The Flint Girls Go To A Fire

One more poem as we near the end of National Poetry Month.  I wrote this rather prosey poem about my Mother and her family twenty-something years ago.  I just came across it again, and decided to publish it here.  I think it's a fun story--at least that was always my intend.  I remember my Mom being a little embarrassed that I said my Dad wasn't a good Catholic.  It's a long story.  Let's just say he was a good-enough Catholic, and so am I. 

Here's the poem.  Enjoy!

The Flint Girls Go To a Fire

My aunt Eleanore had a muskrat fur coat.

My aunt Ruth had a skirt that revealed her knees.

She wore it with platform shoes.

They went to speakeasies

on the Sacramento River during prohibition.

They sat on wooden stools at squat wooden tables

and drank gin.  “We weren’t scared,”

Ruth said.  “We were having fun.”

My grandfather made beer in the basement.

He was of English descent

but my Irish grandmother

would not admit this.

She called him “a Yankee.”

He converted to Catholicism

and was an usher at 9 am Sunday Mass

at St. Francis.

Bishop Armstrong like him.

My grandmother gave the nuns

pink divinity and whiskey for Christmas.

She and my grandfather had four daughters.

They lived in a brick house

across the street from McKinley Park.

There was a road through the middle of the park.

The road was lined with palm trees.

When my mother was ten

she sat on the front porch one Saturday night

with her older sisters Grace and Ruth.

Ma and Pa had gone to the double feature

at the Alhambra.

The theater gave everyone a blue china plate

with the price of adult admission.

Next week they would give out tea cups.

From the front porch of the brick house

my mother saw blue black smoke

billowing into the southwest twilight sky.

“The theater is over there!” declared Ruth.

She was seventeen and knew how to drive a car.

She hastened my aunt Grace and my mother,

whom everyone called “Baby,”

into the red and white chevy

and they sped between the palm trees

through the park.

They turned in front of the theater;

but there was no fire there.

So they followed the smoke

ten blocks down and ten blocks over.

There were police officers

in sweaty blue uniforms

at 20th and W

waving the cars away from the fire.

One of the police officers was the brother

of a boy Ruth went to school with.

“We want to see the fire,” Ruth told him.

He agreed to let them through.

“Not yet!” she said.

she drove to the snack bar

next to the Senator Hotel

on L Street

and bought buttered popcorn

in red and white striped sacks.

She drove back through the police lines

and parked the chevy at the corner

of 19th and W Streets.

The three girls sat in the front seat

eating popcorn and watching

orange flames lick the wooden frame

of the Bethel Temple Christian Church.

My grandmother played the organ at Sunday mass.

At home she played ragtime on a baby grand piano.

She gave bridge parties and served

ham and pickle sandwiches

and high balls.

On summer evenings

my grandfather walked

to the drug store with a tin bucket

and they filled the bucket

with chocolate ice cream.

Some nights the family

piled into the red and white chevy

and drove over the bridge

across the American River

past the trellised hops

to the asparagus fields.

They drove between the irrigated rows

and felt the breeze

blowing cool across the wet ferns.

After my mother graduated from Business College

She worked in a building on N Street

across the street from the State Capitol.

A state policeman picked flowers for her

from the Capitol rose garden.

He presented them to her

as she walked through the park

with her friend Mary.

Mary and my mother ate lunch

at Weinstock’s counter on 12th Street.

On Fridays they ate fish at Robert’s.

My mother learned to knit casting string onto #2 yellow

Ticondaroga pencils.

Her friend Doris taught her and Mary

on a coffee break.

Mary later became my godmother

but they learned to knit

before my mother met my father.

My father was in Germany

at the Battle of the Bulge.

My mother stood in line on K Street

an hour and 15 minutes

to buy a 2 pound box

Sugar was rationed during World War II.

But there was always ice cream

at the USO dances.

My mother and Grace volunteered

at the soda fountain.

The USO had a spring form dance floor.

My mother wore cat’s eye glasses

and open toed shoes.

Grace met the man she would marry

when he was stationed at McClellan Air Force Base.

He was from Montana.

He was a good Catholic.

My mother did not meet my father

until after the was  over.

He was not a good Catholic

but Ma and Pa liked him anyway.

My mother stopped accepting

flowers from the state policeman.

My father liked to watch

the Sacramento Solons play

at Edmunds’ Field.

Julius, who owned

a Men’s Clothing Store on K Street,

had box seats.

He gave my father the tickets

when he wasn’t using them.

My father took my mother

and her nieces and nephews

to the game.

Before my mother got married

she went to Europe

with her friends Mary and Olwen.

They sailed from New York to London

on the Queen Elizabeth.

They were gone three months.

They went to Lourdes and the Vatican.

My mother bought rosaries

that were blessed by the pope

and gave them to her sisters

and brothers-in-law and her nieces

and her nephews.

She also brought back water

from St. Bernadette’s grotto.

My grandmother would put a teaspoon of it

in her coffee every morning

at breakfast.

When my mother married my father

they built a house in the south elbow

of the American River on land

that was once apricot and peach orchards.

And so I chose to be born into this family.

They lived on the flood plain,

in a state of grace.