Home can mean a lot of things to different people. For me home means Mobile Alabama and even more so the house that I grew up in. That is and will always be home for me because I was really fortunate to grow up in that one house on Wagner Street. All of my memories from my early childhood through college come back to that one house.
Our home was really nothing special at all. I would bet that the house was probably only 1800 square feet but it was enough for our small family. We made do. There was a large front and back yard that we took great pride in keeping clean and tidy. During March and April the front yard was always an explosion of azaleas, magnolias, lilies and fading camelias. Everything was just so. The majority of our neighbors took equal pride (Thank you Mrs. Cunningham for the fig tree next door, just over my fence). This area was one of the first middle class neighborhoods in Mobile where African Americans lived in the late 60's after the White population moved away because of desegregation. My hero Hank Aaron grew up here. This is where you could find the teachers, doctors, and politicians. As an adult I know that this was due to redlining of districts (I urge you to look that term up if you are not aware of it because it plays a major role in why racial inequity still exists today and why the playing field is anything but equal) but that did not matter, because we were a community in every sense. This was just a very special safe place to grow up and call home.
Unfortunately, it is anything but home now. Mom sold the house after Pops passed on and it has not been the same since then. After Mom moved I found that my reasons to go to Mobile became less and less frequent for me and now I rarely go back. I think that I was in Mobile maybe seven years ago and stopped to see my God Parents. They told me how things had changed and how the house was now run down. Schools were different, parks gone, memories and standards erased. With a new younger generation of African Americans taking over the properties their relatives had in Toulminville, the previous standard of care was thrown out of the window. My childhood home now reflected that. When I drove by that day I found a home with cars parked in the yard on the grass, no flowers or care given to the property, and the front porch looked like Ma and Pa sat out front with ten neighbors every night and boozed it up on 40's. The home was now painted a hideous shade of blue. There was nothing green or alive it seemed, and it simply broke my heart. A few years ago with the advent of Google street view I visited that home again only to find the same heart break. I honestly vowed never to look again.
I had an unexpected visit back there this past weekend. A friend and his wife from Houston went to Mobile to visit their own relatives and contacted me via text while they were there. My friend asked me where I grew up, and I shared the location hoping that they would not go by. It went through the back of my mind that a picture phone would not be my friend if they went there, but that was likely their intention by contacting me in the first place. And yes, the picture came the next day. The scab was picked again. In all fairness to them, they really had no idea and there was no way to tell them all that I shared here in this post.
They can't be faulted. I just wish that they could have known Wagner Street as I knew it. I wish they could have met Mr and Mrs Cunningham and jumped the fence to swipe a few figs. I wish the could have met Mrs Shamburger - damn that woman made some mean fried chicken. I wish we could have gone to the end of the block so that I could have introduced them to Mrs. Watson on the school board. We could have gone to the street behind us where Mrs. Vincent lived who was pretty much my nanny growing up - she loved me so dearly. Lastly we could have gone down to Donald Street and seen Bessie C. Fonville Elementary where my father was a principal for many years. They actually named a building after him that bore his name until the school closed last year.
But all of that is gone now and I can't share it. I can only share my perception of their intention.
