Porchtales is a podcast by HumanitiesDC, Washington's humanities council, and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Each season we work with a guest producer to focus on a historic or cultural topic and dig deeper to learn and celebrate the unique experiences that shape our fascinating city. Whether jogging by the capitol or driving along the California coast, Porchtales listeners get to experience DC through the eyes of those who make up the fabric of our nation's capital. Have an idea or a question, send us a note at programs@humanitiesdc.org
*Any views expressed in this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of HumanitiesDC or the project’s funders.
Open Credits:
This is Porchtales, a HumanitiesDC podcast where we hear the stories of those who shaped the history and culture of our nation's capital.
Katie Davis:
Welcome to Lanier: Stories of the Block That Raised Me.
I'm Katie Davis.
The land was there at the end of the block. It was always there, four acres and some change. I never went as a kid. It was too overgrown and there were abandoned cars and a lot of trash. But others older than me, they saw what it could be.
They made a park, a place to gather. First, they called it Community Park West, and then Walter Pierce Park for one of the activists who fought for the land. I called it our true center.
Most mornings, around 5:00 AM, I walked across the baseball field with my two dogs, Purdy, and Kodi. I could think at that time of day when no one was there, and then one morning we weren't alone.
Sound of lion roar.
Purdy's short black hair stood straight up. Her skin was pink. I never knew that. And Kodi looked at me. Should we start running? I knew it was the lion from the zoo right down the hill, but I'd never heard his roar carry this far- right to us.
The lion was marking his territory saying, "This is my place."
There were two cemeteries on this land in the 1800’s, a Quaker burial ground and a larger African American one, early on blacks and whites together. The cemeteries are the reason the land was not developed into apartment buildings.
In the mid-1960s, a few neighbors decided to take over the vacant land. Walter Pierce lived a few steps away from the lot. He rallied Black kids on his block to start clearing out the abandoned cars and the trash and some trees. At the same time, Victor Zeina got the Latino kids to cut trees. Victor said, that one boy, Edwin, climbed the trees, looped a rope around them, and they pulled.
Victor:
So, we started to knock those trees down. One afternoon, one tree fell, and Edwin fell in the hole. And I pulled him out. His feet were full of dust. It was where there was a coffin.
So, we kept on pushing the rocks. And when I was digging, I found a headstone. That sat underground for so long, it was a golden headstone.
Katie Davis:
Victor and his boys, Walter, and his boys, they worked the land with their own hands, carving out room to play. They laid out a baseball diamond and a dirt basketball court, and the kids came. They came, including Reggie who lived nearby.
Reggie:
The baseball field went as far back as the cemetery. Great games. We played Spanish countries; they represented their countries. Nicaragua, Cuba, El Salvador, things like that.
Great games, cookouts after the games, it was beautiful. They were real good, some of those Spanish guys. Real, real good. They used to whip us pretty good. Laughs.
Katie Davis:
Tell me a little bit. How old were you? And which sport were you really good at?
Reggie:
When I started playing here, I guess I was about 13 or 14 and, hold on one second.
Reggie: You need the ball?
Speaker:
Yeah, sure.
Sound: Ball bounces
Reggie:
Okay. Yeah, 13, 14, I was really good defensively at baseball. Couldn't hit my own weight, though. I couldn't hit to save my life. I couldn't go to Hertz and rent a hit. I was real terrible at the plate, but really good defensively. Nothing got past me.
Katie Davis:
What did you play?
Reggie:
I played just about every position. I liked that, we all played a lot of outfield. I played third base, shortstop, outfield, catcher. It was more fun playing neighborhood than it was in school for some reason. I mean, in school I really didn't care too much for it at the time. I was good in school. I just didn't like going because all my friends didn't go. All my friends, Bob, and the guys, they were out here. So, everyone in school was just square to me. Everybody that was hip was out here.
