Category Archives: Suburbia

 Baby Steps That Make For Success

14 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Exercise/ Fitness, Family, Sexuality, Suburbia

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I bought a bicycling helmet today at REI. What a great store! I definitely will get the bike rack there.  My brother’s old Chicago-made Schwinn 10-speed is ready. So cycling is in my future.

Today was another hot day, but I took care of myself, exercised, ate right, and even took a nap! It would be nicer if I weren’t hot, but this day was filled with the little accomplishments that make for satisfying days.

Tomorrow I pick up the bike, hang around the house for the HVAC service call, and go to the Y with D, my stepmother and workout buddy. It won’t be in that order. But close.

Re-thinking The Automobile

22 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in American History, food, Suburbia

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I actually walked somewhere I needed to be yesterday, instead of driving.  Rather than use the word “liberating” to describe a small act of resistance against Car Dependence, I think the term “Common Sense” is more apropos. 

My parents grew up in a world of sidewalks and street cars.    If they needed to get somewhere, they walked or took the street car.  Their neighborhood, Church Hill, was divided from the downtown area of Richmond by Shockoe Valley. Mom would cross Shockoe Valley and trudge up Broad Street Hill when she walked to the old John Marshall High School. I suspect it was roughly the same distance I walked yesterday.  It was no big deal eighty years ago to do what I did.  The numerous immigrants from the developing world think nothing of walking to places when they arrive in America.  Our church sponsored South Sudanese refugees (the famous “Lost Boys”), fleeing that now-forgotten civil war in the 1990’s.  These young men simply walked where they needed to go, out of habit and necessity.  They did not drive.

In my part of Henrico County, sidewalks are a hit or miss proposition.   For example there is was no sidewalk to my destination on the route I took from home, but there was a sidewalk for use on my return route.   Sidewalks are useful if a pedestrian wants to reduce the chance of being hit by an automobile.

After World War Two, the suburban paradigm captured American urban planning and the popular imagination.  Sidewalks were an afterthought and a redundancy.  Cars were the indispensible necessity when planning communities.  It was a given that a household had at least one car, possibly two.   The distances between housing developments and supermarkets (to name one destination) would be breached by a car.  A family bought a week’s worth of groceries on the jaunt to the store; such purchasing was made possible by a freezer and frozen foods.  I remember so well the frozen bricks of spinach, green beans and cauliflower my mother bought.  Fresh meat could be frozen, then thawed and cooked later.   Walking to a store and returning with a sizeable quantity of food was a challenge.

So back to 2017.   The challenge we now face, living in suburban America is to shift our thinking around the automobile from a necessity to a convenience.  I set out a rough guideline. If a distance to destination is under two miles, I will make an effort to walk there and plan my day accordingly.  We shall see how this turns out.

 

Memory Chain Reaction

19 Friday May 2017

Posted by in Family, food, memoir, Suburbia

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1.jpg1953Nash

1953 Nash Ambassador

It is the 1950’s, a Friday night, and we need to go grocery shopping.  We have one car, a 1953 Nash Ambassador Super, black body with a red top, Continental wheel, straight 6 engine, three on the tree, and overdrive. A righteous car. We all pile in the car, Dad, me, my elder brother in the front, Mama, my sister, my younger brother in the back.  That’s the we way we did riding in the car. Mother did not drive. We had just one car anyway.

We went to the A&P. Some people went to the Safeway; some people shopped at the Colonial Store; some went to Siegel’s (run by brothers Hip and Charlie). There were other local independent supermarkets and superettes (so asserted Richfood, the local buyers’ co-op).  But we went to the A&P.  To a child’s mind, this was almost like our religious affiliation. We were Presbyterians on Sunday who shopped at the A&P on Friday and we all rode in the same car to go to both church and store.  “God’s in His Heaven, all’s right with the world.” 

We would shop.  Dad preferred Bokar Coffee, available only at A&P.  That’s probably why we went. Dad was as serious about his coffee as he was about this country, the Marine Corps, the Presbyterian Church and the Republican Party.  Coffee was serious business in his family. His father (Pop) called it “Arbuckles”. The first coffee I ever tasted was what Pop gave to me from a spoon, with cream.  Still the best coffee I ever tasted.

The A&P was on Meadowbridge Road in Highland Park, near a fire station.  The neighborhood was transitioning from all-white to all-black.   Next to the A&P was a High’s Ice Cream Store. It was a local chain, that had chrome steel swivel stools at the counters.  They sold ice cream at five cents a scoop. The single scoop cone had a pointy end. Sometimes we would be mean to my sister and bite the tip off her cone. (I think she forgave us for this. At least I hope so.)  The High’s Stores were staffed by these little old ladies who wore pale pastel-green dresses (like the old fashioned nurses’ uniforms) and hairnets, white hairnets.  As drug addiction grew in the Richmond area, the junkies would rob the High’s Stores to get the money for a fix..  Eventually the High’s Stores went out of business and the junkies moved on to the 7-Elevens.

