A Complicated Marriage of Convenience

Support for this American life comes from Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid, all in one place. From consultations to events and experiences, showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business Plus connect with your audience and raise support for your cause by fundraising directly on your website with built in donation tools Visit squarespace d. com slash American to get ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain Let us speak of our nation's monuments When you're at the Statue of Liberty, or Standing under the Ratunda at the US Capitol., when you're at the Alamo, it is clear what they mean Why Do thousands of tourists go every day of the summer four corners ot in the wilderness where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, four different states att one point I wouldn't wantce somewmer drawn inexorably magnetically without quite knowing why justust like every other wandering tourist who strays within two hundred and fifty miles of the place. chances are you have done this yourself. You've driven three or four hours out of your way And you show up? And there's a marker on the ground Rring by dozens, literally dozens of t shirt stands And families come, and they stand on the supposed spot where the four states meet And what? They hold hands, they sit on the ground. and then mom or dad or sis. It st's a little platform they have they're built speespecially for this purpose and takes a snapshot And then, often, there's this some kind of aftermath moment where everybody just sort of stands around haplessly like, what was that all about? You know, we came for this? And then the next group comes in The arbitrariness of it all, I think, is lost on no one I saw one family with young kids who simply placed a teddy bear On the spot where the four states meet, I snapped a picture of that Could't any four corners hold just as much meaning as this place He my friend The answer of course is yes And today on our program, we offer our own little national monument here on the radio, our own picture of life in America, our own four corners. From WVEZ Chicago, to American Life, from Iirra Glass, todayod on our program, fourour Corners, we tell the story of life in America through portraits of life on four different corners in four different states across this great nation Eack one, history, E two, love, Eck three, neighbors, E four How to become an American, stay with us Support for this American life comes from Schwab Et Schwab, how you invest is your choice, not theirs That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest in trade on your own, pllus, get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs With award winning service, low costs, and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab Visit schchwab. com to learn more This American Life, Today show is a rerun from nineteen ninety nine, a very memorable rerun, but I mentioned this just in case you noticed some outdated language O Let's begin with the most epic of our four stories today Back when we made this episode, writer Sarah Vaow had a theory that she could tell the entire history of America by describing what happened on and around one single street corner. spepecifically corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive here in Chicago She thought she could just swivel around and point at the whole dark and inspiring tale Here then er story When I started, I had only a few things to go on A couple of French explorers a plaque on the bridge said passed by in sixteen seventy three. an Indian massacre in eighteen twelve right there in front of the Burger King vague notions ofbbe Lincoln's debt to the Chicago Tribune whose quaint gothic tower looms over the brridge's Northide. I thought, that's enough American history and Id just make up the rest Turns out my theory was only too right The intersection of Michigan and Wacker, I found out, isn't just a corner, it's a vortex The deeper I dug into the history of Chicago and its relationship to the history of the country, the more crowded the ghost traffic jam clogging up the Michigan Avenue Bridge got He, I'm standing here right now on the Michigan Avenue Bridge and the Chicago River is right underneath me. There's some ducks floating under there and a boat just went by And here's another one coming. Out there is where the river meets Lake Michigan to the east I' lookingoo south, the place where the bridge hits land is the corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, where you can get your vision checked or buy a nice fur coat should you desire I'm swiveling around and the view from the bridge is just picture postcard pretty. Eespecially at night when the Wrigly building is just lit up so soft it glows. Supposedly, the building so delighted Joseph Stalin that he had the University of Moscow designed in its image. And who can blame him? The American national mythology revolves around the idea that the promise of America is best seen in the West, home, home, on the range, etcetera. Existentially, that might be true. But economically, the real place to witness the promise of America is the Midwest, where for most of this country's history, the products of the range were manipulated for fun and profit When the cowboys sang Get along little doogie, they left out the part where the little doogie is railroaded to Chicago to be slaughtered by some underpaid, overworked immigrant en route to its manifest destiny as a New Yorker supper. The first person to grasp the significance of this place where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan was Louis Jolier, or as he's known around here, Joliet Back when his name was still said with a French accent, Joliette was a twenty seven year old fur trader who accompanied a Jesuit missionary named Jacques Marquette on a canoe expedition from Quebec in sixteen seventy three They were to map the Mississippi in the name of France Unaware that Spain had already claimed the river some hundred and thirty years before On the return trip, at the suggestion of their Indian guide, they traveled from the Mississippi into the Illinois River and then the Displains They got out and carried their canoes a few