Katie Davis:
Well, think back to a moment. You're young and a sport that you're really good at, and it's just a perfect moment. Either you catch it, or you throw the ball or just a moment that you remember.
Reggie:
In baseball, I guess the best moment I had, we were trailing, I'm not sure if it was Nicaragua or San Salvador because they were the two best teams, and I was playing left field over there. And the guy hit a scorcher, a really deep ball, and I ran and dived and made the catch and that was the best catch I ever made.
Katie Davis:
The kids painted a sign. Welcome to Ghetto Stadium. They put up a scoreboard, built bleachers, and made an outdoor theater for local bands. I love this about my neighborhood. People saw a problem and fixed it themselves. And in the fixing, they found new ways to do things and they learned about each other.
People did big and small things in the park. Country Bobby started watering new trees and cleaning up trash.
Walk through our park and one of the first people you'll come across is Bobby. Big burly Bobby. He sewed pockets onto his cutoff sweatpants, and there's a hunting knife and scissors poking up. A stuffed bear hangs off his waist. Newcomers ask, "Should I worry about that guy?" "No, that's just Bobby," we say. "He keeps the park clean."
Country Bobby:
More people know me than I know them. People are always calling my name, but I don't know who they are.
Katie Davis:
Bobby didn't set out to look after our park when he arrived 25 years ago and started a small garden, but he's there every day now doing what the city has no money to do and what the park group pays him a few dollars to do. He cuts weeds like he did back on his family cotton farm in South Carolina. He picks up dirty diapers in the playground, soda cans at the basketball court, and piles the overflowing trash cans onto a jury-rigged shopping cart and pushes it to the dumpster.
Bobby:
I cleaned them yesterday morning. No, Friday morning. Yeah.
Katie Davis:
Bobby's the first to know when the water fountain backs up and when someone beheads the day lilies for fun. He doesn't call to report this, though. Just laces the wilting flowers through my iron gate, and I know he's been by. Every morning Bobby's in our park checking on things, using a golf club for a cane because his legs give him trouble now from his diabetes. He wears an ankle bracelet with bells, but it doesn't really jangle.
Bobby:
I'm still in the country. Just walking around the city, but I still talk like I'm in the country. And I move like I'm in the country, too. But you would think I was working for the government; I'm moving so slow. Laughs.
Katie Davis:
Last summer, the park group set out to make Bobby's watering chores easier. We bought 10 Gator bags, plastic pouches that sit at the base of trees and soak the roots slowly. Bobby hated those bags. First, he told me the rats ate holes in them. I checked, and it wasn't true. Then, he hid the bags. I put them back. Eventually, I realized those watering bags were scab laborers to Bobby. He was union doing work the honorable way. It's something my old neighbor, Ellen, noticed, too, as she and her son spent days at the playground.
Ellen:
Well, I think Bobby really found his place in the world when this park came, and he really loves it, and it makes him feel important. And he is important here, and he very much is part of this. If I came back here, and Bobby didn't work here anymore, I'm sure this park would look 10 times worse than the last time I saw it. But this is Bobby's world, and he loves it, and he takes care of it. And hard work gives you back something to your soul that money doesn't.
Katie Davis:
Bobby would never say that. He doesn't waste words. But come any dry August morning, and you'll find Bobby at dawn pulling hose, 300 unruly feet of it. He's got to soak those new red buds and dogwoods the park people planted. And while he might put water in those Gator bags, he will also douse the trees his way, so they'll sink their roots deep and wide, so they'll give good shade 30 years from now.
Katie Davis: There was always room for one more person to come into the park and set up shop and claim a piece of the land, start a little project.
I got involved when a neighbor told me to stop planting flowers in the park and do something big, like have a basketball tournament for the kids. I took the assignment. The signup sheet for the tournament was at the Kim's corner store, and the kids played when they were 12 and 13, and later when they were out of high school.
