Rain in Englewood June 20, 1985
The rains come, washing down Englewood streets, gusts and gales,
dark clouds hanging over the whole town, sucking up the heat from the pavement.
The store air conditioner hums, chilling the air, no longer
needed, but tied into the establishment next door, I cannot turn it off.
Then, suddenly, the sky changes and what was previously gray
turns blue. Streets shimmer, reflecting the sunlight, painting the wet puddles
red, puddles rapidly vanishing into gutters, with a few remaining flashes of
lightning rippling the sky in the distance.
I almost don’t recognize the town from the first time I came
here long ago.
The fundamentals are the same. Palisades still runs each to
west with its accumulation of small shops huddled together in clumps, a phony, mini
metropolis of Woolworths and Bimplies, and a small circle with its monument decorating
the western end.
I used to zip around this in Donald’s red van on my way from
Park Pharmacy or Discount House in nearby Teaneck, two distinctly different towns
with distinctly different populations.
I was impressed by Englewood’s head in parking because it
reminded me of towns I had traveled throughout west.
Back in 72 or 73, Hank had a girlfriend who lived here – I
forget her name.
By 77, the place still felt wealthy, and my stop here was at
some high-end drug store up there on the cosmetic company’s list of class
joints.
I remember rushing in and out of the drug store with boxes
of Channel, Dana, or Prince Machabelli my boss later shipped to poorer stores
in the deep South, a strange kind of smuggling operation in which I played a principal
role.
Black people started appearing on the streets after that,
though one of the merchants claims they were always here, dating back to the
times of the Dutch. Kept hidden perhaps
like Bergen County’s version of Apartheid.
Now they dominate the town, as if someone finally came along
with news of the Emancipation, free but unimportant, as the rich whites
barricade themselves in Teaneck or up the hill closer to the Palisades.
But even I fall into the quite prejudices. Last winter, I barricaded
myself in the shop to count the cash, fearful of the men who sat on the stoop
outside, drinking bottles of wine, drifters mostly, coming and going with the
gusts of wind, chased away by the occasional arrival of a patrol car – rarely treated
fairly.
The rich have abandoned the neighborhood when they could no
longer have total possession, their Jim Crow far less obvious than the one in The
South in the Sixties, but there none the same, surrendering the business
district in an effort to prevent the spread into neighborhoods where they live.
The streets are alive with the sound of sirens, cops, fire
trucks, ambulances rushing off to some event beyond my vantage point, hinting of
warfare I don’t understand.
The rain returns, gusts of wind carrying is across the
street, stirring the few stragglers out of the store doorways to seek dryer
places to reside. A deep chill hits me as the temperature drops, not from the
air conditioner, but from something else I can’t quite explain.
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