Problem We Do Not Have

Used to live exactly one block from here, for four years, and before that two blocks from here, for six years, for a total of ten, among many poor folks trying to make a dollar. The rapper Nelly grew up on my street while I lived there. Look, rent was $255 a month and my income was $500 a month and stayed that way for two years, and my landlord (owned both buildings) never ever raised my rent from the starting rent because he wanted to keep a tenant whose checks did not bounce.

I laugh sometimes at life in those close-set apartment buildings. Cats sang in chorus in the back alley and woke us all, and tenants on the second and third floors raised their windows, screamed swearwords, and pelted the cats with shoes. Summer barbecues smoked on every fire escape and the party hosts gave away their ages by the music they were blasting. Once a crew removed my fire escape (I guess to replace it) while I was at work and it was the only way to enter my apartment because I had police-locked and chained the other door. The workers still there put a ladder up to the second story and told me to climb it. I was wearing a skirt but also pettipants, and blessed myself for wearing pettipants and being fit. I was in my late 30s then.

I got very good at -- right in this spot in this photo -- darting at top speed through an alley in order to cut five minutes from my walk home. Then I moved to the Divine Property. These days the old neighborhood has been upscaled and landscaped and at night the alley is floodlit. They've even put benches along that walkway to make it seem parklike, and plants in planters to make it pretty. But apparently people want plants badly enough to steal them. I now live where there are plants galore and we worry they'll be eaten by deer.

Cheerful

Carefully I select from my collection of 13 old restaurantware coffee cups the one which suits my mood or the one I think will alter it for the better. These are the three with airbrushing. The blue and red are from Buffalo China, the goldish from Shenango. Buffalo, Syracuse, and Iroquois were three major manufacturers in upstate New York and I started with six cups from Syracuse China while living in Syracuse 30 years ago in an apartment measuring 10 feet by 12 feet, not caring because I'd shared a flat for three years and wanted my own life. At the Syracuse China (now out of business) factory outlet with its bins of seconds, cups and saucers, I selected six different cups at just a few cents each; four survive intact, and I keep one that's cracked, hoping it will heal.

None of these were among them. Over the years I have eBayed, seeking mostly to replace the one Syracuse cup with a Greek key design around its edge, broken when a table collapsed, never found, but now and then falling in love with a cup for no good reason; I did not grow up in or near a diner, nor eat at any. My passion for them must be prehistoric. They are with me every day and never leave. They do not booty call. They do not come home at 3 o'clock in the morning and lie to me about where they were.

Fine china I never had, don't have, and don't want. It doesn't suit my knockabout lifestyle or keep the coffee warm--the whole point of thick-walled, thick-lipped restaurant china. The blue cup has a matching saucer, one of two cups in my collection that does.

Hearts and Flowers

I had more company this rainy morning: the Dutch couple who rented this place before me and who told me when they were moving out, to California, so I could move in. They are great, and visit whenever they get to Missouri to see the cabin they lived in for a decade. She's an artist, he's a professor. When I moved in I saw that kitchen and "dining room" ceilings are stenciled with flowers and hearts. I know immediately who painted them. Pink and blue. What purpose do these little paintings serve? I guess they're just for the spirit. This October it's done nothing but rain.