Humor Monday: The Thin Red Line: A Tale of the 60's

My brother is looking for a house. A month ago, he handed me a picture of a beautifully restored Victorian for $850,000. He teased "Should I buy it?"

It was the house we grew up in. A house my old man bought in 1957 for $9,500 and sold in 1965 for $7,500.

I remember the old man buying the house. A process that began with a bumpy ride in our aged Plymouth across town to an office building down by the river.

I was six, old enough to be dubious about the place. Who wouldn't be? Whoever did the decorating died of old age in the early 19th century. It was dark, seedy and other than the overpowering scent of mold, was utterly indistinguishable from an Alfred Hitchcock movie set. The door frames tilted at stomach retching angles and the floor warped in waves from having survived not only the biblical flood but several crests of the Mississippi as well. Yet dad was in high spirits, cracking jokes and whistling. He got a good laugh when I pointed at the canvas awnings to ask "Is this what they mean by being shady?"

The tip off should have come when dad approached the old harpy of a receptionist to ask for "Mr. James McCaslin" She frowned owl-like through her bifocals -- "Whoo?"

He repeated the question. This time louder.

With utter disdain, and may I add complete contempt, she pointed across the street to McCafferty's Pub, directing us to ask for "Skinny Jimmy", a man who we later found to be an immensely rotund Irishman. The guy was an untrustworthy cigar chomping hustler who came highly recommended by another untrustworthy cigar chomping hustler down at the union hall. Jimmy dabbled in numbers, real estate and loans of a type offered only in whispers.

These days, the same kind of loan are called credit cards.

Anyway, the conversation between Jimmy and us went like this:

Dad: "We're looking for a house"

Skinny Jimmy taking out a stubby #2 pencil: "What church you attend?" Translation "What is your religion?"

Dad: "Nativity" Translation: "Catholic."

Skinny Jimmy scrounged for anything to write on: "What's your wife's maiden name?" Translation: "I know your German, what's the other half of the equation? She ain't Italian or something unsavory like that, is she?"

Dad: "Ryan" Translation: "No, it's okay, she's Irish."

Then Skinny Jimmy tuned out. For a long while he was completely absorbed in writing between the beer stains on a coaster, then suddenly he snapped : "What's your union?" Translation: "How much you make?"

Dad: "Plumbers & Pipe fitters Local 243" Translation: "'bout $10,000 plus OT."

Skinny Jimmy twisted around the short novel he had written on the coaster to see if it made any sense: "How old are you anyway?" Translation: "This is part I of a compound question."

Dad: "Thirty-six"

Skinny Jimmy squinting, kinda pissed, at the chicken scratch on the coaster : "How many kids you got?" Translation: "This is the other half of that question I just asked"

Dad: "Five" Translation: "My religion, ethnicity, age and current number of kids projects our eventual family size to max out at thirteen"

Now that Jimmy had us pigeon-holed by race, religion, ethnicity and family size, he was able to position us within the compartmentalized social framework of Saint Paul, Minnesota in the 1950's. He tossed the coaster aside: "Got just the place. Came on the market sudden-like, and it needs work, but nothin' you can't handle". Translation: "Got a big 3 bedroom repossessed dump, take it or keep renting."

This is where I perked up: "How many bathrooms it got"

Skinny Jimmy: "Cute Kid." Translation: "One - use the bushes, kid."

Strutting out of McCafferty's, my old man lectured me on the ways of the world. "You got to have connections" he said pointing back at the Pub with his thumb, "else you get screwed".

For him connections were everything. His world was a web of fealty that descended from a Catholic God, to Roman Pope, to the Democratic Party, to the Plumbers & Pipe fitters Local 243, and everything was interdependent. Power flowed down and loyalty flowed up.

All that changed the next time we met Skinny Jimmy.

To truly understand the early 1960's, you got to understand how rigid society was in those days. You had your German Neighborhood, Rice Street, your French neighborhood, Frogtown, your Italian neighborhood, West Seventh, and your black neighborhood, Rondo. Not only were we divided by the sharp line of religion and ethnicity, but in the case of Rondo by the razors edge of race. And people like Skinny Jimmy made sure that edge remained sharp.

A few blocks from our house ran a major thorough-fare named Selby Avenue and down the middle of Selby ran a red line on a map in Jimmy's office. If you were white, you walked, talked, ate, slept and hung-out on the south side of that red line. If you were black, you walked, talked, ate, slept and hung-out on the north side of that red line

If you wanted to get your butt kicked you crossed that red line.

That was the natural order of things and no one but the Kumbaya crowd questioned it.

And that's the way it was until Skinny Jimmy knocked on our door during supper, one night in 1964. Mom invited him in, but he declined, waiting at one end of our porch cigar in hand. When dad pushed away from the diner table and stepped out onto the portch, Jimmy greeted him with "Got real bad news" They talked a few minutes. We couldn't hear what they were saying but we could see Jimmy apologizing with profuse gestures while my dad flushed with anger, then Jimmy left.

When dad came back in, he pulled mom aside and though he whispered, it was an awful loud whisper. "Jimmy said, a Negro family is moving onto our block. He offered us half what the house is worth."

Jimmy and his buddies had moved the red line. To be fair, they had a little help from the Federal government who displaced every black family in Saint Paul by routing I-94 right down the middle of Rondo Avenue.

I give my parents credit, they played it cool. So did most everyone else, and the couple, who Jimmy used to "block-bust" us with, "the Wells'" turned out to be wonderful people and everyone got along just fine.

It was a short happy time, a time that vanished faster than a flash of sunlight in the eye of a hurricane.

The next summer Jimmy rented a tired old house on the corner to "The Browards". Rumor had it no one in the Broward family held a job since 1906; that their primary occupation was incarceration. Within days of their moving in, the cops started showing up and we witnessed the first of what we would know later as a "drive-by".

The Wells's moved out and the neighborhood went to hell.

Jimmy made a fortune by buying homes cheaper than cheap because he knew something everyone else didn't. The Feds had a program named Model Cities that would eventually use $160 million of taxpayer's money to move most of the black folks a mile north into truly desperate housing. Stuff that couldn't be fixed up.

I hadn't seen the place in 40 years. Even though I knew the history of the neighborhood, that things got a lot better, I just couldn't stomach what happened to all the people, black and white, who lived there.

I asked my brother "Are you going to buy the place?"

He said "No, I want my home to be mine, not a piece of everyone else's memories"

I told him I could understand that.

"And besides" he added, "who wants to live with yuppie neighbors anyway?"

© Greg Schiller, 2008

Author: Greg Schiller