Ice cream was a big deal. On a hot summer night, we would get in the car, ride to High’s, Dairy Queen, Tastee Freez, or the Curles’ Neck Dairy Bar.  When we went to Curles’ Neck, we could get an awesome maple nut ice cream.  Then we would ride down to Byrd Park and watch the illuminated fountain in the Fountain Lake.  It was fun.  It was free. My Dad, who worked between his civilian job and his Marine Reserve duty almost constantly, loved this time with his children.  We loved this time with him.

In retrospect, all of these simple pleasures were living on borrowed time.  What destroyed them was affluence and the advertisers who promoted bigger and better versions of fun.  So now we go to Disney World or Busch Gardens or Kings Dominion, for better or worse.

Curiosity

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in memoir, Sexual Identity, Suburbia

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Adult Content

Way back in the early Seventies, a movie was released from Sweden entitled  I Am Curious- Yellow.  Shortly thereafter came its sequel, I Am Curious-Blue. Blue and yellow are the colors in the Swedish flag. Get it? The curiosity centered around sex, naked people having intercourse.  I remember going to the Rose Bowl Drive-in to see it. The Rose Bowl had an incredibly cool sign, red neon roses. The sign was the most memorable aspect of every excursion to the The Rose Bowl.  Watching this “fine” Swedish import was no exception. Viewing Porn was just beginning to go mainstream in the Seventies, for better or for worse.  Visual, cinematic pornography is now ubiquitous.  But in the Seventies, you had to go out of your way to see porn. It was an excursion into some seedy, sketchy places.  Porn still existed on the periphery and  The Rose Bowl sat on that edge.

The Rose Bowl was on Rte 1, the “Number One Highway”, as it was known then.  Near it was the Wigwam Motel, a tourist court of small one room cabins, spaced in a semi-circle around a larger building that served as office and restaurant.  There was a wooden representation of a “tipi”,  that comprised the roof. Hence the name “wigwam” could be justified. Further up Rte 1 was the Jamaica Country Club, a swimming pool for African-Americans in the days of segregation.  Simply put, it was a different world. The Rose Bowl is gone, as is The Wigwam. The Jamaica Country Club remains, at least physically, if not as a business. The area is giving way to suburban commercial encroachment, a Sonic Drive-in, Taco Bell,  Arby’s, several mini-storage places, antique shops galore.

There were other venues for porn back then. A fraternity house would acquire some “stag” films and show them to male collegians, for a fee. They were black and white, silent films with various sex acts (never sexual activity between males, however) depicted. The college boys (yes definitely boys!) would watch and make comments, predictably as juvenile, immature and sexist as the films, location and  context would inspire. I watched, because I was curious. Here was sex depicted, mysterious, daunting, powerful.  The filmmakers were not Henry Millers or Anais Nins or Joyces.  There was no thought to “art” in these grubby, grainy shorts.  Yet they were, in their way, art. The films were forgettable, except for one which featured two women who were having penetrative sex with a double headed dildo.  It must be said that the performers were not silicon- enhanced “stars”, but rather ordinary women, not particularly attractive, not ugly either.

The main location for “X-rated ” films in Richmond in the 70’s and 80’s was a movie house near  Virginia Commonwealth University called the Lee Art Theater, later called the Lee “X” Theater.  The films were from Essex or Caballero and starred Seka, Vanessa del Rio, John Holmes, John Leslie, the usual suspects. I remember going on slow business afternoons, the theater incredibly dark, the smell of Pine-Sol in the air. Occasionally there were “strippers”, usually female porn stars, like Vanessa del Rio, Annie Sprenkle, and Juliet Anderson, aka “Aunt Peg”. I vaguely recall Vanessa being busted for cocaine possession during her visit to Richmond, but I could be mistaken.  She took off her costume to the song She’s A Latin From Manhattan.   Gathering up the pieces of her freshly discarded outfit was “Dirt Woman”, a transgendered individual, notable for his obesity and a  crude similarity to the late Divine (aka Harris Glen Milstead), the John Waters “superstar”.  He did this for all the travelling performers. Annie Sprenkle did her show against a back drop of slides, one of which featured a Renault Le Car.  She was working on her doctorate at this time. The announcer mispronounced her name, calling her Annie “Sprinkles”.  When Juliet Anderson appeared, she stripped down, put on some kind of cover-up, then sat down for a Q & A with the audience. She did ask that the audience members not smoke.  She had a second hand smoke issue.  She shared that the porn business was rough; women had to buy their own underwear. I asked her if her parents knew she was in the adult film business. She said they did.  All in all,  she was representative of everybody’s sexually liberated individual living in San Francisco.  This was before AIDS, before porn was shot direct to video; when adult films were still marginal.  Eventually VCU bought the building and uses it for something other than showing sleazy movies.

