Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 Humanities DC 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.
Music from Herman Burney
Katie Davis: I really only worked at one place, National Public Radio. I was a reporter and producer, but when I asked for equal pay, they said, "No," and my job was over.
I loved that job. There was something different every day. I interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the poet May Sarton, and DC cops trying to get guns off the streets.
That all ended in 1995 and I came back home to Lanier. I sat on my porch for months. To be really honest, it was sort of like a couple of years. And this was a time of doors left open, of living back in the street like when I was a kid.
My brother Jimbo gave me his Lab-Doberman puppy. Her name was Purdy. She was barky, bossy, a queen. My second dog, Kodi, was left on my front porch when his owner got locked up for armed robbery. Kodi was a Shepherd mix with caramel eyebrows, a pure gentleman, kind of like Nat King Cole. So yes, two dogs, one king, one queen.
I listened as the old Lanier Place merged with the new. Mrs. Glass, who lived in the oldest house on the block, gave me holly cuttings from her 100-year-old holly tree. Thank you, Mrs. Glass. And I went to see Mrs. Filmore, who was a kind of Mary Poppins to us kids when I was little.
Charlotte E. Filmore:
My name is Charlotte E. Filmore and I have lived one whole century. And I made my life like I wanted, my way by myself. I wasn't chasing nobody's husband, wasn't chasing nobody's friend, and I raised everybody's children along with mine. Don't care what color you were or where you come from, they still were my children.
Katie Davis:
Mrs. Filmore's kids. That's what we were called in my neighborhood. She had hundreds over the years, an extended family that Mrs. Filmore tended to. She knew that some needed the hot meals she offered in her home. Others, the books in her Alley Library. For us older kids, she offered adventure. When I was 12, Mrs. Filmore scooped us up to go to that new place down on the river. I remember her, all six feet of Mrs. Filmore, settling into the red seats of the Kennedy Center. She looked up and down the row with eyes that meant, open your minds and ears. And we did. And heard our first concert, Leonard Bernstein's “Mass.”
Leon calls out:
“Katie.”
Katie Davis:
People asked me, where did you find the kids? I didn't. They found me. They came up and started talking to me when I was out on the porch. If I was inside, they yelled, and the dogs barked me to the door.
Leon calls again.
“Katie.”
Katie Davis:
That's Leon, 11 years old. He came on his 10-speed bike to borrow my hex tool to raise his seat. And while he was doing it, he told me, "I want to design cars. You know, I drove my father's car once, a Hugo. It was a stick."
I came to know the kids by their calling technique. Lily trilled my name, fluttery like a baby bird. "Katie, Katie."
And Joaquin planted his feet and just bellowed, "Katie."
Kid:
“Hello Katie. I just came by your house.”
Katie Davis:
How you doing?
Kid:
Good.
Katie Davis:
I was starting to know a lot of kids. Brandon and I met on the neighborhood baseball team. He was too young to play, but he suited up for every game and we let him come to every game. One day he crossed Columbia Road and stood outside my house. He didn't knock, he just stood there. But the dogs knew, and they pawed the door and there he was, nine years old holding a tall gold and green trophy. He set it down on the top step and blushed. "I won the math challenge at school," he said. "Hold on, let me get my camera," I said.
Sometimes I wanted silence, and I hung a sign on my gate, "Katie is working, do not disturb." Apparently, I was asking for it, because the same day three boys knocked and ran, but I heard them hatching their plan and ran down and called them back. "Now, come over here and just read this sign for me."
Jezekiel reads sign:
“Katie is working, do not disturb.” And it was his idea.
Katie Davis:
Now, actually, I was sitting upstairs reading. I overheard you say something about a kid's job is to... Now what did you say? I want to hear.
Jezekiel:
No, that was him. That was him.
Katie Davis:
No, I recognize your voice. What did you...
Jezekiel:
I said a kid's job is to always obey-
But the number one rule is
Jezekiel:
Obey what grownups say.
Jermaine Butler:
No, you didn't. No, he said that. This is Jermaine Butler talking. He said, "Number one, a kid's rule is when a grownup says something, you do it anyway."
Jezekiel:
So anyhow, it was his idea.
Katie Davis:
Pretty soon, my porch was a daily pit stop for the kids. They asked for a quarter, or an inner tube patch and we talked and talked. We were all looking for something to do.
Sound: Girls play a clapping game
Katie Davis:
One really hot day, Michelle, tall and graceful, was out on the sidewalk with her cousins. They knew me and I knew their mom.
"Hey, you guys want to take a walk to Rock Creek," I asked. "It's cooler down there."
Michelle said, "There's no creek around here."