Sound: Referee whistle
Katie Davis:
When I go sit by the court for a while, I know that between games of 5 on 5 and who's got next, someone will look over and ask, "When's the tournament?" They know that we just had it, that it's always the second week in July, but they ask anyway. And I always tell them because this is part of getting ready - all year long.
Man on sideline:
Man, what ‘a going to do, Moe? Whatcha gonna do?
Katie Davis:
All year long, Moochie says, "We'll beat Jesse and them this time." All year long, Bryan, who's 33, plots to beat Courtney's team. Five years, and he's still losing. This time, he'll get Gerrard on his team. Never mind that Gerrard's a showboat. He's got a great handle.
Spectator:
Hey, Gerrard, you've got to pipe that joint.
Katie Davis:
When I started the tournament 10 years ago, it was for little kids. But within a few years, it became a ritual for boys and men, a way to sort out who's who, who can talk trash and back it up, who's up and coming, who better sit down- a way to tell stories.
Jeremiah brags:
It was me. I'm like Iverson. Without me there would be no Team. I'm the Team. I made all the shots. All they had to do is take it out and give me the ball. I'm Jeremiah, the world's greatest.
Little boy chimes in:
He's the world's greatest.
Jeremiah:
I had 42 points.
Katie Davis:
Yeah, Jeremiah, all fury and drama on the court. But his legs, his legs, get him above the rim every time, makes the old legs pray to the backboard.
Spectator:
Make the layup. Yeah, there you go, baby. There you go.
Katie Davis:
When knees wear out, men in their thirties shift to strategy. Months before the tournament, they start pressing me for the pairings. Who plays who? Who plays first? They can't forgive me for the year I scheduled the two best teams before the crowd even got there. This year I told Bryan I'm thinking about drawing straws.
Bryan:
You don't draw straws. If you draw straws, we'd end up with exactly the same thing. How you would do it is the historic powerhouses of the tournament, which are Sam and Courtney's teams. So, you have Sam's team, and his team….
voice fades under.
Katie Davis:
The men want the day organized just so, drama unfolding between Sam and Courtney's teams or Bryan and Ant's, peaking right around 5:00 PM when the whole neighborhood is packed along the sidelines.
Spectator:
Let's push the ball, push the ball.
Katie Davis:
After each game, I hold my breath because someone usually throws a tantrum. The question is are they going to throw a chair? Violence courses through these games, and it gets right to the edge. The trick is to keep it there.
Player:
Foul, damn it. Foul. Shoot it, Gerrard. We're running the clock out. Don't get upset, young'un. Play.
Katie Davis:
These tournament games. These 20-minute games on a runty cracked court, they're chewed on the whole year, replayed from one angle and then another.
Man on sideline:
Get back, get back, get back.
Mike:
Yeah. We lost by one point in the last 10 seconds of the game.
Player: Hands up, hands up.
Mike:
So, upon the opposing team taking out, one of our players goes out of bounds and knocks the ball out of his hands while he's out of bounds, which is a technical foul, which they shot and they made and they got the ball and they made that, which gave them the game.
Katie Davis:
After my brother, Sam, went down to Courtney's team three years in a row, he went recruiting. And when he came back, he had two six-foot sixers, one with a flawless jumper.
Sam:
Chris Elsie, who was a player for University of Pennsylvania, and also who played in Europe professionally, and Thomas Treadwell, who was a very well-known ball player.
Katie Davis:
Yes, Sam got his win, 36 to 35. And then, for months my brother would drop by the Safeway, slide into Courtney's checkout line, and ask, "How’ya feeling?" This went on for a year until Courtney's guys, Mike, Poobie, Tank, and Face, until they reclaimed their title.
Player:
Go, go.
Katie Davis:
Mike says he's going to retire this year. No one wants to be like the guy who missed an easy layup in front of everyone. He quit right then and there, relegated himself to the sidelines with the old guys.
Spectator:
Watch one in the corner. Watch the one in the corner.
