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Authors: Walter Dean Myers
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be. There were a few old boats moored on the next pier, one that looked like a coal scow, but nothing even vaguely romantic. I moved on eastward along 125th Street.
There was a milk-bottling plant, and I watched therows of milk bottles move relentlessly along a conveyor belt and tried to make a big deal of that. Not much there for the budding writer either. I was beginning to wonder what authors like Byron and Shelley were seeing, or if they were really just more sensitive to beauty and interest than I was. I moved on.
Still walking along 125th Street, I was seeing what I had seen all my life. I didnât know how to look at the sights with fresh eyes. The funeral parlor on the corner looked like the funeral parlor on the corner, the West End Theater, with its âTHREE, 3, THREE BIG FEATURES, and a SERIAL,â looked the same, as did the small stores along Harlemâs central byway. It was early, and there were a few musicians with their instruments talking outside the Apollo. I tried to match them with the faces on the show cards outside the theater. Pegleg Bates, the one-legged tap dancer, was appearing, along with a band and a comedian.
I continued across 125th until I reached the building where Unity Insurance was located. Unity was where I went once every three months to make insurance payments for my parents. It was called life insurance but it was really burial insurance, to make sure that when the insurance holders died, they would at least have a decent funeral. One of the worst things that could be said about someone from Harlem wasthat he was buried in potterâs field. It was as if his whole life was being summed up in those two words.
Harlem had wonderful rooftops, and sometimes I would take the stairs to ours to sit near the edge overlooking Morningside Avenue and read. When I got home after making my rather scanty âobservations,â I went up to the roof and decided to record what I saw on the street below. My aim, as I remember it, was to write something wonderfully dramatic. When it was warm, the sun would soften the tar, which gave off a distinctive odor. Sometimes people would barbecue on the roof, and more than once I had heard of parties where someone actually fell off, although I donât remember this ever being verified. Some roofs had clotheslines with white sheets flapping in the summer breeze. I liked being high above the world, and I spent a lot of time either on the roof or sitting in a tree in the park.
Across from me, on the park side, there were women with small children sitting on the park benches. I recognized some of the women, big-hipped and solid, whom I had seen sitting on those same benches since we had moved to the neighborhood. In the park, men were playing checkers. There were more children, running in seemingly aimless patterns while sparrows flew overhead, tracing the same pathways through the air.
When a Fifth Avenue bus passed, it was a double-decker, and I made notes comparing it to a huge yellow-and-green dragon, which it did not look like at all. A Studebaker passed, and I tried to make something of the fact that it looked the same from the front or back. That didnât work either. Maybe, I thought, I would have to move to the country, or at least to another part of the city. Harlem was not exotic, or special. Harlem was just home.
I decided to write about people I saw in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Dodson, the Wicked Witch of the West. Mrs. Dodson was a tall, brown-skinned woman with an intelligent, pleasant face anchored by a resolute lower lip that signaled that she would put up with no nonsense whatsoever. She had opinions, and if you dealt with her, you would deal with those opinions in no uncertain terms. Her husband, a big handsome man just slightly shorter than his wife, worked on the railroad and was gone for days at a time. Working on the railroad was considered a good job, and A. Philip Randolph, perhaps the most important figure in the
There was a milk-bottling plant, and I watched therows of milk bottles move relentlessly along a conveyor belt and tried to make a big deal of that. Not much there for the budding writer either. I was beginning to wonder what authors like Byron and Shelley were seeing, or if they were really just more sensitive to beauty and interest than I was. I moved on.
Still walking along 125th Street, I was seeing what I had seen all my life. I didnât know how to look at the sights with fresh eyes. The funeral parlor on the corner looked like the funeral parlor on the corner, the West End Theater, with its âTHREE, 3, THREE BIG FEATURES, and a SERIAL,â looked the same, as did the small stores along Harlemâs central byway. It was early, and there were a few musicians with their instruments talking outside the Apollo. I tried to match them with the faces on the show cards outside the theater. Pegleg Bates, the one-legged tap dancer, was appearing, along with a band and a comedian.
I continued across 125th until I reached the building where Unity Insurance was located. Unity was where I went once every three months to make insurance payments for my parents. It was called life insurance but it was really burial insurance, to make sure that when the insurance holders died, they would at least have a decent funeral. One of the worst things that could be said about someone from Harlem wasthat he was buried in potterâs field. It was as if his whole life was being summed up in those two words.
Harlem had wonderful rooftops, and sometimes I would take the stairs to ours to sit near the edge overlooking Morningside Avenue and read. When I got home after making my rather scanty âobservations,â I went up to the roof and decided to record what I saw on the street below. My aim, as I remember it, was to write something wonderfully dramatic. When it was warm, the sun would soften the tar, which gave off a distinctive odor. Sometimes people would barbecue on the roof, and more than once I had heard of parties where someone actually fell off, although I donât remember this ever being verified. Some roofs had clotheslines with white sheets flapping in the summer breeze. I liked being high above the world, and I spent a lot of time either on the roof or sitting in a tree in the park.
Across from me, on the park side, there were women with small children sitting on the park benches. I recognized some of the women, big-hipped and solid, whom I had seen sitting on those same benches since we had moved to the neighborhood. In the park, men were playing checkers. There were more children, running in seemingly aimless patterns while sparrows flew overhead, tracing the same pathways through the air.
When a Fifth Avenue bus passed, it was a double-decker, and I made notes comparing it to a huge yellow-and-green dragon, which it did not look like at all. A Studebaker passed, and I tried to make something of the fact that it looked the same from the front or back. That didnât work either. Maybe, I thought, I would have to move to the country, or at least to another part of the city. Harlem was not exotic, or special. Harlem was just home.
I decided to write about people I saw in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Dodson, the Wicked Witch of the West. Mrs. Dodson was a tall, brown-skinned woman with an intelligent, pleasant face anchored by a resolute lower lip that signaled that she would put up with no nonsense whatsoever. She had opinions, and if you dealt with her, you would deal with those opinions in no uncertain terms. Her husband, a big handsome man just slightly shorter than his wife, worked on the railroad and was gone for days at a time. Working on the railroad was considered a good job, and A. Philip Randolph, perhaps the most important figure in the
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