dozen miles to the Chicago River. But they got back in their canoes and paddled to this very spot right where the river meets the Great Lakes. Bow the corner at Michigan and Wacker And Juliette then had a vision. His map of North America, an oddly pretty, delicate ink drawing he made in sixteen seventy four, is concerned with one thing and one thing only, water His America is all Great Lakes in Mississippi close and you can see what he saw There's like Michigan and at only one spot the future side of Chicago connect to a river that connects to a couple of other rivers that could connect it to the Mississippi This is what Juliet saw This place is a continental hub The missing link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and thus the Atlantic and the Gulf. All that was needed was a short canal spanning the miles of prairie between rivers. He wrote, We could go with Vacility to Florida in a bark and by very easy navigation. Jouliette's map isn't so much a map as a prophecy Stick your ear up against it and you can practically hear cash registers ring Surprisingly, they only built a bridge here in nineteen twenty. Engineers also strained out the Chicago River and put in massive landfills over there, so the lake is further from the corner than it was in Jooliette's day And I like to picture Joliet sometimes walking up or down Michigan Avenue to the bridge, a go cup in his hand from either the Starbucks over there from the north side of the river, or the Starbucks over there on the south side of the river, spitting coffee lace saliva into the Chicago River, knowing it'll float with facility all the way past New Orleans into the ocean from there The first person to get cracking on Joiette's dream was Chicago's first permanent settler, Jean Baptiste Plain Duabel, a triter who built a cabin here on the north side of the river in seventeen seventy nine, a century after Joiette paddled by Dusabo's mother was an African slave and his father was French. He lived here on what is now the site of a thirty five story office tower called the Equitable Building Pottawatome wife Catherine, Tusabble's marriage bed was itself a map of America The mixing of European, African and Indian blood to make a son and a daughter, true American children with three continents in their dark eyes Chicago school teachers like to impress upon their students that Chicago's first resident, Dusabel was a black man And just think, it only took two hundred and four years for the town to elect its first black mayor In eighteen oh three, the United States established Port Dearborne at what would become the corner of Michigan and Waker to protect the portage of the Chicago River During the War of eighteen twelve, hundreds of Potawatamy Indians descended upon the soldiers and their families and killed them, burning down the fort The site of Chicago was then abandoned for four years. When soldiers arrived to rebuild the fort, they first had to bury the scalped human remains which still lay there Today the side of the fort is weirdly commemorated here with these little bronze markers embedded in the sidewalk at Michigan and Wacker so the chorus can dance around its former perimeter as if learning to cha cha cha And over here, there's a wildly racist relief sculpture commemorating the defense of Fort Dearborne, where a soldier from the forort is kind of battling off this savage Indian brave while a mother and child are kind of cowering behind him, basically waiting to die And underneath that There's a plaque that says the people of the fort were brutally massacred by the Indians. They will be cherished as martyrs in our early history. What it doesn't say is that those Indians technically hadn't given over their rights to this land, but it looks like they ran out of room to put that on the plaque. Now I'm going to walk around here ono the bridge And I'm looking west across the Chicago River. And if you look downriver at the turn in the river, a few blocks west, you can see the site of the old Suinash Hotel right over there During the first half of the nineteenth century, at the Suinesash Hotel, Chicago and seem to be play acting the juiciest bits of the country's spanking new Cstitution every night. Historian Donald L. Miller writes, At the Suanash and its neighboring hotels, men and women of every color and class were welcome, and whiskey, song, and dance were the great democratizers Visitors from more civilized parts were shocked to see Indian braves spinning the white wives of fort officers around the dance floor of the sauinash to the frenzied fiddling and toe tapping of hotel owner Mark Bauubien or white and Indian women drinking home distilled liquor straight from the bottle To add an edge to the evenings, local white traders would put on feathered headdresses and spring into the crowded tavern with war whoops and raise tomahawks, scaring the wits out of tight buttoned easasterners I cannot overe emphasize how much I love that story. Not just the metaphor of it, but it is the best ideal of America I can think of picture of lqukeored up ladies and dancing Indians, the strangeness of reenacting the Fort Dearborne Massacre to scare the Ceasy Easterners, turning what must have still been an open wound into a practical joke I love that story as proof of the theorem that then, as today in Chicago, the mysterious equation of whiskey plus music equals what can only be called happiness. The ladies of Chicago wouldn't be dancing with Indians much longer because there wouldn't be any Indians left to dance with The city of Chicago was officially incorporated in eighteen thirty three. The year the Pottawatomy chiefs stood near the old Dusabble home and signed away their land in Illinois to the administration of Andrew Jackson who found time in his busy schedule of relocating the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw to have the pottawatomy removed west to what US. government surveyors had called land too poor for snakes to live upon Three years after the Pottawatomy signed away their land and the city was incorporated, construction began on that canal that Joliette had envisioned to connect Lake Michigan to the Mississippi The canal worked pretty much exactly as Joiette had imagined. So much trade