Katie Davis:
The old guys. They do the thinking. Young men, the running, back and forth, back, and forth. The solos on the court, the chorus on the sidelines, the call and response of the game.
For the 10 years I ran the tournament, we never had any real trouble until the last summer when one kid, and I knew him, started a fight and he had brass knuckles on. He was punching like crazy, and he hit a bystander and broke that kid's jaw, a kid he didn't even know.
We finished up the games that day, but I never had the stomach to do another tournament, and that was the last one.
I still did things in the park. When a neighborhood teenager was murdered, I asked a muralist to paint a portrait of him on plywood, a big piece four feet by eight feet, and we hung it on the fence by the court. It stayed up for years until it was warped and peeling. It was a way of marking territory, of saying the park was our gathering place where we grieved and celebrated. And the basketball court was central.
Brandon, a kid I tutored, told me the court was sacred to him.
In 11th grade, when he studied Henry David Thoreau and Walden Pond, Brandon wrote an essay comparing the court to Walden Pond and how it helped him see a wider world, what was beyond the park and beyond the fence. "The court," he wrote, "is an escape, a refugee camp from gang violence, drugs, and tears."
Then, a few years ago, without consulting the community, the city fenced the field and locked it. They only issued paid permits, and most neighborhood kids couldn't use it anymore. Change was everywhere. Brandon and a friend were drinking Gatorade on the steps of a friend's building right by the park. It's something they'd done for years. A man came out and told them to get off the steps and added that, "People like you ruin this neighborhood." We were all living these changes and losses.
Here's Brandon talking to his friend Johari in an interview they recorded for me.
Johari:
What did Adams Morgan look like to you growing up?
Brandon:
Have you ever been to McDonald's, you know the playpen?
Johari: Laughs, yes.
Brandon:
That's exactly what Adams Morgan was. It was the playpen. Everything else was different colors for a reason because everybody's race was different. Everybody's background was different. And the fact is that we can have a pickup game with whoever. No fighting, no real cussing, or if it does escalate like that, there's always someone that would say, "Yo, you're not from this neighborhood. This is how we play ball. Don't take offense." And once the guy earns his stripes on the court or earns his stripes in the neighborhood, he starts to recognize that.
I think basketball, is a relief because when you can't eat, your parents are struggling that much. "Yo, what are you about to do?" "I'm about to go to the basketball court." "Why?" "I have some stress to relieve."
At three o'clock in the morning, me and my brother used to get into a fight all the time. Four o'clock in the morning, it's like, "Man, I'm leaving. I’m out. Peace. I'm gone." And I'd be playing basketball till the sun came up. And honestly, without basketball, I just wouldn't know what I would be. I don't know what type of stuff I would've fell into if it wasn't for the basketball court. So, that's why I feel as though we don't look at the bigger picture of people here.
Yeah, the neighborhood's changing. The people no longer even play on the courts anymore, and the dog park is filled with dogs. So, what's next? They're going to have to make the dog park as big as the park. And next thing you know, they're not going to have places for the kids to play at. But, to me, I think how the neighborhood has changed, change is going to happen, but it's not changing for the better. It's changing for money.
Johari:
What are your interactions like with the new people?
Brandon:
I don't really talk to them. I'm gonna be the one to say it. I don't because there's nothing you can tell me about what you like about this place that's as in depth as the people who once lived there. Like it is on the basketball court, you've got to earn your stripes. Or like it is growing up anywhere, you've got to earn your stripes. You just can't come in here and necessarily feel that I’m going to greet you with hand baskets and a poundcake just because you moved in here, because you can afford living here. No, you're raising the rent for people who can't live here, and people who have to move to other places. And little do they know they're ruining the neighborhood.
You don't know why you moved here. You just moved here because everything is feasible for you. Everything is at a good location. That's the only reason why you live here. You don’t live here because it's a great place to raise your family. You don’t live here because you like to interact with the people in your neighborhood, because they don't. And those people just raise the taxes. They're just going to raise it up, and that's just how I feel about that and interacting with the people. I don't trust you. With all due respect, you should be interacting with the people who live here.
