Poems of the Cayuga Street Gang of the '50s

Δ
Neighborhood Poems
(Out of Donkeyland)

I See the Boys
((Of Donkeyland) (1960s))

I see the boys of Cayuga Street; it is summer (it is in the early sixties). They are sitting on the steps of the neighborhoodgrocery store, in the evening it will be the church steps(with the heat, and the summer winds).They are talking about the neighborhood girlschewing on green apples from old man Brandt's backyard.

These boys of the neighborhood, called Donkeylandby the police, are curds in their recklessness?Sweet and sour, like honey on fire:the jacks of folly, with fingers like bees.Here in the summer's sun, they sneak underbridges, catch pigeons, scale the beams withno doubt; even in the dark they feed their nerves.After twilight, after leaving the church stepsthey will go down to the train tracks open up a car full of beer, jump over thecrematory fence, and get wasted.

I see the boys of Cayuga Street, it is still summerthey divide the night and day with mental imagesthey got on dark shades.As sunlight paints in the moon, they are buildingbonfires in the empty lot (by Indian's Hill).I see now some will die young, some in the Armythe Vietnam War is going on, others willdie old, or in their 60s (I know of a few already)but this is still far-off....
There, in the night, everyone's sleeping, but the boysin the neighborhood turnaround (some have chains of keys hidden behindtheir coats: Mike, and Gary and a few othersthey will borrow a car or two, for a joyride).Here all the girls and boys hold their drinks high

smoking, joking, a fight or two, Big Ace makingloud noises like a fool, dancing—David laughing, I'm somewhere around; it's a love and drunken quarry.Oh, I don't see much promise of the boys, some ruin—but who knows, I might be fooled.They are becoming men, there father's were;the sons of the hard and grey, with a sparkleft for the playing field.

4-22-2008 (#2359)

Three Houses and an Attic

Three houses were on the embankment
we lived in one, to the far right,

a wiredfence stood between

our house and theirsalong with trees,

chimneys, and so forth.

The summers were very hot back then
in the ‘50s, boiled an egg on the sidewalk;

our attic bedroom was even hotter…!.

My prayers were said, stuffed animals
surrounded my bed, my brother on the
other side of the room, readied himself
to sneak out the window, and visit the
gang in the turnaround. And my mother
would say, “You boys are really quiet up
there…”; funny she never found out.

Notes: Funny isn’t it, but simple things are often remembered with a chuckle, at the time, I thought my brother was quite bold and daring, jumping out the window onto the pantry roof, and climbing down a ladder he had placed there, before he went into the house, for the evening. He had his plans, but I got the better of the sleep. #1513 (2006)

Cayuga Drag Strip: 500

Night, from an attic bedroom window

can be a dreary, if not ghostly dark thing…

street lamps reflecting glares from the
passing cars, raindrops hitting your
forehead and face; rustic and squeaky
metal sounds coming from nearby railroad
cars. But the worse of it was the drag strip.
A few of the gang boy’s would hotrod up

and down Cayuga street, as if it was
a drag way; consequently, hard to sleep.
My brother would simply say: “Can’t
you be quiet, go back to sleep!” Well,
it was easy for him to say, he had just
snuck back in the house from a heavy
night, through that window I wrote about
before, in a poem; he was you know,
one of those bone-headed hot-rodders!

Note: back in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, the neighborhood boys used Cayuga Street, as a drag strip, and you never knew when they’d pull those old 1940-Fords up to the corner, and peel rubber like, cutting ham. #1514



Empty Lot

In the middle of summer
in the empty lot, next to Indians Hill, (up the embankment was my grandpa’s housewhere my brother, mother and I lived), we’d play softball (reckless days of my youth).After the game, the Cayuga Street Gang was eager —with their wild wishes and all—to find some
lonely place and get plowed!! And we did.

Note: I don’t rightly know of any neighborhood that drank more than we did. Many of us turned into alcoholics, some still alive, some died from it, some recovered, I was one of those in the latter category.


—Farewell Donkeyland
(Memories and ashes)

I remember the last day in the neighborhood; it was in the year ‘68.After that day, I’d never return to stay—I’d follow the sunset; travel the world, become the person I wanted to become, I realized, it couldn’t happen there, not in that neighborhood, alas, but so true.

The day had a gleam of light to it, and in my body a hesitation, the air was fresh, it was a yellow morning, daybreak, it was April, I was outside the Mont Airy Bar; having said my last goodbyes over a beer or two, leaning a friend’s car.

I didn’t realize then, I’d remember so well such simple things, such as the cool Midwestern air of spring, the faces of the Cayuga Street Gang, and a hundred seemingly, inconsequential things, I was on my way to the cosmopolitan city of the west, the city by the bay, San Francisco.I remember her long—my neighborhood: some feelings now escape me, corners that hate me, yet life there went on, now mostly gone to memories and ashes, memories and ashes, like this poem.

Note: Our neighborhood was called Donkeyland by the St. Paul Police, of Minnesota; nicknamed by a police officer called Howe who use to comb Cayuga Street, and the rest of the neighborhood back in the late 50s and 60s. #1517

Old Mrs. Stanley

She sits on her porch and knits

in the mornings, bending at the
windowsill, with those old, old
waxed fingers, you can almost
see those old perturbing veins
from where I stand, she’s just
smiling away—looking up and
down Cayuga Street, checking
out the boys and girls, the gang:

my old neighbor, and widow,
at ninety-three, Mrs. Stanley.

When noon comes around, she’ll

switch windows, pull back the
curtain, in the kitchen, spoon
in her soup; check out the birds
in her birdbath, splashing water
all about, she bought it after her
husband passed on, perhaps from
boredom. She doesn’t care if
I’m looking over the fence, to see
her looking back, I’m just a
teenagers, wet behind the ears,
a neighborhood fact, a dupe.

In the evenings, in summer, she’ll
pull weeds from her backyard
garden, a few vegetables will grow
back there; not much to speak of,
carrots and cucumbers.
I think, or so it seeps up from deep
within my head, “Doesn’t she
have anything else to do?” I’m being
really kind of cruel, she knows this
from my looks…she really seems
kind of homeless to me, in that big
house, but she knows I don’t care;
and neither does she.

Now at sixty, I can kind of identify
with her, I’m in my little house garden,
pulling dead leaves off geraniums,
picking up dead worms, looking out
my bedroom curtains, trying to see
what teenagers plan on robbing me,
and how soon, will I be able to go to sleep.

Mrs. Stanley, her husband died about 1960 at the age of 67, if I recall right, after retiring from the Railroad, he didn’t live long after his retirement, perhaps two years. He bought a 1959-Rambler, drove it one year, and that was it, it sat in the garage for the next five years. Not sure why, Perhaps Mrs. Stanley loved him more than I could conceive. #1518 (2006)(reedited, and revised, 5-2008) If she could see me now, know me now, she’d say: “Dennis, you fooled me, you actually became somebody!”