Re: Ghetto documentation—rain & barf

[J.David Moriaty]

"2812 1/2 Nueces
Monday, April 8, 1963

"Tary moved out last week, so now its just me and Hersh. And that's 
jes' fine. "

Tary had recruited me in January under the understanding he would move 
momentarily. February came, and he was only able to come up with $10 on 
the rent, so he recruited Hersh, which made his share only $13.333. 
That still put him $3.333 in arrears, no small change in those days, 
three six packs of Pearl Beer at the 7-11.

I seem to remember that, to avoid further embarrassment, he moved in 
with some chick, but letters to parents offer no clue. I seem to have 
taken up with Anne Hubbard, since she is briefly mentioned—"Anne is 
maybe coming home with me [on Easter]"

"Rained here two days without stopping. Hadn't rained since March 11. 
Thought everything was gonna float away. Did the flowers good, we got 
30 big roses on the two bushes [out by the alley] and another 30 
middle-sized ones on the other [on the fence between the yards]. 
Amazing. The desert blooms.

"We even cleaned all the trash and the old car that was against the 
fence and the courtyard is beginning to look real suave. Even got tons 
of peaches starting on the tree."

What is not mentioned is the great manure disaster that almost made 
Powell St.John an enemy for life. There were old barren planter beds 
next to the entries, and it being Spring I bought a bunch of flower 
seedlings at Sage as well as several bags of cow manure.

The manure was not composted. Spread dry on the old planters and around 
the rose bushes, it was more or less OK until the rain, then there was 
an overwhelming reek of fresh vomit, which hit Powell especially hard 
since he lived on the ground floor. I remember him raging "flowers! At 
least you should have planted vegetables so we would have something to 
eat!" It was all moot. The pecans in the courtyard leafed out two weeks 
later and everything died from lack of light.

We painted the walls the obligatory 60's dead white except for the sign 
over the bedroom door, a really nice pencil rendition of a pair of 
testicles over the legend: Main Ball Room.

There were Chinese red burlap curtains  someone had left for color. I 
found a quart of Ramona Green enamel in the old paint cabinet back in 
Port Arthur and refinished the peeling white wood kitchen counter tops.

I sanded and painted the scabrous toilet seat same color and got Kit 
Teele's dad to show us how to write foo [the Ranger's euphemism for 
'shit'] in white Japanese characters on the lid.

As the weather warmed we found the bedroom windows couldn't be left 
open since they overlooked the alley. The caliche surface brought up 
clouds of white dust in the drought. Even with the windows closed the 
dust permeated the bedroom. Mixed with sweat it turned the white sheets 
on the two double beds a color now popularized as 'putty'.

The beds had open, rusting springs topped by heavy cotton mattresses 
that exuded damp. Sperm-soaked by countless student generations, the 
faded grey and white ticking was disfigured by large yellow clouds 
rimmed in brown. We all hoped those were due to innocent roof leaks and 
protected ourselves from them with heirloom quilts, too worn and out of 
fashion to care about.

The alley was lined with dozens of open galvanized steel garbage cans, 
their tops long gone. They were nightly ravaged by neighborhood dogs, 
and the strewn garbage left to be mashed into the caliche by passing 
vehicles. When the resulting dehydrated powder was energized by the 
rains, the smell lent quite an atmosphere to the neighborhood.

Later we bought a set of new cans at Sage, but the lids were almost 
immediately scavenged for shields, painted with coats of arms and 
legends for the Ranger–Texan pie fight we'll get to later.

Dave