Why I love Durham

I didn't write this, but I do love the sentiment. It was penned by a good friend, Mitzi Viola, director of development at Habitat for Humanity here in Durham:

August 2, 2008

WARNING: political content

There are a couple of things you have to know to make sense of this post.

1. There's this place called Bicsuitville - the crème de la crème of Southern fast-food breakfast that will kill you. Our friends at Biscuitville have a restaurant conveniently located in the 'hood just about halfway between my house and my office. I stop here most mornings for eggs. Some days, even, I do what the good-ol-boy lineman in front of me shamelessly did last week: I add cheese. Yes, after the requisite Diet Pepsi, I am now paying $5.05 each day for the privilege of eating something that costs next to nothing if you make it at home. And to understand this you need to know I'm following the advice of a piece of happycrap I once read: limit the amount of bingable food in the house. Because I can't keep anything besides tuna and almonds in my house without abusing it, that's all there is in my huge pantry. Tuna. Almonds. And dog food. It's a costly position to find oneself in, but it's sane and safe, and I really think I'm getting there. In fact, cooking eggs at home is a goal I'd like to take on once I tackle inner peace and how to dupe the IRS. I'll get there. In the meantime, I wait in a long line of fatigued people driving fatigued vehicles in the worst neighborhood in Durham for eggs with cheese.

2. The neighborhood really is rotten. It's about six blocks from the Mo-Do Bait and Tackle Shop and just east of the place where only two percent of Durham's residents live but where 20 percent of Durham's crime occurs. Just around the corner is Angier Avenue, the area with the single greatest concentration of prostitution in the city. If the author of the Left Behind series is correct, Angier Avenue and its many business associates (and I, waiting in line for eggs with cheese) will all be comfortably, guiltlessly left behind after the rapture, just going about business as usual. The other description offered of this neighborhood comes from our new construction director, Karey. Karey lives in and loves Durham. Only she calls it Beirut. The judgment comes from her habit of driving Hummers and F-350 diesels between Habitat work sites - in high-heel flip-flops, no less. The streets are so bad she finds herself searching the roadside for IEDs and the like. She's convinced the guy who runs road improvements is related to the guy who owns the only tire alignment and balance place in East Durham. It's a set-up.

So, with all this said, I was waiting in line this morning for eggs, in inner-city Beirut, wearing my favorite Habitat for Humanity T-shirt. The Biscuitville experience is especially enriching on the weekends, when even the most frugal live a little.

There's a cacophony to delight all the senses. A pearl-colored Cadillac Escalade waits in front of me in line, its self-absorbed driver refusing to move up just a little and instead playing with her newly painted nails. Two young men in red and black march through the parking lot, crossing in front of oncoming traffic without fear. They are the Bloods. A huge immigrant family dressed for church weaves between the parked cars, the seemingly mile-long drive-through line I'm in that's backed out onto the street, and the lane of open traffic that's now stuck because the Escalade in front of me won't move up. I'm guessing this family is Pentecostal because they appear to be Mexican and it's Saturday. This skinny old man the color of cocoa who is wearing an orange vest and sporting a business permit is selling newspapers on the corner. He is given the papers to sell for anything he can get and splits the cover price with the company. Our local paper has done this for "qualified" individuals for years. Today he's a little brazen, though, moving to the sidewalk by the drive-through pick-up window and harassing everyone who drives by while their windows are still down - along with their defenses. All the while the smell of bacon wafts through the humid air to the beat of somebody's R&B.

And then it happens. A gentle old woman shuffles out to an old burgundy Buick and settles into the front passenger seat. The kids in the back are playing with toy soldiers. The not-as-old-but-still-old woman driving cranks the engine. They are backing up.

Problem is I'm parked almost directly behind them in the terminally long drive-through line. This woman isn't stopping simply because there's a Subaru behind her. No, sir.

As suddenly as the Red Sea once parted, the Escalade driver (whom I'm still judging) moves forward, looking with concern at the situation developing in her side mirror. The guy behind me backs up and urges the guy behind him to back up, pushing him back out onto the road.

The Bloods stop their conversation to be sure we all have what we need to pull this off.

I back up slowly and motion for the not-so-old-but-still-old woman to back up.
It all happens instinctively. None of us really stops to think. There's this beaten-up old Buick full of people - family. They have some place to go. They really can't negotiate the chaos that is Biscuitville, and no one in the car is actually qualified to drive it. And so the village responds. We are there to help, to facilitate their safe journey home.

