The Dirt Road Year

****Warning Long*****

The Dirt Road Year

The summer of 2005 was one of much change for me and my family. I had become ill with a mysterious malady the December before and was unable to work as a nurse. I was the sole provider for my family, so it necessitated a big change. My husband at the time would not try and find work because he felt that most work was demeaning, even though he had never had any kind of job but blue collar his entire life.

I am one that does not feel work is demeaning in any form. I learned a lot about this philosophy living on Okinawa from 1977-80. I would see the elderly Ryukyuan People approach every job as an important one. I was at the beach one day and saw several elders of the community picking up sand on the beach and I watched to see what they were finding. I discovered that they were sifting the sand for it to be clean! They smiled and went about their work as if they had just found a cure for polio and I observed and learned that all things are worth doing well.

My dad always said if you do something do it well enough to put your name on it. I was 25 and it became clear to me what he meant by that statement. These proud women were putting their name on the job they were doing. It humbled me and excited me all at the same time. I was becoming who I am today and this helped in defining for me how to approach anything that I do in my life.

Here is a link to Wikipedia to read more about the lovely people I encountered there and how they changed my life. In a later story I will share more of my three years there among them and how much I loved them all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyuan_people

Please excuse the ramblings of my mind this AM. I was caught up in the beautiful memories of the island and the people.

When I became sick it required that many things change. I was sole support and had been for most of my marriage. I had an 13 year old son at home who had depended upon me his entire life to provide home, food, and shelter. Now I was so weak that I could barely drag myself out of bed and sell my lovely things on eBay, but drag myself out of bed I did, for six months. I sold and sold and sold and then would collapse into bed forgetting to eat, forgetting to shower, forgetting to live.

When I received a call from UPS that there were 25 boxes of stuff addressed to my husband there and would he please come pick them up, I was shocked into consciousness as I asked him where they came from. He knew that he was caught as there was not any income coming in except my eBay sales. As he tried to weasel out of this one, I asked him what the boxes contained. He told me motorcycle leathers, knife making materials such as silver coins, buffalo horn, exotic woods, and I in my dumbfounded state inquired as to where the money had come from. Since he knew that I was aware he proceeded to tell me that in May, (this was now June) his grandmother's estate had sent him 12,000 dollars. I could see his mouth moving to tell me this but I remember it being unreal. I knew that we were struggling to make it each month with my selling and I knew that I had to keep the house, electricity, and food for us during this awful time of my extreme illness.

The audacity that it takes to do such a thing overwhelmed me and my husband of almost 19 years saw that he had committed a fatal error and he started to cry. Manipulate is the word I use but I was not buying it at that point. Something cleared through the fog of the past 20 years of knowing him and I knew with certainty that I had to leave him to survive and that I could not get to the safety of my family without his help. I told him he had made a fatal error and that I would never forgive him this. I forgave him so many things over the years. His drunkenness, his mental and physical abuse, his almost burning our house down, his inability to keep a job, and so much more than I will ever talk about was rearing to an arch that I was at the top of and I could see clearly for the first time in so many years.

I equate this new found clarity to my Prednisone use which is a steroid and it cleared up some of the brain fog that comes with an autoimmune disorder like I was suffering from and undiagnosed from for many years.

The plan came to a head and I sold, had yard sales, and sent to auction enough of my beloved things to move to Florida to be closer to my older children from a previous marriage. My oldest is a nurse, as I am, and I needed to be near her.

We needed a place to move to quickly, as I did not have the energy to keep selling, and made our way south. My husband insisted on bringing his 21 ft sail boat over my 1956 Buick so I sold my Buick, swallowed the pain and loss and drove south pulling his Harley behind my car.

My oldest daughter knew that I needed a place quickly and it had to be cheap, so she found a rental trailer from a realtor with a year lease, thinking that would insure that I was in a pretty good neighborhood, but she it did not turn out to be that way.

The trip south took five days because I could not drive long and my concentration was feeble, but we made it into the neighborhood two days before my son's birthday, July 27th 2005. I noted right away that the yard had barbed wire all the way around the property but did not think anything of that because I am a farm girl. We used barbed wire all over, but this barbed wire was not to keep things or animals in, but to keep things out. We were in peril almost from the moment we arrived. It was one of the few times in my life that I was glad that I brought my husband with me, even when we both knew that it was temporary until he could move out and until I could get well enough to work as a nurse again. He was and is a big biker dude and he created fear in others just by his presence. I thought all along that it was him that protected us that year but now I know that it was the grace of God and my ability to bake that saved us.

We had moved into a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood. The drive in was terrible with the moving truck and all our things because the roads were dirt and they had foot wide potholes everywhere in the entire length of the road. I think the suspension on my car lasted a year or less. Even if you slowed to 10 MPH and crawled your way in, it was tantamount to being bounced along on a trampoline as you went down the road. The streets were not improved in any way and there were no sidewalks or street lamps to light your way.

