The Alley Less Traveled

The other day, I read an intriguing article on folk agriculture. The writer suggested that we might return to more sustainable food systems--meaning local food systems. She pointed out that humans used to get their food closer to home. I was introduced through the piece to wildcrafting, a word I immediately fell in love with. I don't know which part of the word I love most--wild--or--craft since both define me pretty well. So, put together, we're talking about a lifestyle right up my alley.

"Food access used to happen in lots of places in our lives, not just at grocery stores and restaurants."  Gordon Smith

Speaking of alleys, on my morning walk I realized that I've not walked through any alleys this summer. I always do so two or three times to capture images of vines growing on garages that haven't been painted in twenty years. I love getting a back alley view of America--a glimpse of the side of ourselves we don't show the world. I also hold out hope that I'll find something really interesting growing back there. Quite purposefully, I keep my nails long enough to have them serve as sheers. This morning, I pinched off a sweet pea in full bloom. It was growing on a beautiful old stone wall that bordered what I suspect may be a carriage house. This morning, I noticed that the neighborhoods in the general vicinity of our house have many properties with carriage houses. This fascinates me. I long to know what life was like in South Bend 100 plus years ago when people still had horses and carriages. And I am amazed that these structures are still standing. There are some pretty "ancient" ones at the back of some Victorian houses along Lincolnway East. This is not a highly sought-after neighborhood. Actually, no neighborhood in South Bend benefits from the rule location, location, location. But, the neighborhoods along Lincolnway are even more ignored, which is fine by me because it means that maybe one day, if I'm lucky, I may for a song own one of these gems.

Perhaps what makes the area even more unappealing to most is that it backs up to a very active railroad. I walked along it this morning as well, picking some weeds, aka wildflowers--some yellow ones I'd not noticed before but which were growing abundantly and the purplish blue ones that grow in every Rust Belt city I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. These foot-high beauties have taken over huge fields in my hometown of Detroit. As I plucked these two varieties up by the root--intent upon planting them in my already wild backyard--I prayed that I wouldn't break out in a rash or, worse, die upon contact. I slightly exaggerate my fears. In fact, I should be more fearful. Most people would agree that walking highways and byways, not to mention urban alleyways, is not smart. Maybe so, but my rebellious spirit against all things others consider smart and not smart naturally makes me go against the grain. I also am curious and growing more so with the passing of each day about the historic functions of all of the weeds that populate cities. If I had another lifetime to investigate, I sure would like to become an herbalist. How wasteful are we to ignore daily plants that for all we know could be tremendously pleasing to our palates or, even better, a panacea for much of what ails us? I'd like this city in which I currently reside much better if on my walks I ran into other wild children out foraging (another word I love). We could share recipes. I could invite such persons to my kitchen, and they'd invite me to theirs. We'd sit on our front or back porches surrounded by trumpet vine and have a lunch of dandelion greens, nasturtium flowers, and marigold heads.

I actually met such a person just a few weeks ago. She lives on a corner on a questionable street with at least one vacant house with a large lot next to it which she plans to buy for a full-fledged garden. Her home is inspired. You can hardly see her front porch what for the growth, and on the facade of the second floor is a huge metal, painted dragonfly. I spotted this urban gardener when I'd gotten done checking out the abandoned house, which, since for rent, may serve as my writer's cottage next summer. As I approached the slender lady, she was bent over, snipping off something with her own fingers. I said something. I forget what, and she told me that she was collecting radish pods, which are great on salads. Right then, I could see that she was going to talk to me and that she had a lot to teach. I view her home, replete with chickens and a shed turned into a coop, as an urban farm. This woman of the house--whom I will call Laura though that is not her real name--can get most of her meals from her yard, and she let me know, after she'd given me a couple dozen basil leaves, that I could stop by with a basket anytime. According to her, many of the plants I saw growing, even the tomato plants, had volunteered, so even though giving one's city lot over to a garden can require a full-day's work, diminishing one's food anxiety--increasing one's food security--may allow one partner of a two-adult household to quit her day job. I dream of this possibility when I walk throughout the city. I wonder what all besides eating I can do with the lush vegetation of South Bend--dried floral arrangements, pretty water colors to be sold at the local farmer's market in winter? I have sold there before. I am not above it even though my Ph.D. suggests I should want more or other for myself and family.

My new friend is just the type who would keep me in this city though I swear every year I will not endure another. She scavenges, and she has told me there is a whole group of urban foragers here who make it their job to know every apple, pear, plum, and peach tree within the city limits and also a few fruit varieties long forgotten or, like mulberry, underappreciated. Laura had completely won my heart when she shared that she traipses onto abandoned lots looking for food. I am similarly drawn, as much for the beauty of decay, a good picture that I might paint to share on Facebook, or to just dream about restoring as I am drawn to potential foodstuff, but I am not closed to the latter. Laura told me to try one of the most plentiful edible greens--lambs quarters. I have Googled it, and she is right. It can be eaten raw or cooked. It's good on salads, and when cooked some say it tastes like chard. The weed is quite plentiful. God's provision I think. There is a warning, however. When it is found in abundance, the ground is likely contaminated, for it is there to restore the soil. This it seems is its other purpose. I have not yet consumed any lambs quarters, but I'm definitely gearing up. Would that the whole world would step outside of the box and live a little on the wild side. Life would be so much more interesting, but then, such radical change should it ever become the norm might lead me to search for the old order.

