work, he had got thinking: as a boy, growing up in the neighborhood was a trip, a great adventure. He tightly held his hands onto the steering wheel of the car, excited he could scarcely speak as he drove down Cayuga Street. His old mouth twitched nervously.
What a life the old man had led since he left the neighborhood, in 1968, it was now 2000, and thirty-two years had passed. He had been around the world.
He knew, the day he left his neighborhood, Donkeyland would disappear once and for all, and it had disappeared once on that train, after closing his eyes and leaning back in the car seat of the train-his eyes had stayed that way for a long while and when he opened them, Donkeyland, and the whole of Minnesota, and entire Midwest had disappeared. When he woke up and stimulate himself-he knew his life there had become but a setting, a backdrop, and the background on which to spread the dreams of his manhood.
He began to think of the time, long ago when he was a young fellow living in the neighborhood, how on such days he'd spend his time wandering about. He was thinking how it affected his whole life, and how a spirit of protest awoke in him, saying: '...that's what I was, what about it, eh? What about it all? I was not the worse of the lot, perhaps not the better part either. Not always up to devilment, but not always up to good. I told them all, you'll see...oh, not out loud."
He was in a sad distracted mood and was affected by the nostalgia of the moment. Remembering how it was.
Evens was different than most of the boys-he knew that, not in that he would stand about, listening and occasionally when addressed, saying a few words-but different in that he always had the power to be a part of and yet distinctly apart from the life about him.
In the late evenings his grandfather would sit in the sofa chair, or old sofa couch on the porch and smoke a pipe, silent as he always was at that hour, look out the screened-in-windows, talk to himself, he had a great vigor. Evens could see him at different times as he roamed the streets with the neighborhood boys-see him pacing the porch in the summer evenings.
More often than not he dismissed everything from his mind-how he did it he never knew. Perhaps he couldn't hate anything, and not being able to understand so many things, he just forgets them; his grandfather being one of those forgetful things, whose nature was always so belligerent towards him-on the whole he was victorious though, so he felt. As often he felt too, the talk of the neighborhood seldom interested him, and he'd slip away. Go up into his room with his thoughts, being alone, write his poetry. As he got older drink him self drunk. He felt it was good to be drunk in those days. If anything it taught him something in his later years-he could now think straight. He wanted to learn things, you see, things he never could understand, that's why he had to leave the neighborhood, that's why he did it.
This is Evens' story. It will, however be necessary to talk a little on his neighborhood so that you will get into the spirit of it: into reading the other sketches pertaining to Donkeyland that is, and on Evens himself.
In the old days Cayuga Street was a notorious neighborhood-known as 'Donkeyland,' by the St. Paul Minnesota Police Department. Whomever lived within its boundaries, were aware of the gripping sounds of the Structural Steel Company (where most of the neighborhood kids worked at one time or another, once they hit adulthood), and the Railroad behind it-with its squealing steel on steel, and whistle blowing, and the screeching of cars that raced up and down Cayuga Street, as if it was a drag-strip. The fires going on in the empty lot-called Indians Hill, and the drunken behavior of the boys. All in all it was a constant noisy active neighborhood, with its share of peculiar happenings.
Then one year, there were no more steel items, like beams and so forth produced; the steel workers became laid off, and the yard was stacked with idle steal items. And in due time, all the steel that had been left, was carried away. The big mill had all its machinery then taken out soon after; removed, along with what belts, and tables, pallets, and paints, iron and lumber that were piled here and there. Everything that made a steel mill a steel mill was gone.
Ten-years later there was nothing left, the houses on Cayuga Street all gone, the railroad that had made all those weird noises, stood deserted, as did the empty lot, and now everything that was something at one time, was covered with plain old dirt. A highway was over the head of Cayuga Street- where Mississippi Street crosses it, north and south.
