I am just a poor boyThough my story’s seldom toldI have squandered my resistanceFor a pocketful of mumblesSuch are promisesAll lies and jestStill a man hears what he wants to hearAnd disregards the rest
That’s Paul Simon’s story, a familiar one.
When I left my home and my familyI was no more than a boyIn the company of strangersIn the quiet of the railway stationRunning scaredLaying low, seeking out the poorer quartersWhere the ragged people goLooking for the places only they would know
I moved into the poorer quarters in Brooklyn, New York after a disappointing break-up, into a third floor apartment above a bar on 33rd and 4th, Sunset Park.
The owner’s mom lived next door.
Her husband had owned the bar, now her son owns it.
She was eighty years old and walked down and up those three flights of stairs once a day.
The neighborhood was different when she was young.
She and her family lived on the second floor.
After her son got married, he lived in the apartment I rented.
Somewhere along the line, the neighborhood turned into ‘white flight’ and everybody moved to Staten Island and commuted to their businesses, like the bar, the auto shop, the corner store bodega.
And that’s how I found myself the only white guy on the sidewalk every now and then.
After a year and half of seasoning in Philadelphia by living next to the old Hahneman Hospital two blocks from city hall, Brooklyn was easy.
The Poor Boy View Of Life
I wouldn’t say living in the poorer quarters had me in the company of ragged people.
My roommate in Philly was a medical student at Hahneman; my roommate in NY was going to Brooklyn Law.
They were smart, ambitions, and most people would look ragged in comparison.
But I did my best to rag it out, to wander, to look around.
What did I find most memorable?
The music venues, the bars like Max’s Kansas City and Lone Star Cafe were dives.
They looked like places where people were taken out the back door and never seen again.
I stayed on the sidewalk.
Those times, and the habits I collected, followed me back to Portland, Oregon where I found an apartment in a ragged part of town after yet another painful breakup.
That’s where I turned to less ragged, call it a turning point.
Plenty of people in the neighborhood looked ragged, but Oregon ragged.
They were not my people. Too familiar.
I had been in the company of strangers, but back home you never know who you might see.
Stay sharp, or let it go?
That’s the was the choice then, and the choice now.
Why let it go when you’re still sharp?
About David Gillaspie