Johari:
To sum it up, I've just got one last question. Do you think that's the problem around the world? Or just DC? Because DC is what I really know. I've traveled, but DC is what I know. And when you have new residents who are moving in, do you think the issue is we don't communicate, even though this is a community?
Brandon:
Yeah, I think we don't communicate, and the fact is that people who may come from Illinois or people who may come from Michigan who've never been raised around black people or never been raised around people with ethnicity, or different types of background, they might be scared because their stereotype is Boyz n the Hood. Their stereotype is Menace to Society. That's their stereotypes of black people. What? We're educated over here. We don't stand for none of that. Just because my pants are saggy doesn't mean my mind is.
Katie Davis:
We were all trading these stories, especially the people in the community garden.
Every spring, I get the phone calls. "Hi, I just moved into the neighborhood, and I want to get a plot in the community garden. What should I do?" "The best way," I tell them, "is to go to the garden around 5:30 in the morning and look for Victor. He'll be filling the water barrels." This is not what they want to hear. They want to sign up on the phone. Or better yet, by email. "It is city land, after all. There should be a system," they say. "Victor is the system," I tell them. "You can find him in the garden just as the light begins to fill the sky."
Victor:
By yourself, your mind is at ease. And when you hear the bird start singing tak tak tak, oh yeah.
Katie Davis:
Victor Zebina of Martinique. He knows every plot and every gardener's story, all 40 of them.
Victor:
Hello, stranger.
I'll give you some beans, pole beans you can put against the fence. It can climb on the fence.
Katie Davis:
Victor's power is rooted in the days when there was no garden here, no park, just an abandoned field. 35 years ago, he paced off a finger shaped parcel for the community garden. And since then, he's been in charge. Victor, Don Victor, and here is where it might help to kneel and take his hand. Can I please have a piece of land to grow a few tomatoes?
Gardener: Estos son palitos de chilis.
Katie Davis:
For decades, Victor handed out roomy plots about the size of a garage door, mostly to Latinos. Not many others asked. He gave the land as if writing a prescription. "You've lost your way in this country," Victor would say. "Go put your hands in the earth."
Victor:
Listen, there is one they call Lalo. He was drunk, and he was having trouble with his life. He'd never send money to his wife and his kid. He came one day; he was crying, and he talked to me. He tell me, "If you give me a piece of land, I'll try to stay here until sundown, and then I'll go home to sleep."
Katie Davis:
Lalo did stop drinking and sent money to El Salvador for his wife to buy land and a house. That was five years ago, and most afternoons you can still find Lalo fertilizing his corn at the bottom of a steep hill.
Lalo:
Spanish under narration
Katie Davis:
"This patch is ugly, but I love it," says Lalo. "Let's see how long they let me keep it." Lalo feels change in the garden and the neighborhood. Once working class, now wealthier, more professional. And that means more supplicants in search of Victor, a problem he solves by dividing the plots and redividing them. And it's getting crowded here in the garden.
A few years ago, Victor gave some land to an Albanian immigrant and ushered in a new era. We watched as the Albanian turned his soil. We'd never seen anyone garden in a black suit smoking unfiltered cigarettes. But he knew what he was doing, molding thick rows, and then planting masses of beans that sprouted quickly. One morning, the Albanian came into the garden stooped over with a load of warped plywood and formica on his back. And then, he started hammering and hammering, and just like that, his garden was completely walled in. It's amazing how instantly our trust evaporated, how it was no longer good enough to place a few rocks to mark boundaries. People wrapped chicken wire around their lettuce, barbed wire around the rosemary. One couple erected a chain link fence and padlocked it. The community garden was Balkanized.
Every year someone tries to just go around Victor and take a plot.
Tessa: Speaks to her dog in Italian.
