I live in a college town and work on campus. On the mornings I don't carpool with my roommates, I walk downtown to the nearest campus bus stop to catch a bus in to work. There are two optimal ways to get there by walking; each way is about as long as the other, so I tend to alternate. I'll call them North Ave and the back way. North Ave is a highway five lines wide with lights, intersections, and sidewalk on either side. Turning out of our neighborhood onto North Ave, a beautiful view of the downtown skyline is visible over a scenic railroad trestle that passes over the road at the same place it passes over the river, down at the bottom of the hill. North Ave is lined with new, spacious, and dense housing: rental housing for the numberless college students who want to be within walking distance of the night life. Taking North Ave down the hill means crossing at the bridge beneath the trestle. When I cross that bridge I always turn and look up the river; it is a small river, about fifty feet across, but very slow and deep. It has dignity, and even after heavy rains it flows along with the same solemn stillness. Beneath the bridge, on either side of the river, is the homeless encampment. The banks of the river are public park, so they can stay there during daytime all they like. In the grass of the riverbank a network of dirt clearings and paths have been beaten in by constant comings and goings. Semicircles of molding lawn furniture, fire pits, and a scum of beer cans mark the enclaves of the homeless: their friendships, groups, and territories. They ignore me as I ignore them; to them I am another anonymous face in the heavy stream of foot traffic that passes by. As for me, I think they're mostly harmless, but I worry late at night, or when I see a group of them talking and glancing at me. There's a police station just across the street, and an alarm kiosk on the corner nearest them, so I have to trust them to know better than to cause trouble. Across the river is the high road; but first, the back street:
Turning right out of my neighborhood instead of left, there is a road that runs behind our carefully manicured townhouses, along the railroad. Here, at the top of the hill, it runs alongside the road at the bottom of a twenty-foot deep gash blasted into the bedrock. Neat semi-cylindrical scars are visible in the crumbling rock walls, spaced at precise intervals: presumably marking where the blasting charges were placed. A concrete footbridge with a nearly-complete cage of chain-link fence crosses over the tracks. The inward-curving tops of the narrow fences make a silhouette like a Gothic arch with a fallen keystone. On the other side of this footbridge is what I think of as the neighborhood. From two driveways and strange sort of hilltop parking lot the road coalesces hesitantly, making a sort of beleaguered split-level cul-de-sac that spills precipitously down the hill, heading for the river directly. Homes line the street; real homes, not rental crates. Some are run down; at least one, I feel sure, is abandoned. Others are clearly cared for and long lived-in. Some sport excessive lawn decorations, and some expensive cars. A low wall of stacked stone lines the road for a few yards; it looks old enough to be native. The residents of this neighborhood, so far as I can tell, are all black and lower-class. They congregate in the street smoking and talking. When I walk down the road, most days they ignore me and I ignore them. I try not to walk through the middle of them, but I also try not to go so far out of my way that I draw attention to myself. It's an awkward situation for me; probably less so for them. I don't believe many people at all take the back way through their home. At the bottom of the hill is the lower of the river roads; away across the broad floodplain and the river is the homeless encampment. Barely visible through brush and at least one hundred yards away, it doesn't mean anything from over here.
This is the second leg of either route: the river roads. On the far side, the side I live on, lawns of bright grass slope gently up from the river about a hundred feet to the road. This is more park, dotted with benches, picnic tables and one small parking lot. On the other side of the road is neighborhood. The houses with a good view of the water tend to be well-maintained. A few look only into marshy scrub, and these are a bit more run-down. One house in particular has a lovely stand of bamboo and sits next to an odd empty lot; the whole thing lies in a depression and is covered in bright green creepers. On the far side, two identical ancient microwaves sit stacked one atop the other. Old tires and concrete pipes lie in a ditch. At one point, they were assembled into a sort of monument. Whether it was intended to resemble a penis is an internal debate I have yet to conclude. On the other side of the river, dry scrub covers a narrow, steep embankment running up to a massive stone wall that stands twenty feet high and runs for a quarter mile. Steel handrails and faux-iron lampposts top it like the filigree and jewels of a crown. On top of that wall is the second river road: the high road. The high road has a nice view of the river, though the height makes it seem small. It is broad, well-lit, and faced by row after row of tall, bland townhouses. It shares this side of the river with the multi-modal bus station, the conference center, the police station, and further, the entirety of downtown. These two roads run on either side of the river for a quarter mile to the rusted steel trestle bridge that connects them. My two paths intersect at the corner that is home to a local down-home restaurant, near one of the shadier parts of town, lying low and dark in the swampy old growth at the river's edge. Just up the hill is downtown and my bus stop.
Today, while walking down to said restaurant, I took the back way and the low road. A few old black men where sitting in the back road smoking. They shifted and went inside when they saw me coming, but one called out to me. I said hello and kept walking, but a conversation ensured nonetheless.
"You from around here, son?"
"Yep, I live just up the road."
He fanned a handful of scratched lottery tickets at me.
"See now, we have this friend they're tryna put away, if there's anything you can do to help--"
"I don't think I can help with that."
"Oh, alright, but if you change your mind, you can always leave it in our mailbox right there."
"Alright, thank you."
"Thank you, God bless."
If you're confused by this conversation, don't be alarmed. I was confused as well. What friend? Put away for what? By whom? What was the point of the tickets? Was I supposed to buy one? Was he trying to win and buy his friend a legal defense? And of course, the whole thing reeked of random panhandling. But why ask if I was local and then panhandle me? Isn't it better to get people from out of town? And what was up with the mailbox bit? Is this some kind of local political cause? Regardless of the reason and whether or not it was all just a complicated panhandle, it was clear now that walking through that neighborhood would result in requests for money in some form. They know my face now; I'm worried that they'll bother me again or harass me if I walk back through. I took the high road to get back home, and resented it. The clean, broad, sterile street was the lot that society had earmarked for me, just as the vibrant but dilapidated homes across the river were the black part of town. Walking past informative plaques describing the history behind this stretch of river, I felt comfortable and safe. I felt that I was in my proper place. I want to walk past that old stone wall, past the trailer with a lawn full of flamingos, past the stand of bamboo and the microwave lot, but none of that is my place. My place is with the joggers, the college kids, the towering apartments in inoffensive colors, and the streetlamps every twenty feet that make sure the road never sees darkness. By panhandling me, the locals made it clear that I am not a neighbor to them; I'm a score. They let me know that I was not in my place.
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