(A Chick Evens story out of Minnesota, 1957)
The Icy-Mississippi
Snow is on
the sidewalks, and in the streets, a thin layer covering the Mississippi River,
on top of four-inches of ice —the winter houses and buildings are all lit,
fires glowing inside of them: hearths, furnaces burning red hot, as I rush out
into the cold early Saturday morning brisk air to sell newspapers “Five Cents!”
I’ll soon be yelling once I get downtown, I tell myself.
It is December, 1957 and I’m
ten-years-old, just turned ten-years-old in October matter-of-fact. Come
summer, mother says, that grandpa says, we’re going to move a mile or so away,
to a street called Cayuga, I guess they’re going to build a housing project
hereabouts for low income families, I thought that’s what we are?
I see people sitting in their houses as
I walk by: men, women and children—as if their minds are unoccupied, it’s 6:00
a.m., some of the houses are covered with blotches of snow, Minnesota snow can
get heavy if it gets sticky, or hard, yes snow gets hard, and even harder when
compacted, try to walk in it under these conditions, then you’ll know; some
even appear to smile back at me as I glance from one white house to another,
they are all white even if they’re not white underneath the coating of snow,
one to the other—with their shadowy silhouettes, they are all brothers or
sisters today.
In the quiet morning cold, the houses
seem to whisper to me—as if they have secrets to tell—but I’m too young to stop
and listen, I’m not yet a hunter of tales.
Moreover, they can only tell me things I am too young to fully
understand.
Some of the houses are completely dark,
solid gray dark inside those windows, with a white outside; I suppose the people
haven’t crawled out of bed yet. In other houses, I hear laughter as I walk down
Jackson Street to the St. Paul Pioneer Press Newspaper to get my stack of
papers to sell on the corner of Forth and Robert Streets. Once I get down
there, I’ll be able to see the icy-Mississippi River from where I’ll stand and
sell the newspapers. The ice get so thick people drive their cars on the river
to fish.
I pass a dozen more houses, two, then
three dozen, now I pass tall clusters and bulky looking buildings—with locked
tight doors, but I know they will open soon for the Saturday morning
window-shoppers.
I start to yell “St. Paul Pioneer Press!
Get your St. Paul Pioneer Press…FIVE CENTS!”
Slow moving, and slow speaking people
walk by and drive by in cars. I think my business is the most interesting in
town—but of course at ten-years old, who wouldn’t think so. There even seems to
be a touch of romanticism in this newspaper selling business, I haven’t a clue
what’s in the newspapers though, don’t care either; I’m too young to be
bothered with such worldly things. Incidentally, my name’s Chick.
No: 539 ((12-5-2009) (reedited 5-12-2010)) / Reedited 2nd
time, 7-2015 / Note: The author lived at 109 East Arch Street, moved to 186
Cayuga Street, the summer of 1958.