"There's our old neighborhood," Chick Evens said, driving up and down Cayuga Street, talking to himself. "There it is," he said (in reflection and dismay). "I can remember when we played softball over in that there field, drank so much, we couldn't walk straight, and on that there hill beyond the field we had a number of fights-Indian's Hill, right there...right where I'm pointing," said Chick Evens to a ghost, as he looked at and then point to what would soon be a parking lot, with no cars, just a black asphalt turnaround.
His ghost, had been left to nurture the old spirits left in Donkeyland, the old Gang, the voice of his mind told him-how noble.
"It seems more like a castle in ruins now; that is all there is," Chick Evens mumbled out loud. Then he drove down Jackson Street, alongside Oakland Cemetery his eyes heavy likened to a slab of driftwood (it was the summer of 2000, and something had ended, he had not been back to his old neighborhood in thirty-two years: '...what a life his this old neighborhood and led,' he told himself, 'it has created a legacy...').
2
Big Ace
(Part of: Donkeyland, a Side Street Saga)
Big Ace and Dan
If you have lived in cities, in this case let's say St. Paul, Minnesota, in the early '60s, and gone out to Como Park, you have seen or could have seen, in those small cages with those iron bars, sitting in a corner, a huge and grotesque ape. Strong, large, ugly and hairy, skin droopy faced ape. A true monster, if it was walking about freely. In its fullness, there was an ugly common perverted beauty in this ape.
When children seen it, they stepped back, griped their father's hand, freighted and fascinated at the same time. The father in turn, would put on an air of repugnance, pert near a show-for various reasons, and the wife, or even single women in general-I might add, more often than not, seemed to be comparing the ape with... you got it, their mates.
In any case, had you lived in my neighborhood in the earlier years of my life, a citizen of Cayuga Street, called 'Donkeyland,' by the local police, there would be no vagueness to look upon, in comparison to the ape in the cage. It was likened to Ace, Big Ace. He was also, often called, Big Bopper, and we can add to that, his real name, his true name, Jerry S.
Sitting with the guys in the neighborhood on a hot summer's day, on the church steps that is, after a long weekend drinking with his buddies, he was a sight for sour eyes.
Yes indeed, as the ape sat in his corner, the beast in the neighborhood sobered up, sitting in his corner-; there was a similarity, and let's add an 's' to that.
Big Ace, never having a job for the better part of his life, was tall and the ugliest thing in the neighborhood, no teeth, sunken in cheeks; his bulk, immense, his neck thick, his arms long. He was not dirty, but everything about him was uncommon to the eye. He was for the most part, taken care of by his family until they passed on, in his forties or fifties. There was something sensitive, simple and even kind about him, strong as an ox and just as dumb, six-foot-six, two-hundred and twenty pounds, if not more at different periods of his life; a best friend to many of us in the neighborhood, during different stages of our formative years.
He bought us all our liquor; he was ten-years older than us. And in spite of his debasement-not working at all, he was still proud of his ability to offer us younger folks a service: booze; buying booze for us with our money, which he drank his sum, and then some.
A few times, when a few older guys got to be twenty-one, the booze buying age, and we didn't need Big Ace all the time, and he was told to put in his share of money in buying the booze he'd drink, he'd get mad, say, "I'll have nothing to do with you-all."
Up along Jackson Street, in the evening he'd go find old friends he once had-his own age, and drink with them or to the saloon and trouble the people there for a drink. And after drinking unbelievable quantities of beer, stagger off home to his mother and father's house, where he lived until they passed on.
Big Ace was not a man of courage, or a coward. A thing had happened to him, which made him leave the neighborhood for a long while, abandon the neighborhood, but most everyone then was of drinking age. We all kind of felt he might hate women, or fear them. He didn't call them "Bitches," but he avoided them. For a long while no attention was paid to this trait of his. And he thus found a girlfriend, or one he thought liked him. But someone else like Mary as much who thought the same thing, instinctively the man felt in him a growing resentment of not only the girl but the other man, as a result, he had the courage to resent, and one night when the other man, Dan, walked through the streets to Mary's apartment, Big Ace was there, but so was the neighborhood gang. Dan, known as Crazy Dan, had an instinct to pay Mary homage that night, and Big Ace was with her, or at least physically, surely not mentally. And Mr. Eye was there, the in-between man.
