I Almost Said "Progress"
We were living in Fells Point, Baltimore Maryland, when Tasha was born. At that time the state had a plan to put a highway through the area, but this was being opposed by people who wanted to preserve the area as a historical site. The struggle between the highway advocates and the history lovers had ground to a stalemate. The properties for the highway had already been purchased by the state. When it appeared that there was going to be no quick resolution of the conflict the city began renting the houses at a rather low price. Rental was from month-to-month with no guarantee of permanency. By and large the people who took advantage of the situation were hippies, druggies, students, Blacks, and people with marginal incomes who just needed cheap rent. It was a group with which Betsy and I were fully compatible. Our house was on Shakespeare’s streat which added to the glamour of the arrangement.
Fell’s Point had been occupied by working people – many of whom were of Polish descent. Most of the dwellings were row-houses. We rented a small one with a black woman training to be an opera singer on one side and a hippie group that seemed to smoke grass 24 hours a day on the other. The hippie cat wandered around in a daze – permanently stoned. We were all on friendly terms.
Another interesting feature of this part of the town was the number of bars it supported. I think the licensing for bars was pretty permissive here. A lot of the people who used these bars were from other parts of Baltimore. But a couple of the bars were mainly frequented by locals. These were not sleazy pickup bars – at least the ones that catered to the locals weren’t. They were more like English pubs. You came to the bars to have a few beers and socialize with the interesting group of people that shared the bars with you.
By the time that Tasha was a few months old. I was able to put her in a baby carrier and walk around the neighborhood with her all cuddled up on my chest. I did this fairly often when I was off work. It was an activity that both Tasha and I enjoyed, and it gave Betsy a bit of respite from being a mother. Betsy and Tasha got along wondrously, but no matter how well you got along with a person, being with them 24-7 can create a bit of cabin fever.
At times Tasha would sleep in her baby carrier and at other times she would just look at the people and buildings we walked by. After I tired of walking I would stop in one of the bars for a beer and some conversation – and, I suppose, to show off my baby. I was very proud of her.
Carrying her around like that was almost like having a womb. I thought of myself as being both a mother and a father to her at the same time. That pleased me immensely.
When Tasha was a couple of years old we moved to Frederick Maryland. We wanted to be closer to some woods and to avoid the rough inner-city schools that Tasha would have had to go to had we stayed in Fells Point. We thought that would not be a good experience for her.
As Tasha was growing up we were a close family. I think we all enjoyed each other. As most children do, Tasha identified with her parents values – for the most part. But at an early age she began to develop in a different direction. She showed an interest in things like designer jeans. She was not much attracted to our hippie-values. She was afraid that if she wore something from the Goodwill it might be recognized by a former owner who might see her at school.
We wanted even more woods than Frederick had to offer so eventually we moved to Maine. For one stretch of time I worked as a medical social worker. The home health part of the agency that I worked for had a very traditional top-down administrative style which I did not much like. I felt that the direct service nurses and home-makers should be involved in the decision-making much more than they were, so there was a bit of tension between me and the administration.
One day in a staff meeting the administrative staff reviewed with us their job performance expectations. For some reason the whole process irritated me. I suppose I felt a bit infantilized. One of the expectations was that we should have “reliable transportation.” I was driving an old secondhand clunker at the time. I think it may have been a Pontiac. I don’t remember. But I’m sure that it was old and that it was a clunker. So I got some stencils and a can of white spray paint, and I stenciled the words “Reliable Transportation” on both sides of the car. It was very much an amateur job. Some of the paint dribbled outside the letters created a very tacky look.
I remember the first day I brought my newly stenciled car to work. I happened to arrive at the same time as the head of the Home Health Services – my supervisor. She just stared at the stencil, speechless.
“I just wanted to be sure that there would be no doubts about this,” I said. I don’t recall any more talk about it but I’m sure it didn’t go over very well.
From time to time people would trying to flag me – thinking I was a cab. I enjoyed the whole debacle – which I thought was very funny. But Tasha didn’t. I was surprised on a couple of occasions when she declined to accept my offer to pick her up at school in “ Reliable Transportation.” Finally I came to understand that she was seriously embarrassed by the car. Old and clunkerish was bad enough. But the declaration in dribbling letters that it was reliable transportation was too much. Her friends at school would think I was a blithering idiot and that assessment might reflect on her.
It took me a while to fully grasp how deeply she felt about this sort of thing. A hippie style was no longer “in,” and she very much wanted to be accepted by the higher class students at her school. She was drifting not only to straight society, but to its most respectable parts.
The tension between my hatred of the way society is organized along lines of wealth, education and privilege, and her desire to belong has been a fracture in our family for a long time. It has never been a source of open conflict or real hostility – or even open for discussion as far as that goes. But It has been a fact of life that has been there just beneath the surface.
I remember a time years later after Tasha had grown and been out on her own for a few years. She came for a visit. Something about the visit made me sad. I wrote a poem about it.
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