Where the Ancestors Reside

Margaret Mitchell does not make light of the O'Hara's Irish ancestry. This comes across in the novel in ways that it did not in the film. Irish ancestry is a key aspect of the story; it is how both Gerald O'Hara and Scarlett's determination is explained. In the case of Gerald for certain, his success is at least partly for the ancestors who never could have experienced the good life in Europe. Rhett Butler recognizes Scarlett's "Irish spirit." It is one of the things he likes about her. He notices when she has her Irish up. Scarlett herself hardly recognizes the depth of her heritage while she has but one goal before her--winning Ashley Wilkes. It is not until she figures him dead and perceives herself as abandoned in the world, left by Butler as well, that she acknowledges her ancestors.

"And when they died, they died spent but unquenched. All those shadowy folks whose blood flowed in her veins seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room. And Scarlett was not surprised to see them, these kinsmen who had taken the worst that fate could send them and hammer it into the best. Tara was her fate, her fight, and she must conquer it."

This is what comes to Scarlett as she lay in bed planning her future. She wonders if the ancestors are in fact in the room with her, or if the dimension she has entered is only a dream. "'Whether you are there or not,' she murmured sleepily, 'good night--and thank you'."

The mystical including presence of ancestors can be found throughout the novel. In the same chapter, Mitchell writes, "There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald's shoulders." One can read this figuratively, Gerald seen to be standing on the shoulders of his ancestors. Their perseverance
has led to his. One can read it symbolically, which would be to read it from a symbolic universe in which there is a crowd existing in another dimension and yet ever present as witnesses. I do not think it unintentional that Mitchell places the ancestors behind the shoulders or, perhaps, off to the sides, for it has been suggested by others that this is how, visually, they are attached. Mitchell would seem to know this. Mitchell has undoubtedly acquired such an understanding.

Reading Gone with the Wind

I began reading Gone with the Wind at the beginning of June. I am almost half way through. I'm an incredibly slow reader because I savor and make a study of text. I am amazed at just how much cultural information Mitchell's book contains. I am especially interested in what she suggests throughout her text, about class.

She helps us understand how it is that Gerald has come to be a slave owner and that, despite his success, he will always be confined to a certain class partly because of his Irish heritage. Gerald, she explains while giving the background leading up to his becoming a planter, didn't want to be "in trade" like his brothers. He didn't want a life of endless "bargaining."

I have been studying trade and bargaining. I am fascinated by these terms and their meaning in the context of nineteenth century America and, even more so, in the context of slave society. I first became familiar with this term, however, through my grandfather, a Mississippi expat, who always spoke of "trading" with certain grocers in Detroit. He had been a small grocer himself in both Mississippi and Detroit, but I suspect that he had learned the term in the South, where he had done much business with area whites in both the small town where he lived and in Memphis, where he traveled regularly to buy and sell cotton and cattle. Many times, I've come across historical writings in which trade and bargaining are mentioned. For instance, right now, I'm studying the Southern Claims Commission file of Cato Govan, a former slave who made a good deal of money during the Civil War hauling cotton to Memphis.

What intrigues me about Mitchell's commentary is that she places the planter far above that of the merchant. A good deal of Gone with the Wind is in fact spent telling a story that has this class problematic as its foundation. Gerald is not Ellen's social equal; Scarlett is not Ashley's equal, and Rhett, despite coming from a good family, is not received by any reputable families, so, in the end, he is not Scarlett's equal. I am interested in this issue for many many reasons as I have immersed myself in Southern culture of the twenty-first century, studying at the same time William Crump, who was an attorney but appears on the 1860 census as a grocer despite the fact that he was a relatively prosperous planter. What gives? Why would Crump self-identify as a grocer rather than as a planter, especially if the former was less respectable?

I have my suspicions about Mr. Crump given that I have read more than one account of his character and person. He appears to have been a Unionist of sorts. As I've been reading GWTW, I have compared him to the unforgettable Rhett Butler. Was Crump too all about profit? Was money everything to him? He was attorney for Elizabeth Hull, owner of my ancestors. Hull trusted him both to take care of her business and with her daughter, whom he married. It was apparently an unhappy marriage; Crump was thought to be uncaring. Elizabeth the younger died, it would seem, heartbroken. Neighbor Henry Craft's diary is one source for this view of the marriage.

My guess is that there were layers and dimensions to William Crump. These deserve to be investigated, for to do so would be to provide a more complex view of Southern society than most of us have received. This investigation may have capitalism as its foundation. Why was Crump Unionist? Was he simply the same pragmatist as the fictional Butler? Was he as dead set on survival as even our heroine Scarlett O'Hara Butler would come to be? How well did Crump come through the war?

In 1870, we find him living in a household led by Morris Anderson, a 32-year-old mulatto carpenter born in North Carolina. Crump, now 65, would appear to have a good amount of money relative to his neighbors. Perhaps he eschewed all social convention. This living arrangement would certainly seem to suggest such independence. I look forward to digging deeper to find out.