The first couple of months I observed the neighborhood, got my son registered for school and tried to ascertain the comings and goings of the many people that came into the community but did not live there. The locals were civil to us but worried about us. They were as unfamiliar with someone like me as I was unfamiliar with someone like them. I am a people person, outgoing, smile at everyone no matter who it is, and I give love to anyone I meet. I know, how 60's of me, but that is who I am. I am all about the love of humanity, no matter what vessel it emanates from.

I observed strange happenings in the neighborhood, like your everyday ice cream truck that played its music at midnight. It was odd the first couple of times that it happened because I was puzzled by it all. My mind does not go right to illegal activities and it took talking to my son about it and he informed me that it was for drugs, not frozen treats.

I watched as drug deals happened in front of my eyes at all times of the day and night. I heard the gun shots booming through the neighborhood and I heard my son talk about “kill a white day” when he came home from school. That put the fear in me as nothing had in some time, as there were only two white families in the neighborhood when we moved in, and we brought it to three.

It was fairly safe for my son to get on and off the bus at the stop that was further from our trailer but unsafe to get on and off at the one that was nearest because at any given time it was frequented by gangs. You could see their colors as they stood guard over their stop and it terrified me when my son had to get off there instead of the other one. I never knew which one to go to as the route would change based on which kids were on the bus. It was a guessing game each day as the school day ended to know if my son was going to get home safely or be preyed upon by the gangs.

On the only “kill a white day” that we were privy to, the teenager two trailers down was stabbed by one of the gang members and he and his family moved out of the neighborhood shortly after that. He did not die from the wound but it was not from lack of trying by the gang members. My fear and panic increased for my son and our family. I knew that I had to come up with a plan and God gave me one just that quick.

I loved to cook, and must admit that I am a pretty fair baker and maker of desserts, or so my family tells me, and my waistline can attest too. I used the skill I had, and that was baking.

I started to bake and take it around to all the people in the neighborhood. I made homemade brownies, (no, not the special kind) frosted them with homemade vanilla frosting and topped them with half of a walnut . I put them on paper plates in groups of six or a dozen depending on how large the family was, and I walked all over the neighborhood taking my treats to them. I did not know how they would receive me. Some of them had pit bulls that terrified me as I walked up to their fences and I did not speak the language well but I would call out, “Hello, I made something and wondered if I could give you some.”

I can not describe here the look on their faces. It is comical to think of it now. Astonishment, wariness, kindness, all were emotions that betook the people. I left the baked goodies at all the trailers that were on our street. As I walked home I could feel their stares as they questioned, “Who, or what, is that?”

There was an interesting mix of people in the neighborhood. Directly across the street was an elderly gentlemen that I came to call Grandpa. He had an extended family that consisted of children, grandchildren, cousins, and other assorted people that would visit him several times during the day. I would go over there a few times a week to talk with him, and I say talk loosely because I did not speak the language. He spoke only a little English, but we communicated none the less. I learned he was a widower of seven years and that he was lonely. He loved to have the company, and I could see him watching me as I hung out clothes and did other chores around the trailer. One day he said to me that I reminded him of his wife, and I took that as the compliment that it was.

Grandpa's son was in charge of the neighborhood, and if anything happened, he was aware of it. Of course I did not know all this when I first met him or his wife, but I learned by observation his impact on our safety and his control of the drug traffic around me. His wife was wary of me in the beginning but her heart melted one day as we were in the middle of the street and she admired a copper bracelet that I had on my wrist. It was a good quality bangle bracelet and she asked me about it. I told her that I wore it to help with my arthritis and then she shared with me her sufferings with the same thing. I removed the bracelet from my wrist and placed it upon hers without any forethought and she looked at me with a question in her eyes. I told her to keep it and wear it as I had because it might help her as it had me. She hugged me and called me Mamasita and turned away back to her home fingering the bracelet on her wrist.

It became a routine for me each week, usually on Wednesday, to bake something and take it around. I made cakes, homemade pies, sugar cookies, brownies, peanut butter goodies, fingerlings, and our traditional Christmas delights of Ohrly, Schenkley, Swiss Fudge. For the Christmas goodies I put some of all that I had made on wooden platters, many of them vintage that I had in my collection, wrapped them with saran wrap and bows, and delivered them to the families telling them to keep the platter after, as a gift from our family to theirs. Once I was talking to Grandpa and mentioned banana pudding, which they had never had. I made one for them using the antique depression amber glassed dish my mother had always used and took it over to them. They looked at the dish and held it as if it were gold. I left the entire dish with them and it was gone in a few moments. They washed the dish, made me a meal and delivered it back to us the next day.

