So Near, and So Far

The summer between my last year at Monroe and first year at East High, I spent countless hours -- at least after morning chores in our little apartment -- at the nearby Sawyer Recreation Center. It was a 10-minute walk from our apartment. I'd listen to boxers in training thump one another. I'd play basketball, play checkers, hope for a free skateboard. Sometimes I'd just sit in the shade.

I dropped by Sawyer on my recent visit here. Children were all about, some coloring in coloring books. The doors to the center were wide open. Javetta Gray, one of the rec leaders, asked me about the history of the neighborhood.

She might as well have asked me to put on an old vinyl record. I started playing back memories. I told her about our Bolivar Arms housing project, about those awful mornings when we had found out someone had dropped an infant down the garbage chute and we'd watch the ambulance with horror-filled eyes. I told her about my summer jobs: one sweeping out behind the alley of the Macon Bar, which I pointed out in the distance. I told her about digging for red worms on crisp mornings in the nearby stockyards. "Oh. My. God," she said, her hand on her chest. "It's a miracle you got out of here!"

I think she thought I sprang from the pages of Charles Dickens, which I did not. So I flipped the record and told her of other things: how sometimes my Uncle Ira would show up at the front door with a bag of unexpected groceries. How there was nothing like Christmastime in the projects, because there were gallant efforts at decoration, and the teeny light bulbs seemed to glow as big as any in those famous Christmas movies. I told her about the lemon cakes at Brassfield's bakery on Mount Vernon Avenue. And about Eddie Rat. And about how on the eve of going away to college, the principal of East High -- Jack Gibbs was our Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall all rolled into one -- pointed me to a downtown foundation, which gave me $300, which saved my life at the time.

I stood staring at the children around her. A lot of poverty still; a lot of dreams would be lost, she feared. The children at Javetta Gray's side certainly didn't need any more "intentionally aggravated" turmoil in their lives.

Which doesn't mean the city of Columbus hasn't changed a lot in the intervening years.

The mayor, Michael Coleman, is black, and his popularity cuts widely across racial lines. White flight doubtless harmed the school system, but something else has followed in recent years: black flight. Black families with their bright children are relocating to nearby locales like Reynoldsburg and Westerville.

Before leaving the city, I walked alone through Franklin Park. It's a much prettier place now with a huge greenhouse and exotic flowers to ogle. I found myself a bench inside the park and sat down. The sun was shining. After a while, I glanced over my shoulder, toward Nelson Road. Toward my Ozlike journey of years ago. I thought of my friends, Mark and Chin, of trooping across this very grass, heading for something we had never seen. There was no busing then. Just our legs. And they took us to where our eyes saw something new. Something I never forgot.

Is it too much to want those children around Javetta Gray to see new things? To wish them travels beyond their immediate surroundings -- even if only on a rickety school bus that might deliver them across Nelson Road?

I let time pass while sitting on that park bench. Looking through the trees at the outlines of East High, I thought of the sweet tingling sound of school bells.