Everyone laughed unpleasantly at the situation, between Mary and Big Ace and Crazy Dan, both men about ready to fight one another over her, but Dan of course being the weaker of the two. The woman, Mary was somewhat tall, not real slender, blue eyes and dirt-yellowish hair-more plainly looking than anything else. Dan and Big Ace both chased the woman with a love as absorbing as a camel in heat-apparently she liked the attention or power, she allowed it, foolishly. Dan was a little fat man, he ran home got his shot gun and was going to shoot Big Ace.
In all of the Cayuga Street Neighborhood, there are better people to tell this end part of the story than I, ugly as it gets, and I have never told this story until now, Mr. Eye, who in fact, had nothing to do with the fight or Mary, I mean he was, or had not been a suitor, got in the middle of all this, walked about under their heated arguments, trying to calm them both down, and got shot with that shotgun. God forbid, he died.
That evening Dan tried to escape, get out of Minnesota. Down the highway he went. It was then the police picked him up.
I met Dan years later, after he got out of prison. He was working at a park, said to me - after I spotted him - "Please don't hate me, or tell anyone where I work."
The man looked hideous, shapeless, he even had his face changed somewhat, yet I notice him, and he had noticed I had: leering face, staring about as if he was consumed with my curiosity, as if he wanted me to guess, and I guessed right. Something in his eyes, his staring eyes told him that I had nothing to say about him bad, and he was right.
Grandpa's House [The Old House on Cayuga Street]
The house needed painting
Sun-blistered and flaking
Grandpa started to have us
Boys-start
Doing some scraping-
While he, pealed off the ole
Paint, and started painting...
Just a humble wooden house
With several rooms, but
Strong enough to keep the
Winds and winter snows out!
How he loved that ole house!...
An' his well-kept yard, which
Contained lilac bushes, and
Big shade trees; where birds
And squirrels lived-season
To season, scattered on...
Branches-they looked like
Play things
(back in the 50s)
#807 8/18/05
1
Something Had Ended
(Part of: Donkeyland, a Side street Saga)
The old man came back to Donkeyland as, one evening he was coming home from work, he had got thinking: as a boy, growing up in the neighborhood was a trip, a great adventure. He tightly held his hands onto the steering wheel of the car, excited he could scarcely speak as he drove down Cayuga Street. His old mouth twitched nervously.
What a life the old man had led since he left the neighborhood, in 1968, it was now 2000, and thirty-two years had passed. He had been around the world.
He knew, the day he left his neighborhood, Donkeyland would disappear once and for all, and it had disappeared once on that train, after closing his eyes and leaning back in the car seat of the train-his eyes had stayed that way for a long while and when he opened them, Donkeyland, and the whole of Minnesota, and entire Midwest had disappeared. When he woke up and stimulate himself-he knew his life there had become but a setting, a backdrop, and the background on which to spread the dreams of his manhood.
He began to think of the time, long ago when he was a young fellow living in the neighborhood, how on such days he'd spend his time wandering about. He was thinking how it affected his whole life, and how a spirit of protest awoke in him, saying: '...that's what I was, what about it, eh? What about it all? I was not the worse of the lot, perhaps not the better part either. Not always up to devilment, but not always up to good. I told them all, you'll see...oh, not out loud."
He was in a sad distracted mood and was affected by the nostalgia of the moment. Remembering how it was.
Evens was different than most of the boys-he knew that, not in that he would stand about, listening and occasionally when addressed, saying a few words-but different in that he always had the power to be a part of and yet distinctly apart from the life about him.
In the late evenings his grandfather would sit in the sofa chair, or old sofa couch on the porch and smoke a pipe, silent as he always was at that hour, look out the screened-in-windows, talk to himself, he had a great vigor. Evens could see him at different times as he roamed the streets with the neighborhood boys-see him pacing the porch in the summer evenings.
