On the first day of 2021, I went for a walk around sunset. It is a favorite time of the day for me, especially in the winter, with the sun so low in the horizon. The light is delicate and enchanting. As light leaves and darkness comes on, it is one of those liminal times. The border between the past and present, the living and the dead, becomes more of a membrane. We can be fed with what we don’t comprehend.
A
short walk from our house is Matt’s Bar at 35th and Cedar, where the
Jucy Lucy was born (sorry, 5-8 Club, but it was here). On the semaphore pole are
the remains of a memorial to three people, killed by an 18-year old driver who
had stolen a car. The three people were
coming from a family gathering; they had no knowledge of the young man, nor of
how their lives would connect in that one awful moment.
I
walked down one block to the Holiday Gas Station, where a small memorial sits
in the snow. A 23-year old man was killed by police on the last day of 2020.
The police released footage that seems to show he fired first at the officers
who had pulled them over. The young man
had had some knowledge of law enforcement, with a few “run-ins” with the law. But
none of his family and friends saw this coming.
I don’t know if he knew the officer who shot and killed him. The gas station is less than a mile from where
George Floyd was murdered by police on Memorial Day.
I
walked a block west, watching the sky, then turned back north on 18th
Ave, the street we live on. At 35th
and 18th is the parking lot of the Hope Temple Foursquare
Church. The low sign on the corner of
the lot has been fully repaired since a hit and run driver struck it. The same
driver, a young man drunk and going close to 70 miles an hour, hit a car at that
intersection, killing a young man. The
victim was a scientist, and a musician who played in a local band. He lived with his wife one block as the crow
flies from our house. There was a
memorial for him for a long while, but now that has gone away. The house he lived in has gone away as well, made
unfit by a huge tree that was felled during a storm a year after his death.
On
the second day of 2021, I thought about
these memorials, and I thought about the places where happenstance or fate or a
terrible coincidence brought the lost lives to their end.
At
Matt’s, a Jucy Lucy is a concoction where cheese is sealed between two thin hamburger
patties and then fried. It comes with a
warning to watch the first bite, because the cheese is so hot. It’s been a neighborhood cornerstone for
years. I remember back in the 70’s, it
was so smoky you couldn’t see to the end of the bar. Since Minnesota outlawed smoking in indoor
establishments, it has become a place where families as well as young adults
hang out.
The
gas station has a long pit to the north of the car wash; I assume it is to
eliminate stormwater runoff from entering the storm sewers and then onto the
river. We’ve bought gas there many times; our Cub Foods reward card gives us
10, 20, 30 cents off per gallon, depending on how much food we buy.
The
sign on the Foursquare Church parking lot has a logo with white silhouettes on
different color squares: a cross on red, chalice on blue, crown on purple, dove
on yellow. I assume they represent the
four core beliefs of every Foursquare Church: Jesus is our savior, healer,
baptizer and soon coming king. The
members of the church have planted several trees in the boulevard on both sides
of 35th Street..
One
square block, three memorials to needless death, at three random places.
Our
soon to be departing president vetoed the defense bill, not because he wants to
limit our death-making machine, but because he didn’t want the part that
eliminated the name of traitor racist generals from military bases. Those memorials of Confederate generals are
not outpourings of sorrow, or rage at injustice, or the hope of keeping a loved
one’s memory alive. They are about glorifying
terrorism.
This
is not the blog post I anticipated writing in this new New Year. But there is still grieving in my soul, for
what we’ve lost this past year, and during the life of our city and
country. It is serenity we need to
accept our losses; it is courage we need to work to change the things we can,
it is the wisdom hidden in the evening winter sky that gives me hope.
Be
beauty. Be justice. Be memory.
Patrick
