WANDERING THE OLD STREETS
BY TRACY SCHLAPP
In our workshops across the state, we each wrote a short passage about a distinct childhood memory. Writers were encouraged to travel deep into the recollection to find concrete details. We travelled far north to an Alaskan village, to a New Orleans neighborhood that seemed safe through a child’s eyes, to Klamath Falls, to Oklahoma, to northeast Portland … and heard stories of taking the school bus, buying candy, skipping school, bike wrecks on big hills, and to my own adventures seeking air conditioning at the Des Moines Art Center. These exercises warm up our brains, loosen ideas for our pens, and they do social work as we learn a little bit more about one another. Connection points help us better understand one another.
From his 5-minute free write Le’Var Howard recalls: “… my father was my basketball coach for a couple of years so on my way to school, I would run and work on my dribbling as my dad drove next to me or walked behind me. This became my normal habit, or practice. I did this most days on my way to Twality School. Across a bridge, across streets, up hills, down hills, pass traffic, rainy mornings, cold mornings, sunny mornings, whatever. But I wasn’t always alone. Basketball had given me a community and lots of friends …”
Austin Clark starts from “the warmth and security of my favorite crochet blanket that my Granny Hazel had made for me — each stitch and delicate pattern a loving thought and hopefulness for the future of her grandson.” Five-year-old Austin then head out to Highway 99 South, “I donned my blue backpack that was much too big for a child my size and poised myself for the journey ahead. I exited the door in an explosion of anticipatory excitement. There was a very steep decline on the way to catch the bus to Bellview Elementary. As I descended the hill, I ascended ever higher toward the man that I would ultimately become. A small child inevitably reaches his destination only to wait for a bus ride that lasted an hour. It has been a long time since I rode that bus, I am thankful to ride back to a time when the roads ahead were not so darkened, instead they were shining brilliantly with mystifying light.”
Drafting off the rich work that he did as part of PSU’s Black Studies project Memory & Place in Black Portland, Stressla Lynn Johnson brings us a collection of poems located in the Northeast Portland of his childhood, including his childhood home in Look ... Stressla details what he found on the shelves of the Going Street Market, and what he understands has since been lost. In Penny Candy … Gone Street Market (II) we read the shift:
The black security bars imply the distrust of the
strangers—gentrification — occupying the neighborhood,
strangers without a care for kindness — just a made-up
empty smile. A smile that read — why are you in my
store...?
In Lincoln Park by Jacob W. Harper, we enter nature trails behind his home where BMX bikes are king for kids that can afford them. For Jacob, imagination takes him to Tolkien’s fantasy world of Middle-earth, a place he comfortable roams free: “Past those obstacles are the yawning trees which my wilderness affords, swamps to my left, where the skunk cabbage grows, to my right go the paths of the older kids.”
Like Jacob, W.C. Puppy’s imagination paints his childhood landscape, and we read language that is fragrant and musical — alive. Currently W.C. is writing a graphic novel, so as I read For A Moment — Home, I couldn’t help but think of those finally drawn landscapes of Hinoki Murasaki with their delicate inking and soft watercolor washes:
Hay sways in one field while horses mow down another, penned in by old wooden fences with a rustic patina that appeals to my sense of past-life nostalgia. I’m fifteen. How can I feel so enraptured by a moment deeply tied to emotions I have yet to understand myself?
These short bursts of writing are the like the penny candies that Stressla remembers so clearly — sweet and bright and far outside prison walls. | TDS