Where I come from (walking dog)
Loose cobblestones. A yellowing Christmas tree. An upturned Jack-o-Lantern candy-carrier. The wrought-iron remnants of a fire-escape, doors and windows sheet-metaled or plyed over, a blue tarp breathing with the wind. And the dog oh the dog, taking stock of it all.
But what about that those transom windows? The casements with the Venetian glass? The oxidized copper on the ground floor? Peer up into the second floor – those joists holding up the third? The spruce rising out of the ground like – nature’s homesteading stake – the winter-killed azalea sure to return for spring?
So the paradoxes add up quickly as the dog roots frost-killed grass, faintly annoyed by the rain.
Further on down we have squares of pressed tin tacked into the masonry, above the skirtboard where stairs once ran. Mortar filling in where brick was hogged out for the treads, or perhaps the stringer red-headed, of a sort, into the parting wall. Tin turned the color of shakshooka, remants from the foyer.
Farther along, beyond the fenceline, a new development. Dog takes stock of it all.
To the west a bumpout wrapped in corrugated galvanized tin, a misshapen fruit tree of some breed seeming to hedge its bets on whether that fence will or won’t remain. Fish-scale freize, tin soffit at top. A lost art this metalwork, except to folks like Dave Brooks in Port Richmond who, thank the sweet lord, with his huge break, keep it alive.
The dog doesn’t care for cobblestones. Maybe when they were chinked in with sand or mud, when shoed horse hooves clattered over them, when they didn’t have great gaps betwixt, he might have become accustomed to their humped backs. Now his paws slip in the gaps, especially in the rain.
But he does like these morning cruises, perambulating along this backwater behind Fourth street, where resilient folk like Audrey Cooper pile split oak from the Firewood King (real name Dusty Tace – he should have been a baseball player) behind houses to burn in their rebuilt fireplaces – courtesy of Brad Kada. Where trees get long shrift of airspace, and the dog gets long shrift of groundspace
We walk on Leithgow, an old Philadelphia Street interrupted in the last fifty years by a subdivision smack in its path. A sewer runs through it. Rainwater from a warehouse downspout runs through a subdivision of moss. The dog sometimes take sips.
Philadelphia publishes its own special brand of sadness. Built on a foundation of hard work, creativity and the persistent feeling that we’re just not good enough – hence our love of Rocky and Vince Papale and the perennial underdog Iggles – we walk around in the daze of a spurned lover not entirely sure why- fore-out the spurning has occured. Yet lacking the tools or simply too proud to talk to Washington or New York about it.
I began Greensaw in a similar daze. Tired and stupid and single, an open site to be worked upon. I mean really dumb – transporting joists from Philadelphia to Alexandria Virginia on a self-built rack that by all rites should have come apart and caused a NASCAR-style pile-up on I-95.
Or sending an intern up a chimney to take it down from above. I mean really just flat-out clueless.
Yet these walks with dog – first in Overbrook when I found through Craigslist a room given in exchange for renovating a bathroom, later on on 21st & Girard, a back room with the built-in cast-iron tub and crackled subway tile, looking out onto the sycamore-shaded grounds of Girard College – these walks with the dog opened my eyes to the fascia holding this city together. And how new-build leaves behind traces of material not yet content to become artifacts.
Back to the shop, the walk always too short – so he says right about at this point, with this absurd look, as we step through the gate we sliced for a pass-thru, and arrive back at the shop. A pile of CMU, plastic piping for the graywater system at the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society, a dumpster from Revolution Recovery, the good work Avi, Johnny and others do there. Christmas trees we plan to de-limb and make fenceposts from, rescued joists from the city and environs. We hope to put a chicken coop on top of the building and raise a horde of Americanas. Vines climb the brick wall, a toupé for the cinder-blocked openings. The truck full of biodiesel courtesy of Moaz on South Street and the genius of Steve Richter.
Photos:
Chez M. Richter at an undisclosed location - February 2011
We do our very best. The dog knows it.
Walking the dog with Bri - at the Philly docks - May 2010
Metalwork - February 2011
House end on Leithgow - February 2011
Just west of fourth - February 2011
Forlorn Colorado - February 2011
Removed chimney, soon after it almost caved in with our intern inside - October 2007
Following the miraculous 40-night trip on 95 - April 2007
split oak from the firewood king - February 2011
Irish moss on CMU - February 2011