With the advent of the VCR, “Adult” cable channels and finally the internet, porn went mainstream and arguably ubiquitous.  Now I have seen it all. I am no longer compelled by a perverse curiosity.  Yet I still yearn for the erotic, for love expressed through sexuality.  The sexual drama lives, as it always has, between my ears.

Adventures In Gender Nonconformity

01 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in cooking, Gender Roles, Sexual Identity, Suburbia

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That term “Gender Nonconformity” is pretty daunting. Why would I, a committed macho-type heterosexual male, dare to venture into this semantic minefield?

In 1961, the 4-H Club came to Skipwith Elementary School. We were still considered a rural area at that time, before the few farmers remaining sold out to the developers.  There were two teachers, facilitators, I guess they would be called now. There were two programs offered, Insect Collecting presented by the male teacher and Home Economics, facilitated by the female.  The unspoken cultural norm was that the boys would sign up for the Bugs, the girls for the Cooking and Sewing.

I signed up for  Home Economics.  I had no real interest, at that time, in collecting insects. The wonders of entomology had yet to seduce me.  I did, however, have some interest in cooking and the other “Domestic Arts”.  I was the only boy in Home Ec.  I do not know if any girls signed up to catch bugs, kill them with ether in a jar and present them pinned to a board.  The point is that it was no big deal.  Nobody said anything.  My mother was not concerned that I might become a “homo”, to use a contemporary term. She always welcomed any help around the house.

I did learn a thing or two. It kindled an interest in cooking, cleaning, and interior design that I still have.  Regrettably, there wasn’t much focus on sewing. I could have benefited from learning sewing. I wish I had pursued it.

“Gender Nonconforming”.  A boy takes Home Economics. A girl collects bugs. It seems the term inflates the significance and obfuscates the reality of what’s actually happening.  I don’t mean to disparage anyone dealing with these issues  and encountering difficulty.  I know that this is a very tough issue, from what I’ve read from my blogging colleagues. Simply put, my experience in doing a “girl-type” thing was, all in all, rather benign.

To all you Gender Nonconformists out there. Rock on!

Wherein A Cubano At The Mall Inspires Musing About Suburban Living.

26 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in food, Suburbia

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The Cubano is another name for the Cuban sandwich. Yesterday, in a bit of defiance against Weight Watcher point-counting, I ordered one at Cheesecake Factory.  I put one half of the beast aside, ate one half. Then, after 30 seconds of not too careful thought, I ate the second half. I now had this agglomeration of ham, roast pork, cheese, pickle and Cuban bread churning around in my gut for what seemed to be an eternity.  I confided to Mrs CorC? that this would be my Cuban sandwich for the Third Quarter. It could be my last one for a long time. Meat, it has been said, doesn’t really have much flavor. We constantly put stuff on it to give it flavor.  This Cubano brought that message home in a big way. I could taste the pickle and the mustard more than anything else. This morning when I scrambled my egg whites with fresh tomatoes, artichoke hearts, fresh basil and Gorgonzola, I had an explosion of taste which I did not experience yesterday.

Maybe it is Cheesecake Factory that ended my affair with the Cubano. Their food is calorie-laden and over-priced.  But it is in the mall near our house. It isn’t a bad mall as malls go.  It isn’t one of those enclosed nightmares.  It has plenty of plants and foliage plus a rather nifty water garden with koi swimming about.  The irony of this mall is that it is a place we drive to in order to walk around.  Weird, huh?

I miss the city, though. I miss walking places.  You could walk to places in the ‘burbs but it would 1) take forever and 2) be inordinately risky with limited sidewalks and street lighting.  Why not move?  The house is paid for, for starters , and I like our townhouse development.  I have dreams of fixing the place up to be the pleasant home I’ve dreamed of.  But every time I drive down to the urban neighborhood  where my lovely parish church is situated, I see tree-lined avenues with sidewalks and streetlights.  There are shopping districts within walking distance.  That urban neighborhood is diverse, but my townhouse development is no monoculture either.  Should we stay or go? We’ll chew on that some more.