Oklahoma Dreaming: Two Cities

by Donna Schoenkopf

last time: Bob and Mom

I used to live in San Pedro, California.

San Pedro (St. Peter, patron saint of fishermen) is at the end of the world. Well, actually, the 110 Freeway. It sits on cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It has one of the largest harbors in the world, with cruise ships and tankers. It has a population of blacks and Latinos and whites, equally mixed. And it has lots of Longshoremen. It has artists and union guys and generations of families. It has hills with houses out of the '40s and old trees and clean, moist air from the ocean. Of all the towns I've lived in in California, it is my favorite.

Nobody goes there because it is bordered on the north by horrible refineries. People are put off by that.

San Pedro is old. And full of history. The ACLU was born there when Upton Sinclair, who was running for governor, was arrested for reading the Bill of Rights to the Longshoremen. Harry Bridges first organized those Longshoremen back in the day. There is a beautiful bridge (lit by blue solar lights at night) which is not named after Harry, although it should be. Harry Bridges Bridge. Don't you love it?

And the post office. High ceilings, marble, echoes, tall windows which look out onto the harbor and as you wait in line with all the brothers of the longshoremen's union who wear their tee shirts and greet each other with, "Hello, Brother," you just might see a cruise ship or tanker move silently across the windows not more than a half block from where you stand. (This happened to me and I fell in love with this town in that instant. It was all so ... WONDERFUL ...)

After I had lived in town for a little while, I discovered McCowan's grocery store, a little, funky neighborhood store, with narrow aisles and Croatian and Italian food alongside the pickles and cereal. Some of the cashiers were Croatian with thick accents. Their produce was famous. (I think they got it off ships which docked in our harbor.) It was the BEST and CHEAP! I discovered when I talked about it, people from out of town KNEW this place and told me stories of when they were kids and went there for treats.

Downtown is old. The Grand Theater shows art films and has fundraisers for liberal causes. On First Thursday, downtown streets are blocked off and people come from out of town to stroll and look at what the artists have done. There is an old lighthouse on the cliffs and abandoned army barracks from World War II which have been turned into artists' lofts. Throngs of people from the inner city of L.A. come to the harbor for crab and fancy dinners and mariachis.

Once, some years ago, when son Eric lived with me for a couple of months and grandson Jimmy was with us for the weekend, the three of us decided to go to lunch as a nice reward for working in the yard all day. We were really dirty and tired and hungry. It was just before 5:00 and we drove to a little place called Papadakis Restaurant, unpretentious from the outside, in the older part of downtown. We parked the car and walked in.

An incredibly handsome man in a TUXEDO (Papadakis himself, it turns out) greeted us warmly at the door. No reservations? No problem!

The restaurant was WAY more than we expected. Tables with linen tablecloths and napkins. Full service silverware and glassware. Greek everything. It was like dropping out of reality and into a dream world without knowing it was going to happen. Of course, I was thinking about how disgusting the three of us were in our dirty clothes and crazy hair, but Papadakis only loved us more. We were the first to walk through the door, so he gave us a fabulous table. The whole time we were there he catered to us. He took Jimmy to the front of the restaurant as the Greek music started and all the waiters began their Greek dance and so did Jimmy, and Eric and I laughed and laughed and then Papadakis gave Jimmy a plate and all the dancing menfolk, including Jimmy, smashed their plates on the floor and we ROLLED with laughter and watched the belly dancer and ate Greek food and had a WONDERFUL TIME.

Which leads me to why the hell I'm writing all this. But not so fast. I have to lead into it.

A couple of weeks ago I called Joe, who lives in San Pedro, to say hi and chew the fat.

Joe is a third generation (he says fourth, but I don't know ... is that possible?) Italian. He is the kind of Italian who had a grandma who was the Italian-Grandma-With-The-Iron-Will, whose house EVERYONE in the family came to EVERY Sunday, for big Italian dinners with lots of fighting and yelling and family stuff. Joe doesn't necessarily feel warm and cozy about those times, but they are authentic.

He has strawberry blond hair, blue eyes, and white, white skin. His father was suspicious of him. They didn't get along. His mother loved her only child. She was glamorous and had high style. His parents divorced after a marriage of fights and drama.

Joe and his partner, Larry, lived across the street from me when I lived in San Pedro. They had an immaculate lawn, gorgeous roses, an iron gate across their driveway that I heard scrape open every morning when they went to work at 5:00 in the morning. I loved that sound. It meant the day had begun.

They took care of me. Once, when I was out of town, my outdoor faucet/hose contraption exploded with water everywhere and Joe couldn't turn it off because I had rigged it in such a complicated ass-backwards kind of way that it was impossible. He TRIED, got really wet, but finally had to call the fire department. My hero.

He made the MOST wonderful pizzas. He had the most beautifully decorated house you have EVER seen. He was funny and angry and smart. He made me laugh.

And Larry was handsome and sweet and a detail guy, who kept their ducks in a row. He was the opposite of Joe. He kept their ship on an even keel and order in the court.

They loved each other. With occasional spats.

We lived on a corner which had a wonderful gully. The side of a hill had a big old rope tied to the limb of a strong tree. Kids would swing out and over the edge of the world. Teenagers would play paintball in the head-high wildflowers. An old mattress served as a wrestling mat for a while. It was a land of no law and utter happiness. I would watch through my windows as life in the gully unfolded. Kids ruled. I loved that gully.

So, as I've said, I called Joe to chew the fat.

He said that my house had been sold and all he could see of any humans in it was a truck parked in the driveway once in a while. He said the gully was in the middle of being plowed and stripped of vegetation to make way for an apartment building. He said that McCowan's had been bulldozed and apartments were going up where it had stood for so long.

And then my daughter called to say that Papadakis Restaurant was being torn down to make way for a Marie Callender's chain restaurant. And that Janice Hahn, the longtime City Council member, who had always been so liberal and proud of being a native of San Pedro, had cheered about it, saying it would bring money and jobs to our town.

I was shocked.

All this had happened in the space of SEVEN MONTHS!

But this is a tale of TWO cities.

Now I live in Oklahoma, because I couldn't afford California on my little retirement check.

I came back to Shawnee, where old high school friends, family, and an ex-husband still live.

I was shocked when I came back.

The town, which had once been so pretty and neat and clean, has become a ghost town. Main Street is almost deserted. Store after store is boarded up. Weeds grow through the cracks in the sidewalks. Hardly any cars drive down the road. The residential neighborhoods are bleak. Where the respectable homeowners used to keep the lawns mowed and paint fresh on their houses, I now see broken pickups and peeling paint and overgrown grass.

WHAT has HAPPENED???

In Shawnee's case it is Wal-Mart. It has sucked the life from the town. The Big Box sits on the edge of town with a crowd of cars surrounding it, like ants around a piece of jelly bread. Even the other stores which are part of the shopping complex have only a few cars parked near them.

Wal-Mart sucks it ALL away.

And it has left unemployed, hopeless meth freaks in its wake.

And people who have more money than I will EVER have in my lifetime have sucked the life out of the gully, McCowan's, and downtown San Pedro.

Two towns have had their souls sucked out and replaced with cheap shit that we ALL are addicted to.

Damn.

But it is not hopeless. Most of you reading this know how the world is changing and how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and it seems like a hopeless cause to try to stop it.

But at least I can write about it one more time. Because when it hits home, it hits home.

My ox has been gored.

Now it's personal.

So my message to you is:

Buy from your local merchants.

Support your neighbors.

Save your town.

We are all connected.

next time: Animal Farm