Shuffling along the length and width of Chili Avenue…the scarcely blue truck…rusted over and through and under. Almost transparent in patches. Tied together with twine and scrap metal. And…I…am…behind…you…waiting, waiting, straining to pass on the left.
The sign states 30 Miles Per Hour and this…this blue heap of a tin pan alley is frudging along at a miserly 29 miles Miles Per Hour. I feel my hands squeezing the steering wheel…I have been behind him before on this street…this slow man. Trapped between the intersection of Saint Mary’s and King Street…slow traffic and a school bus and it is all…backed…up. At the head of the irritated pack…this blue swaying dust heap. I feel my teeth grind…I have things to do, places to be, speed to pick up.
Milagro! Miracle of hard wishing and head pounding…the left lane opens up and I pass…I pass…I pass! A quick glance to the right at this…this…this man who has dared to put this blue danger on the road in front of me. Slumped profile…very old. Very old, staring straight ahead…lined face…a few teeth…a sharecropper’s son. Burnt by the Southern sun for years and years until making a painfully slow journey North where there might not be as much racism but there will be no real wealth for this man in the dilapidated blue truck.
The tires are riding on hope…back end dragging along the length and width of Chili Avenue cement…grimy greasy twine and a box of tools rusted on to the back end of the dragging, dragging, dragging and sagging tail pipe…but he owns it…this sharecropper’s son…and I am silent.
No doubt someone was teaching nonsense when this man did not yet know his alphabet and the past is the past now…done. I think about it; as if I could ever do a day’s work as a sharecropper’s daughter…the heat would kill me dead…the slow pace grind me down…down to Chili Avenue at the head of the irritated pack.
690 Saint Paul 