"There is," I said, and we walked about four minutes to the creek, then under the Osage trees dropping their crazy brain looking fruit. And the kids saw it before I did, a rope hanging above the creek to swing into the deeper water. They looked at me. "No, no," I said, "You can't go in, the water's dirty, full of bacteria." But when they started climbing up to the swing, I didn't stop them and swing over the water, dangle one time, swing again and let go.
Music
I made them all promise that they would take a shower the minute they got home. It was exhilarating and really dumb. And this is where I have to say, I did more than a few dumb things when I started hanging out with the kids in my neighborhood, more than a few dumb things.
I started thinking the kids needed something more organized. Maybe a free summer camp, and this would be my new project, sort of my new job. A church gave me the space and a bike shop set up four bike stands with color coded tools. I hired Tiny and he brought his two daughters. They all rode their bikes to camp, and I also hired Nigel. He played the church piano to calm us down and it worked.
Bikes, bikes, bikes. This brought all the kids to our camp. They shouted across the bike stands and threw ball bearings at each other. "No, no," I'd say, "No throwing." Tiny looked at them once and they stopped.
Tiny: (Bryan Washington)
You want to have controlled chaos basically. And I have a friend of mine who deals with kids, and he'll just let them just hoop and holler and pay them no attention. He'll watch them, and then after a while they'll burn themselves out and he'd just let them play. You want to bang on the wall? Cool. You can only do it for so long, or you're going to pass out or you're going to bleed to death.
Katie Davis:
Maybe we should try that.
Tiny:
Oh yeah, let them just do that thing. But you have to control it. You have to realize, okay, today we're going to let them just peter themselves out.
Katie Davis:
That first summer camp, we started teaching the kids about bikes and how they worked. We still walked most places until they could ride the bikes safely, until they could go down Snake Hill. I kept a journal, and I even did a radio piece.
On the first day, 22 kids show up to the neighborhood church where we meet. That's almost twice the amount I'm expecting. There is no way, I'm thinking, no way we can handle 22 kids, as young as eight, as impossible is 16. We got to make some rules. I want to waitlist six kids, but my coworkers Tiny and Nigel, they convinced me we can handle them.
Tiny:
Everybody stand up with me.
Delontae:
Yeah.
Nigel:
Up, up, up, let's go.
Katie Davis:
And if anyone can handle these kids, it's Tiny. He's six foot three, an ex-bouncer and personal trainer, and the father of two. Nigel is quieter. He'll tinker with the church piano to calm the kids down, but he has credentials from growing up at 17th and Euclid, our toughest street corner. So, 22 kids it is.
"No, don't throw the koosh ball inside because remember what happened yesterday?" We lay down the rules. No koosh balls inside, no hitting, no fighting, no weapons, no cursing, no, no, no. No to a lot of things. I am running Camp No.
Then we line them up single file and March two hot steamy blocks to the National Zoo to see the pandas. They are pulling at the door to get inside to their air-conditioned cages and all we see is their backsides. "This is boring," Jose mutters, and I'm surprised at the stab of hurt I feel. I am running Camp Boring.
Stephanie, 13, keeps hitting Finti, who's 14. So, he hits her back. We separate them, they roll their eyes and slouch away and 10 minutes later they're at it again and again. We corner Finty and ask, "What is going on?" He stammers and then blurts out, "It's just that when I get around her, my head hurts." Tiny and I burst out laughing. I have never heard a better description of what girls and boys can do to each other. So, we walk to the back gates of the zoo where a creek slices through the grass and the kids come alive, skipping stones, and turning over rocks.
Delontae:
We went down and we got in the water and then we had fun in the water. We was splashing the water and we seen a lot of animals in the water. I forgot the name of them, but they looked kind of like crabs.
Katie Davis:
You see, our neighborhood is right by this huge swath of woods called Rock Creek Park, 1400 acres of woods and many of these kids never go in it. They never climb the trees or catch a craw daddy or run down Snake Hill the way I did with my brothers. Most kids barely leave their block or their PlayStations for that matter. Their parents keep them close and rightly so, but they're missing a part of growing up, having a ditch, a creek, a bank to call their own. Here's Tiny.
Tiny:
For the most part, these kids, I don't think they realize that these places are actually real. They're like television, they're illusions to some degree until they actually go and touch and feel and see them for themselves.
Katie Davis:
Another friend of mine, a neighborhood activist, has distilled his whole philosophy of working with children to these six words. Around the corner to the world. Everything is within reach. You've just got to get off your block. Stephanie and Finti though, they're having trouble doing that. Stephanie keeps provoking and prodding until she triggers a fight between Finti and another boy. We kick all three of them out.