They began to believe in me, called me Mamasita, and they started to bring food to our home. If you have never tasted traditional Puerto Rican cuisine, you have missed out. They brought empanadas, chicken and rice, or arroz con pollo, plantains, and a potato type thing that grew in the yard and was out of this world delicious.

One of the trailers close to me had a Mexican family. The elderly woman, who did not speak much, would bring us homemade tamales, all the while saying that their food was better than the Puerto Rican food that was being delivered to us. I would tell her that it was the best food I have ever tasted. I would tell the Puerto Rican families that their food was the best I had ever tasted and I was sincere on both counts. There were few days that I had to cook if I did not want to, and they put out the word in the neighborhood that we were not to be bothered.

I could see it in the safety of my son walking to and from the bus stop everyday. It was half a mile or more each day and I walked him to and fro. They watched me do that too and said they had never seen a mother like me, but it was the safety of my child that was uppermost in my mind.

I had seen a black truck trolling the neighborhood, watching the bus stops. I had gone online to see if any predators of the human kind lived in the neighborhood, and they did. One was across the street and another was two streets over. This is the place where the man that drove the black truck lived. His eyes met mine once and chilled me to my bones. Such emptiness, the antithesis of what I was, a total lack of concern and caring for anything that drew breath. I watched him everyday and one day I talked to the next door neighbor's cousin about him. He never came back to the street again after that and I was glad that I did not have to see him, but I prayed that no harm came to him because of me.

I worry about my son probably more than a body should, but some people on this planet hate things they don' t understand and I worry for his safety, so that is why at age 14, I walked him to the bus stop and he is so awesome that he didn't mind. He knows where my actions come from and accepts me for who I am as I accept him.

The next part of this is hard for me because I think that my words impacted a decision that I would never have made.

I was walking my son to the bus stop one morning. I always carried a big stick to ward off any stray dogs as there were always a few around and it was early morning, still dusk, when I noticed a man crouching in the bushes wearing a black hoodie so that I could not see him well. He watched as my son and I walked up the road. I noted this person in the woods and I whispered to my son, “Go to the other side of the road. Don't say anything, and if I say to do anything, do it immediately.”

I was so afraid. I was breathing fast, my pulse raced, my breathing increased as I laid out a plan of how I was going to fight or die protecting my child. He was 14 with life ahead and I was older and sick. I would have sacrificed my life for him in that moment. I was high on adrenaline and the “fight or flight” response had been initiated.

He just watched us and I tried to watch him in case he made a move, but he did not. I walked my son on to the bus stop and had to walk back alone with the man in the bushes watching me. It was in better light so I could see him out of the corner of my eye. I did not hurry past him, kept my pace and tapped my stick on the ground as I walked until I got about 30 feet from home and then I ran as fast as my swollen legs could carry me. I ran into the gate and into the house, locked the doors, and collapsed into tears of fear and frustration. I had never encountered anything like this in my life and I did not know what to do about it, but the next door neighbor saw me later in the day and after hugging me, he noticed I was quiet and asked if I was okay. I then told him about the hooded man watching us and he just nodded.

Two days later I was sitting outside and I noticed that there were several men next door detailing a car. The seats were on the ground, and the people were using a hose and bleach to clean the car from the inside. I knew a few days later when I never saw the hooded man again, that they had taken care of the neighborhood's problem. Grandpa's son never said anything to me and I never asked. My brain would not wrap itself around that concept. I felt diffused with guilt and prayed.

I don't know that anything happened to anyone, but I don't know that it did not either. It is a hard thing to live with knowing that people value you so much that they would defend you in such a manner and it made me retreat into isolation for a few years.

Things seemed to go smoothly in the neighborhood and I had lulled myself into a routine, a survival routine. I baked, the people in the neighborhood reciprocated by cooking for us, and on most days I felt safe, until early one morning an explosion rocked the neighborhood. It was still dark, but it was almost time for me to walk my son to the bus stop. I looked out, but could not see anything, so I got my things together and we walked down the road to the stop. It was not until my son had gotten home from school that I was told what had happened that morning. A meth lab had blown up two blocks over and it reminded me of where I lived and the need to leave as soon as a way could be found.

Not everyone will have an opportunity to live in a neighborhood as we did, but it taught me some things about human nature and it taught me some things about me. I understood with certainty that Grandpa's son had kept us safe that year. I was grateful to him and his family for watching over us as they did. We would have surely been robbed or attacked in some way if not for him.
I am so thankful that I ventured out and gave them the only thing I had, my love. If I had stayed tucked away safely in my cocoon, the outcome may have been different and I might have missed an occasion to mirror what I believe deep in my heart, that love will cover a multitude of sins. Love to all, Kimmee

(google images of dirt roads similar to the one we traversed)