More often than not he dismissed everything from his mind-how he did it he never knew. Perhaps he couldn't hate anything, and not being able to understand so many things, he just forgets them; his grandfather being one of those forgetful things, whose nature was always so belligerent towards him-on the whole he was victorious though, so he felt. As often he felt too, the talk of the neighborhood seldom interested him, and he'd slip away. Go up into his room with his thoughts, being alone, write his poetry. As he got older drink him self drunk. He felt it was good to be drunk in those days. If anything it taught him something in his later years-he could now think straight. He wanted to learn things, you see, things he never could understand, that's why he had to leave the neighborhood, that's why he did it.
This is Evens' story. It will, however be necessary to talk a little on his neighborhood so that you will get into the spirit of it: into reading the other sketches pertaining to Donkeyland that is, and on Evens himself.
In the old days Cayuga Street was a notorious neighborhood-known as 'Donkeyland,' by the St. Paul Minnesota Police Department. Whomever lived within its boundaries, were aware of the gripping sounds of the Structural Steel Company (where most of the neighborhood kids worked at one time or another, once they hit adulthood), and the Railroad behind it-with its squealing steel on steel, and whistle blowing, and the screeching of cars that raced up and down Cayuga Street, as if it was a drag-strip. The fires going on in the empty lot-called Indians Hill, and the drunken behavior of the boys. All in all it was a constant noisy active neighborhood, with its share of peculiar happenings.
Then one year, there were no more steel items, like beams and so forth produced; the steel workers became laid off, and the yard was stacked with idle steal items. And in due time, all the steel that had been left, was carried away. The big mill had all its machinery then taken out soon after; removed, along with what belts, and tables, pallets, and paints, iron and lumber that were piled here and there. Everything that made a steel mill a steel mill was gone.
Ten-years later there was nothing left, the houses on Cayuga Street all gone, the railroad that had made all those weird noises, stood deserted, as did the empty lot, and now everything that was something at one time, was covered with plain old dirt. A highway was over the head of Cayuga Street- where Mississippi Street crosses it, north and south.
"There's our old neighborhood," Chick Evens said, driving up and down Cayuga Street, talking to himself. "There it is," he said (in reflection and dismay). "I can remember when we played softball over in that there field, drank so much, we couldn't walk straight, and on that there hill beyond the field we had a number of fights-Indian's Hill, right there...right where I'm pointing," said Chick Evens to a ghost, as he looked at and then point to what would soon be a parking lot, with no cars, just a black asphalt turnaround.
His ghost, had been left to nurture the old spirits left in Donkeyland, the old Gang, the voice of his mind told him-how noble.
"It seems more like a castle in ruins now; that is all there is," Chick Evens mumbled out loud. Then he drove down Jackson Street, alongside Oakland Cemetery his eyes heavy likened to a slab of driftwood (it was the summer of 2000, and something had ended, he had not been back to his old neighborhood in thirty-two years: '...what a life his this old neighborhood and led,' he told himself, 'it has created a legacy...').
2
Big Ace
(Part of: Donkeyland, a Side Street Saga)
Big Ace and Dan
If you have lived in cities, in this case let's say St. Paul, Minnesota, in the early '60s, and gone out to Como Park, you have seen or could have seen, in those small cages with those iron bars, sitting in a corner, a huge and grotesque ape. Strong, large, ugly and hairy, skin droopy faced ape. A true monster, if it was walking about freely. In its fullness, there was an ugly common perverted beauty in this ape.
When children seen it, they stepped back, griped their father's hand, freighted and fascinated at the same time. The father in turn, would put on an air of repugnance, pert near a show-for various reasons, and the wife, or even single women in general-I might add, more often than not, seemed to be comparing the ape with... you got it, their mates.