Now, this may sound harsh, but one thing I finally learned is not to tolerate constant disruption. It took me seven years of experimenting. I hired conflict mediators and child therapists for the kids and for me. I was famous for giving the kids second, third, fourth, fifth chances and it never seemed to help them, and it exhausted me. Now I explain the rules and Tiny helps me stick to them.
Tiny:
If you don't want to be with us and understand our rules and guidelines, there's the street, so you can get to stepping.
Katie Davis:
We go everywhere, to museums, a monastery, the National Mall, canoeing, and on some mornings, we simply walk the two blocks to the woods and explore. One day I guide them to a stand of trees that I know well. A place where there are deer, woodpeckers, box turtles. My refuge. The complaints start after about six minutes. How much longer? My feet hurt. It's too hot. The call of the whine.
Jane:
It was hard.
Katie Davis:
To the kids, it's a forced march. It feels like torture, like-
Dontrell:
I was in jail.
Katie Davis:
Malaika starts crying. I confer with Tiny. Maybe it's too much. Maybe we should turn back because my feet are starting to hurt right now. He just looks at me. All right, all right, and we keep going. Two miles, three miles, four miles. Antonio, who's extremely overweight, starts to sniffle and limp. So, we veer back out of the park to 16th Street, and I flagged down a cab and put him in it. "Hey, that's not fair," yell the other kids. The day after though, the hike is legendary. "We walked 20 miles," they bragged. Really it was about five. We climbed a mountain, we survived. Our group has its own mythology now.
Tiny:
All right, listen up, listen up.
Katie Davis:
Early on we realized that about four of our kids were not bathing. We're talking grit on the neck and smells so bad you can't sit next to them. I know these kids and I know that they are basically raising themselves. City workers know it too. In the meantime, they need some pointers, so we give the job to Tiny who titles his lecture, 'When you are funky and possibly losing friends.'
Tiny:
Funkiness is a delicate subject. All right? So, what you want to do is make sure that your friends don't necessarily have to tell you. A lot of people just stay away from you and say, "Oh, she's so nice. I like being around her. But she's funky. She's a little odoriferous. To put it bluntly, she stinks. Or he stinks."
Katie Davis:
So, we explained about bathing at least once a day, washing their clothes and changing their sheets, Camp Hygiene. And that's how it goes all summer. We set out to do one thing and stumble across something else we need to teach the kids. One morning, Walter is learning how to weed a tree box when he finds a knife. "I'm keeping it," he declares. Tiny talks to him for more than an hour. "Look, if you have a knife, you're going to use it. You use it, you might die." Walter gives Tiny the knife.
I never want to run a program again without men. For seven years, I tried, replicating many of these kids' fragmented families, strong mother figure, no fathers, or big brothers in sight. This summer, we are one strong extended family and if I can give anything to these children, it's that feeling, that there's this group of adults who are looking out for them in our neighborhood.
They know that I'll come down to the park with a band aid when Charlotte whacks her leg. They know that if their pants are hanging off their backsides, Nigel will ask them where their belt is and that if Tiny sees Walter, who's diabetic, if he sees him eating candy, he'll make him throw it away. I am the head of an emerging family, Camp Family.
One July day it was really hot. I asked the firemen to open the hydrant on Lanier. All the kids came. Biggie put his large belly in front of the hydrant and made the gushing water spray. The kids rode their bikes through the water, flashing chrome and the street was all cool and silvery for a moment. The kids were learning a new language, a bike language, and I was learning to listen.
Three boys lean over an upside-down mountain bike, turn the pedal back, spin it, smooth the spoke, true the wheel. Leon is wearing a faded T-shirt, the one with a picture of his father on it. Julio says, "I wish my father were dead." Leon looks down at his 12-year-old chest at the letters, Rest in Peace Daddy. "He died in prison," says Leon, but the boys already know this. Leon unbends a spoke and sends the wheel spinning.
Cyrus grabs the tire, stops it cold. "I've never seen my dad. He might be dead." "Mines is in Arizona," Julio says, and spits into the street. "Last time I saw him, I was eight." Julio spins the wheel again hard, and the chain pops off. "If he walked up right now," says Julio, "I'd beat him with this chain." "Yeah," nods Cyrus. I watched these three boys truing one wheel and I see the father wheel. They keep working because when a wheel is true, it is steady and balanced. It can take them down Snake Hill to Rock Creek Park and the river. It can take them away.
There was trouble almost every day, some kind of trouble. Wiley, a drop in member of the camp took nine-year-old Nathan's bike. I mean, he stole it and I told everyone at the basketball court to tell Wiley I needed that bike back.
