Poor Folk Along the Levee ((spring of 1988) (Story No: 17 "Voices out of Saigon"))

Poor Folk along the Levee
((spring of 1988) (Story No: 17))


Advance: Everyone has some skeletons in their closets and so did Sergeant Morgan Carter II. He and his mother lived in a hole of an area of St. Paul, Minnesota, on the levee, along the Mississippi River, they tore it down in 1960, that was when he went into the Army, he was seventeen years old then. The judge gave him a choice, the Army or Jail: with no exceptions in-between. It was the way the Army got many of its recruits back then.


The levee was a narrow strip of land, between two bridges along the Mississippi, between the High Bridge, which headed West, and the Robert Street Bridge, a half mile east of it. Many of the folks on the levee were poor folks. It was a sandy, worthless piece of land, that slowed the river down a bit, stony underneath it, and it often flooded ever spring, especially if there was a harsh winter, and most winters in Minnesota were harsh, and most had ninety plus inches of snow a year.
The merchants that had the bars, and small grocery stores, and restaurants, which were poorly made, ramshackle affairs for the most part, lived in them as well as used them for, what I just said, their place of business.
The folks of the levee were really invaders, folks who came into town for one thing or another, had no place else in the country, had a mountain of bad luck, so they would build a shack, and in time made it into a house. It all started long before my mother ((Teresa Carter) (maiden name being Wright)) moved onto the levee with me her son, my father had left long before I was even born, no sense in giving you his name.
Back then, back in the mid ‘50’s, on the levee, folks didn’t have credit per se, like stores would provide in the future, with credit cards and so forth, although they did have a credit system in place. Whatever they handed out over the counter, they wrote on a tab, piece of paper: even the carpenters, and shoemakers and other tradesmen did this, especially the two saloons on the levee, and you’d pay on payday the sum, or whenever the piece of paper told you, you had to pay.

(Carter stopped for a moment, caught his breath)


As I was saying, Ming, or about to say: we got credit back then with a handshake, and a written note, an IOU note, even the farmers did it that way, in 1953, I was ten-years old (you were a year old). And no matter what, one could find cash to get drunk, and every Irish Man on the levee and Italian drank from the age of eight to eighty, blind, crippled or crazy. If you didn’t they’d think you were a sissy.
I cleaned cisterns, swept floors for every establishment in town, and sold papers for the Pioneer Press, a nickel then. When I got older I drank even more, and for days slept it off, caught fish, and took the few cents I sold them for and drank more, I was a drunk at sixteen years old. You don’t know at sixteen or seventeen, it is going to last a life time if you don’t stop your drinking now. Your body is healthy, and your spirit is strong, and you recover, recoil, and rebound quickly. And then age creeps up, and it has its toll on you. It’s the way it is.
In between these years of drinking you become more like an animal than a mature adult, you produce for yourself a hard youth.

(Ming began to get sleepy-eyed, wiped her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she had sat down regularly at a table with a man, and enjoyed listening; his life along the river was not perfect, she told her second self, the person that was locked up in the back of her mind, the one she kept detached most of the time, unless she wanted definite things. And now she had learned to store patience for the man she married, and got up washed her face, and said, “You were saying”:)



I wasn’t so smart back then, I had a sharp- tongue, and fast fists, and hated this levee town, and then mother took me out of her and we moved to the north end of the city, as they still call it.
Most of my friends got jobs from the Railroad, or went onto trades, I was kind of door-jammed not knowing what to do, and watched them move on, one by one. I had several misdemeanors for drinking underage, a few accidents, and I wrote a few back checks out, like thirty of them, and was driving at the time, and had twenty-one parking tickets. I got into a few fights, and put a few people in the hospital.
Well, to make a long story shorter, all this annoyed the judge, and he said, “Son, indolence is found in you,” he devoted all of fifteen minutes lecturing me and when he could think of no more to say, I thought here I go, mister bum to the big house, the jail. But he didn’t say that, he said this:
“Boy, learn to keep things natural, not cloudy, or sleepy minded, get a plan, and work it, fix it in-between, if you wait for a perfect plan, you will end up straight back here, and not even know the purpose for being here, you will join the Army, or I will slam all I can on you and you will not see freedom for two years.”
Well, I thought, two years in the Army or two years in jail. I had to pick one. And as you know Ming, I spent a large part of my life in the Army, and I sobered up. And so this impulse to tell you my background was just an impulse, no more.

(Ming had a tear in her eye; understanding came to her, and her arms ached to hug her husband, he had come on a long journey, and he made it, he had beaten all odds, the world would treat him always with respect, for he demanded it, and worked hard for it, he had tamed the beast in him, and was no longer a burden on anyone. What more, she asked herself, could I ask for, in a man, I mean I have it all, love, devotion, some hard times, a character background that shaped him, and she got up from the sofa, and laboriously started sweeping the floor, as Morgan went back to reading, “All My Pretty Ones,” a book he had sent for. )