In any case, had you lived in my neighborhood in the earlier years of my life, a citizen of Cayuga Street, called 'Donkeyland,' by the local police, there would be no vagueness to look upon, in comparison to the ape in the cage. It was likened to Ace, Big Ace. He was also, often called, Big Bopper, and we can add to that, his real name, his true name, Jerry S.
Sitting with the guys in the neighborhood on a hot summer's day, on the church steps that is, after a long weekend drinking with his buddies, he was a sight for sour eyes.
Yes indeed, as the ape sat in his corner, the beast in the neighborhood sobered up, sitting in his corner-; there was a similarity, and let's add an 's' to that.
Big Ace, never having a job for the better part of his life, was tall and the ugliest thing in the neighborhood, no teeth, sunken in cheeks; his bulk, immense, his neck thick, his arms long. He was not dirty, but everything about him was uncommon to the eye. He was for the most part, taken care of by his family until they passed on, in his forties or fifties. There was something sensitive, simple and even kind about him, strong as an ox and just as dumb, six-foot-six, two-hundred and twenty pounds, if not more at different periods of his life; a best friend to many of us in the neighborhood, during different stages of our formative years.
He bought us all our liquor; he was ten-years older than us. And in spite of his debasement-not working at all, he was still proud of his ability to offer us younger folks a service: booze; buying booze for us with our money, which he drank his sum, and then some.
A few times, when a few older guys got to be twenty-one, the booze buying age, and we didn't need Big Ace all the time, and he was told to put in his share of money in buying the booze he'd drink, he'd get mad, say, "I'll have nothing to do with you-all."
Up along Jackson Street, in the evening he'd go find old friends he once had-his own age, and drink with them or to the saloon and trouble the people there for a drink. And after drinking unbelievable quantities of beer, stagger off home to his mother and father's house, where he lived until they passed on.
Big Ace was not a man of courage, or a coward. A thing had happened to him, which made him leave the neighborhood for a long while, abandon the neighborhood, but most everyone then was of drinking age. We all kind of felt he might hate women, or fear them. He didn't call them "Bitches," but he avoided them. For a long while no attention was paid to this trait of his. And he thus found a girlfriend, or one he thought liked him. But someone else like Mary as much who thought the same thing, instinctively the man felt in him a growing resentment of not only the girl but the other man, as a result, he had the courage to resent, and one night when the other man, Dan, walked through the streets to Mary's apartment, Big Ace was there, but so was the neighborhood gang. Dan, known as Crazy Dan, had an instinct to pay Mary homage that night, and Big Ace was with her, or at least physically, surely not mentally. And Mr. Eye was there, the in-between man.
Everyone laughed unpleasantly at the situation, between Mary and Big Ace and Crazy Dan, both men about ready to fight one another over her, but Dan of course being the weaker of the two. The woman, Mary was somewhat tall, not real slender, blue eyes and dirt-yellowish hair-more plainly looking than anything else. Dan and Big Ace both chased the woman with a love as absorbing as a camel in heat-apparently she liked the attention or power, she allowed it, foolishly. Dan was a little fat man, he ran home got his shot gun and was going to shoot Big Ace.
In all of the Cayuga Street Neighborhood, there are better people to tell this end part of the story than I, ugly as it gets, and I have never told this story until now, Mr. Eye, who in fact, had nothing to do with the fight or Mary, I mean he was, or had not been a suitor, got in the middle of all this, walked about under their heated arguments, trying to calm them both down, and got shot with that shotgun. God forbid, he died.
That evening Dan tried to escape, get out of Minnesota. Down the highway he went. It was then the police picked him up.
I met Dan years later, after he got out of prison. He was working at a park, said to me - after I spotted him - "Please don't hate me, or tell anyone where I work."
The man looked hideous, shapeless, he even had his face changed somewhat, yet I notice him, and he had noticed I had: leering face, staring about as if he was consumed with my curiosity, as if he wanted me to guess, and I guessed right. Something in his eyes, his staring eyes told him that I had nothing to say about him bad, and he was right.