Wiley leaves a message:
Sunday, 12:00 AM. "Okay. Hey, this is Wiley. I heard some people acting like they're looking for me, so if they looking for me, tell them, come for me. But you can have a bike back tomorrow. Once I get off work today, I'll bring it to us. All right, bye."
Katie Davis:
Walter's mountain bike was stolen as he was coming up a long hill. I bought him a new bike and then Walter's dad took that one to go to work. I offered Walter another one. "Katie," he said, "I don't even want a bike anymore."
The bikes brought problems I never imagined.
"We've got a problem Katie," a neighborhood store manager was on the phone. "Your kids just stole something from us." I had sent two members of my bicycling group to buy a new wheel so they could go on a ride.
LeAndrew and Iby:
Every time I ride my bike, it's just to get away from the city. I try riding far as I can. It feel good because it make you think, and you just be riding and riding and riding.
Katie Davis:
That's Iby and LeAndrew. They carry themselves upright in our neighborhood. So, when the manager called to say they'd stolen something, I thought other kids, yes, not these two. "Did you see them steal it?" I asked. "No, but I have it on video." A heaviness seeped through me. "Okay, I'll go find them. Can you please double check the tape though?"
I walked down to the park and spread the word that I was looking for Iby and LeAndrew. I reminded myself that anything is possible. What if they did steal the handlebar grips? Should I ban them from our group?
I decided that they would have to return what they stole and apologize. A totally humiliating experience that I went through as a kid when I got caught stealing a fist full of pink taffy. Back home, waiting for the boys to appear, I called the store manager again. "I checked the tape," he blustered. "It is them, and I'm calling the police." My front gate creaked. It was Iby and LeAndrew. "Look, guys," I began, "You've been accused of stealing something from the bike shop." "We didn't take anything," they said evenly, meeting my eyes.
"They have it on video," and then I launched into the kind of speech I thought I should give at that point. It's best if you did to admit it and come clean. Iby didn't flinch.
Iby:
I was like, hey, show me the tape.
Katie Davis:
So, we went to the store, and we huddled around the monitor. As the manager fast forwarded his evidence, Iby couldn't wait for him to hit play.
Store manager:
I got a bad feeling about it when Iby and the other kid were both just really just completely adamant that they didn't do it. And I was like, "Oh no."
Katie Davis:
We stared at the blurry tape. A lone figure came up the aisle and stuffed something down the front of his baggy pants. Iby pointed to his clothes.
Iby:
I said, "See, that's not what I got on. I kept telling you." He said, "I see it." And dude had on a totally different thing.
LeAndrew:
He had on a gray sweatshirt, we had on our raincoats.
Katie Davis:
We looked at Iby and at LeAndrew and back at the video and we began to see what they knew. The thief didn't look anything like these two boys, but they kept on, as if they had to convince us further. "You see, he's got on boots, we have on our Jordans. He has a hood on, and we don't." They could see all the subtle differences between themselves and the thief. The manager began to see the picture more clearly, or he actually looked at it for the first time.
Store manager:
It was really clear once I looked at it from the other angle.
Katie Davis:
Because all he'd seen before was a Black kid, a shapeless Black kid. "I owe you an apology," the manager said, not looking Iby and LeAndrew in the eye. It was awful and wonderful at the same time. Wonderful how calmly and assuredly Iby and LeAndrew stood up for themselves. Awful that they had to and have to all the time. I keep thinking how we don't see each other, how we walk by, take one glance, and assume so much.
This manager somehow missed Iby, who has striking light skin, the color of whipped foam, and LeAndrew, who has a mole under his nose that's impossible to miss. Both have been buying tubes and patches at that bike shop for years. Before I worked with kids, I did the same thing. Groups of boys, Latino and Black, triggered my fear drill, gripped my purse. Don't meet the eye, just keep walking.
Now I try to slow down, and the 200 pounder turns out to be nicknamed Poo Bear and the sixth grader throwing dice against the wall comes up to tell me that he got to play a pig in the Three Little Pigs. "Well, that's great, Moochie." I've gained this intimacy from catching people's eyes and speaking. It's worth practicing because if we don't see these kids, they'll never bother to see us. And when people don't see each other, they end up colliding.
Music
Katie Davie:
Snake Hill was mixed by audio engineer Flawn Williams. He’s the glue of these stories, they wouldn't make sense if he wasn't involved. The editor was Mary Rose Madden. The opening music was from bass player, Herman Bernie. All the other music came from David Schulman and Schulman Creative.
And this episode is dedicated to City Bikes, the local bike shop, and Charlie McCormick for his brash vision for the Kids' Bike Workshop.
Credits:
Porchtales is produced by Humanities DC. 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.