I suppose there is a reason this part of town is called an “end” rather than a “side.”  Things are just dif’rent down h’yar, where I landed.  A home.  A fine home, and one I could afford.  No, things don’t appreciate down here, but I didn’t buy it to sell it.  Old stock, here.  Coal miners.  The egress from the mines, the bright promise of the auto industry, good, solid, work, so far, so far, Detroit.  Many, many, did not make it that far.  But they made it this far.  Out of the hardscrabble mining stock of Kentucky and West Virginia.  The country, it was back then, just outside the big city.  Columbus is the capital, so the main business here is government, but there is heavy industry, also placed down here, in this “South - End.” 

Lives, re-built. Dreams, accomplished.  Near schools, where the children could, actually “do better.”  There are deep lines on the faces here.  But the eyes?  They twinkle.  They are full of love.  Gospel love, children love, wife, husband love.  Mated to their roots, and afforded a place to live with them in.

A lower State Route divides my city.  Saying that you live below that line is tantamout to saying you live in abject poverty.  But that is just what the snooty people think.  The West, East, and North "Sides" are chockablock with chi-chi shopping malls, national brands of designer goods that no one should be able to afford, flaunted.  The Haves vs. The Have Nots.  After all, how can you exalt yourself, unless it is by putting someone beneath you?

The railyards have their terminus down here by me as well.  The massive, 1800’s brick Roundhouse, still in use by the C&O and CSX Rail Lines, lives just a half mile from me.  I hear them, not often, so silent, the massive trains.  It is the humping yards, the end of the line.  Hobo paradise.  Yea, you still see a few.  The adventurers, always in search of a Circus.  They whisper down here.  It echos out, too, because the mighty Scioto is also nearby.  They are at standstill.  Steam down.  Rest.  I hear moans.  Sweet moans of rubber’d metal and cogs coupling the trains.  A thud, cracking the very air.  And when they leave, so slowly, not at speed, their exit is little more than a distant whistle call, and the echo of it across the bridges that separate the South End - from all the Sides.    

My neighborhood is always a whisper.

It’s just across the Core Road to Buckeye Steel.  The pit of us, America.  Industry.  It lives and thrives here.  Still.  Here, in the heaven-haven of The Forgotten, the Taken For Granted.  Trucking work.  Quarry work.  Good labor, good pay, for good men.  Most people drive pick up trucks.  We don’t see luxury cars.  We see rods.  Lovingly restored, it is a hotbed of cruise-ins during Summer, and I made many a pal by just driving my bitchen ‘68 Buick Skylark droptop to'em, and just hangin' out.   Good people.  Really good people.  Wholesome.  Sincere.

Traditions come here in myriad form, and food is just about the foremost tradition, I have found.

I can get things in the grocery mart that you just can’t find in other places.  I know; I’ve tried.  Grandview runs out of pecans.  German Village runs out of oysters.  Down here? -- we are chockablock with them.  No one else around here eats that stuff.  At the holidays, you will see Fam-Packs of Chitterlings, Hog Mawls, Bird’s Feet, Sour Pigs.  Greens.  Mustard greens, Pike greens, Poke Salad, Turnip Greens, Beet greens.  Like greens?  We got’em!  I have no idea how to cook greens, don’t think I want to learn, but have been thankful for whole-berry cranberry sauce for the leftover- meals when my home-made relish has been devoured by my guests.  

And speaking of guests, I always make a meal of my own after the holiday’s festivities, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I always have.  I love my brother, and I know it is the one day of the year that he cooks a full meal, serves it on time, and the whole family is expected to be there for a big sit-down.  However.  It is starch-laden, sweet-laden, and vegetable bereft.  I continue to make country green beans lovingly prepared with a liquor that I simmer for a day of smoked ham hocks and bermudas, but I am always careful to put just a PINCH of cumin in, and always mindful of overcooking them just slightly in order to finally triumph one day and trick them into thinking this fresh stuff MUST be better than canned-soup casserole if I keep making it, and have just one person besides my friend and I taking at least a bite.  My escalloped oysters, yum in a liquor of butter, some fine cracker crumbs, white pepper, worchestershire and heavy cream, baked to almost souffle-texture.  Incred.  But they always come back home with me, untouched. 
    
But I digress. 

My real story of making a Holiday meal in the South End was just a chance encounter with a sweet lil’ feller in the grocery mart.  I was so happy to be buying the ingredients for my own meal with company coming this year instead of just my friend and I, that I was gaily gathering up veggies, condiments for relish trays, nuts for toasting, the once-yearly golden garnet yams, etc. that I didn’t see him coming ‘round the corner, nearly colliding with my cart.  He was an older fella, older than me, anyway, and very cute.  Kinda small, maybe 5’7,” had a rather big head with a dozer cap on, and a discreet hearing aid.  I smiled brightly, gave a wee laugh, and said Happy Holidays!  He nodded his approval, gave me a greeting back, then quickly added, “can you help me?”  I replied, “why yes, if I can.”  Seems he was rather lost in the rearrangement of the store in order to change it from a Kroger to a “Kroger MARKETPLACE”  It’s like a grocery within a Target store now.

He said he saw that I was headed for bread, but he was actually looking for “flare” and “mee.”  Uh oh.  Here comes that language barrier again.  I had to say excuse me, could you repeat that?  He tried his best to enunciate, but it still came out as “flaaaar”  and “meeee-uh.”  Okay.  So I am supposed to be this linguist, right?  I study the accents of the people around me, and finally recognized the drawl.  “Oh!”  I said.  “Do you mean ‘flour?’”  “Yes!,” he said, “flare.”  I chanced it: “...and meal?”  He actually brightened.  “Yes, mee-uh,” he said.   So I briefly explained that that would be in the baking needs aisle, in the center, by the cake mixes, and it will be up there, here let me show you.  He was so happy!  I took him to the baking aisle, and found the Martha White cornmeal he loved, and the Pillsbury Golden-Seal, bleached, refined flour. 

He thanked me with a little shyness, but with that lovely twinkle of gratitude in his sweet eyes.  A neighbor, no doubt.

I thought about him several times over the Holidays.  How he was just the cutest, sweetest, true South Ender.  And I wondered what he was going to do with the flour and meal, and more importantly, if they served greens.  Maybe he could have told me what in the world you do with those big bitter leaves.