As the gray-haired driver does a five-point turn out of her parking space, I have this thought: I LOVE DURHAM. I'm proud to be from Durham, and I adore East Durham. It's dirty, stinking Beirut at its worst - the Mo-Do Bait Shop in cahoots with the city - but it also has integrity and texture and innate goodness. The people of East Durham don't have time to worry about being too fat or too ugly or too anything else. They are where they are, and they're grateful for it. They do their very best each and every day, and they splurge on biscuits and the like on the weekends. They have hopes and dreams and values and fears. They are we: we're really all the same, after all, once you get past the (false) superficial divisions. Only perhaps they have the benefit of being more real. Life has shaped their focus and limited their distractions.

~~~

What's great about all of it is this same Biscuitville is the place I've taken pictures to post online. There's a string of Goliath-sized power things that run through the parking lot, just kissing the building. The signs posted on each gigantic tower read, "WARNING: High Voltage, KEEP OFF." You'd think if it were that dangerous they might think differently of placing these towers of power within reach of children at the friendly neighborhood Biscuitville in the middle of one of the poorest sections of Durham where many people walk and ride buses. It just doesn't make sense.

Yet, if this not-as-old-but-still-old-woman-backing-up incident had occurred across town at a McDonald's in a better zip code, I'm pretty sure the Escalade in front of me would have been a Volvo (or a Subaru) and its driver would have cursed me out or rolled her eyes as I requested a little assistance in helping the old woman get home. It's generally in neighborhoods like Wellons Village that people really "get it" and respond generously without needing to be asked. Those who have the least give the most. And I challenge my own assertion that they have the least. Perhaps they have only what matters in the end, and that's what makes them so cool. They have God and family, and so they have everything they need.

So I ask you...who deserves most to live in a community where live wires litter parking lots: those who reach out to anyone and everyone or those who are closed? But maybe it doesn't matter. Perhaps it's inevitable that this situation exists. Perhaps if zip codes switched the roles would change. Ultimately not everyone is all ‘good’ or all ‘bad’ in any zip code.

~~~

A front-page article in the Herald-Sun caught my attention while at Mr. Bell's BP station yesterday. The headline reads, "Durham ranks low in violent crime."

To anyone from our state of this union, this is a laughable headline. Comparison places city, county below similar-sized areas. Remarkable.

Outsiders' beliefs about Durham are ultimately driven by one fact: roughly half of the city's residents are African-American. For this reason alone Durham is looked down upon by nearly 100 percent of the Free World that knows it. Durham is dirty and lesser and scary. Don't go there. By all means don't live there.

And our hometown paper, which I loathe for firing the best publisher ever, my friend Toby - this paper has now proven what we already knew. It is, however, most unfortunate that the city cited in this article as having the next lowest crime in the state happens to be Raleigh, our nemesis neighbor to the southeast. Just one place in line ahead of us for the good.

Durham rocks. That's what I have to say today.

p.s. Raleigh, you suck.
p.p.s. So as not to be like Raleigh, I need to say this: Beirut, we judge you, and we do not even know you. Peace.

On getting outside of your comfort zone

In my lifetime, I’ve been out of my comfort zone quite a bit. I remember the first time a black schoolmate was invited to stay overnight with my boys. Over time, it got to be normal with no need for unfounded fear. It eventually led me to be comfortable with the idea and I know we were part of getting some other people out of their comfort zone. Once, I brought a black child to a private swim club we were part of and was asked to accept a refund of my membership money if I insisted on bringing him back. I’m sure fellow church members were out of their comfort zone when our family brought inner city children with us to church.

I was outside my comfort zone when several of my children chose to marry interracially. At first I was uncomfortable because I feared what life would be like for them and for their children in what was then a society that was pretty intolerant about such things. I had some tough moments with some of my family since they also were out of their comfort zone. Questions from acquaintances like “why are you allowing your children to marry a black” come to mind. A threat from a spouse’s parent to disown them if they married one of my children comes to mind.

The results have been rewarding to my wife and I. We’re grandparents to the most beautiful and smartest grandchildren imaginable and we have many true friends of another race. My eyes have been opened to the value of stepping outside your comfort zone.

I say this to introduce another idea that for a time was outside my comfort zone. The idea that you could bring an inmate into your home for a visit. It took some getting used to. I had attended religious services held by my church at Guess Road prison on alternating Sundays. I got to know some of the men in attendance and began to realize we weren’t really all that different. They talked about missing their families. Some had children they hadn’t seen in years. Some thanked God for landing in prison saying they’d probably be dead by now were it not for being imprisoned.

I’ve taken guys out into the community as a community volunteer for some 7 years or so. I’ve met a wide range of guys…probably more than 30. Some are college grads; some cannot read or write. I’ve been impressed by the general level of intelligence and social skills so many have. Some are independent thinkers; some will go along with anything a friend suggests. Many are in prison for drug-related crimes. One killed his wife years ago. He was a Vietnam vet with PTSD (he didn’t realize it at the time) and had no recollection of why he did it, but remembered doing it. No one has denied doing the crime they were charged with, but it is obvious to me from hearing their stories that there are serious problems with our system of justice. A lot of guys talk about getting a job, although many incarcerated as teenagers never had a career. Some have taken job skill training offered within the prison system.

Guess Road is a minimum security prison. Over the years, they have been able to implement some programs that I think will help keep guys from coming back into the system. As a volunteer, after some appropriate training, I can take 1 or 2 guys out into the community to pre-approved locations for up to 6 hours on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I’m allowed on the camp for religious services. There are 3 levels of classification within the system, each allowing different levels of privilege. At the highest level (3), an inmate can interview for a job and work in the community.

In the US, over 650,000 inmates are released from prison each year. From the community’s perspective, the difference between a level 3 inmate and an ex-offender is relatively minor. Generally, a level 3 inmate is going to be released in a few months or weeks. They can be working a regular job just like an ex-offender.

One of the themes I remember from my Sunday School classes and the sermons I’ve heard over the years is Jesus’ stories about people or things that were lost and the great effort that was made to find or rescue or forgive them. It angered the prodigal son’s brother that his wayward brother who had offended his father was welcomed back into the fold when he “came to his senses”. In many ways, I think as a society we are a lot like the prodigal son’s brother in that we resent good treatment and forgiveness directed toward folks we see as wayward. But, like the prodigal son, I think we need to “come to our senses”, too. The rewards of stepping outside that comfort zone are simply too good for us to be passing up.