Katie Davis:
Tessa arrived at our park with her terrier on the back of her scooter pining to get her hands dirty like she did back in Italy. She first met Country Bobby. Everyone does because he's in the garden seven days a week. Bobby pointed to an abandoned plot, and told Tessa, "Go ahead. Take that one."
Tessa:
I cleaned it, I planted it, and fenced it, and everything else. The next day, I came back, all of my plants had been ripped out, and then they'd taken the three garbage cans and dumped them in the middle.
Katie Davis:
So, Tessa went to Victor, and he gave her a plot. She spent hours there fussing with her roses and lettuce, ignoring the tomato thieves, and talking to everyone.
Tessa:
The majority of the new people that are here are in DC in transition for probably their 2.5 years while they're working on the Hill, and they decorate their garden beautifully with gold painted rocks and mobiles made of blue bottles, which is absolutely beautiful. But the people who are here who are gardening because they needed tomatoes to be able to make preserves to eat throughout the winter are like, "That's not what we want for our garden."
Katie Davis:
Tessa talked like an old timer, but she did things that were unnerving. She called the police when people barbecued in their plots. She lobbied Victor to take down all the fences because she didn't like the way they looked. That summer, anger grew. Miguel attacked Victor when plants were pulled up from his plot. Miguel insisted the plants were to honor his dead mother. Victor said they were marijuana seedlings. Miguel threatened to cut Victor's head off with a machete, and Tessa was right in the middle of it.
Tessa:
Fight breaks out. It's three Latinos against Victor, who can hold his own, even at 75. Throw him down, kick him. We call the police, they get arrested.
Katie Davis:
The police found a machete hidden in the garden plot and confiscated it. It all got to be too much for Tessa, especially after her scooter was vandalized. That's when she decided to step back.
Tessa:
If I were them, and I were as angry, the next thing I would go for is my dog. And I come from a country where dogs are poisoned all the time as warning signs.
Katie Davis:
After that summer, Tessa gave notice on her plot and transplanted her rose bushes into the Children's Butterfly Garden, my plot. To make room, she ripped out a half dozen bushes, Spirea bushes, which she had always hated, but the butterflies loved. They'd been there 20 years. Tessa left for Italy, and I stayed, deeply rooted that I am. I found that is often the best strategy against those who promote change in my neighborhood without talking it through. Wait them out. They get tired of the unruliness and unpredictability. I spent the whole winter thinking about where to move Tessa's rose bushes. And in the spring, I dug them up, gently, mind you, and then I put them in their place. Another place.
Victor and Walter and many others built this park, but they're not here anymore. Neither are many of the kids that I came to know. They've moved away, mostly because of the rents. The baseball and soccer field is a beautiful green museum that we can't use. Manuel Mendez grew up playing basketball at the court with his uncles, and now he works to bring together Blacks and Latinos. And he says, "The park is a place that needs attention."
Manuel Mendez:
For Black and Latino folks, I will say that this is yours, and you need to come back to this space and recolonize it because it's yours. And we need to do that. And this space, Walter Pierce Park, was fought for very hard by so many people from the African American graveyard, to the park, the beautiful park we see today, the basketball court, the soccer field, and yes, including the dog park. This is the people's park in Washington DC.
Katie Davis:
I didn't know Manuel Mendez until someone said I should talk to him about the park. And I'm glad I did because I hear echoes of the voices of the people who built this park.
End Credits: MUSIC
There were two musicians that shaped these stories, Herman Burney, and David Schulman. Together, they made a soundtrack for Lanier.
Flawn Williams was the engineer. Mary Rose Madden and Richard Fawal were the editors. A special thanks to Rebecca Lemos and James Watkins, who showed me the way. And I'm Katie Davis, and this is Lanier: Stories of the Block That Raised Me.
Closing Credits:
Porchtales is produced by HumanitiesDC. If you want to share your DC story, check out the link in the show notes and be sure to rate and review us wherever our podcast lives on your favorite podcast player. This season is made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.