moved past this corner that Chicago expanded from a muddy little hamlet of a few hundred people to a city of over one hundred thousand in just twenty five years Cyrus McCormack built his McCormack Reaper works right here on the river in eighteen forty seven His machine, the Reaper, turned out to be one of the most significant inventions in the history of history Before McCormick, it took three hours to gather a bushel of wheat, and with the Reaper, it took ten minutes Because McCormack helped mechanize agriculture, farms could take up more space and use less labor and less time. By speeding up and emptying out the country, McCormack populated the city Not that the march of progress is necessarily benign, especially if you're one of those urban workers Just ask the dead of the Haymarket riot who laid down their lives just fifteen blocks from here for the eight hour work day. O read Upton Sinclair's the jungle about what the stockyard employees went through on the south sideide By the Civil War, most of America's grain from the west and the vast prairie around Chicago was unloaded from trains here, traded on the commodities exchange, and then sent east on ships from Lake Michigan All within a five minute walk of the corner of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive. It could have been this very spot the poet Carl Sandberg was thinking of in his famous poem about Chicago Hog Butcher to the World. He called the city, Tolmaker, stacker of wheight, player with railroads and the nation's freight handler. Stormy, husky, brawling, city of the B shoulders Okay sow over here, toolmaker That was the reaper factory on the north side of the river. And over there, stacker of wheat on the south side, that was where these giant grain silos stood, where now is standing a giant hyatt hotel The player with raailroad and Nations freight handler, that's over there behind the hyatt where the train tracks were. And look right there, the guy in the leather jacket. Big shoulders It is my project to tell the whole history of America from this corner, and there's no telling of that history without the Civil War Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president here in Chicago at the Republican National Convention in eighteen sixty On the very site, by the way, of the oldld Suanash Hotel, where the Indians and drunken ladies used to dance From the Chicago Tribune, standing on North Michigan Avenue a stone's throw from the bridge, not only campaigned for Lincoln, its editors talked him into running for president in the first place Lincoln was considering going for vice president Maybe Trib's great editor, Joseph Madill helped found the Republican Party to advance the anti slavery cause Madeell was such a passionate abolitionist that he wrote in a tribune editorial in eighteen fifty six We are not unfrequently told that we crowd the tribune with anti slavery matter to the exclusion of other topics We plead guilty Midell and compomany's access to the president wasn't necessarily always in their favor. At the height of the Civil War, they went to the White House and pleaded to get out of the president's new request for six thousand more union draftees from Cook County and Chicago This after the area had already given up some twenty two thousand men According to writer Lloyd Went, after Madill asked for mercy, Lincoln turned on him with that Lincolnesque biblical wrath scolding It is you who are largely responsible for making blood flow as it has. You called for war until we had it. You called for emancipation and I have given it to you Whatever you have asked for, you have had Now you come here begging to be let off from the call for men which I have made to carry out the war you have demanded. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a right to expect better things of you. G home and raise your six thousand extra men. Needless to say, Lincoln got his Chicago soldiers And reporting the news of the president's assassination on april fifteenth, eighteen sixty five, the headline of the Chicago Tribune simply reads Terrible news. Not long after the Civil War, the whole city burned to the ground, and Chicago became the place where every major architect in the country, from Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright on down to Mes Bandero, worked on reinventing what a city skyline is supposed to look like Montgomery Wward and Sarson Robuck revolutionized consumer merchandising with mail order catalog sales. Montgomery Wward was just two blocks from Michigan and Wacker In nineteen twenty, Al Capone came to town. the same year prorohibition went into effect. One year after that, Vincent the Semer Grucci, a member of the Deon O'Banion gang chased by police drove onto the Michigan Avenue Bridge just as it was opening to let a boat pass He jumped the gap, only to crash straight into the other side Decades pass. Manufacturing at the corner gives way to the service economy. Now it's all banks and advertising agencies and law firms, skyscrapers instead of warehouses Railroads give way to the world's busiest airport on the north side of town. If I may skip ahead in the interest of finishing this story before tomorrow morning's paper arrives, for me, by the way, the tribune chock full of those anti slavery screeds as usual Only an eight minute walk from the corner is the site of the firstirst Kennedy Nixon debate, the place you could argue where modern televised democracy begins. Since that's the debate Nixon was said to lose not because of the issues, but because he looked so ghastly sweating under the lights And just a short walk from there is the building where Hugh Hefner ran Playboy magazine during its heyday As long as we're on the subject of the decline of Western civilization, if you look over there to the second story of the NBC Ter, tucked between the Equitable and the Tribune, that's where they tappe the Jerry Springer show The Jerry Springer Sh. It just wouldn't be the haunted landscape around the Michigan Avenue bridge if some symbolic television apocalypse did not happen here each day Making guuest Soth's near constant profanity makes the show into an unintelligible barrage of bleeps Watching it is like listening to a constant storm warning, which is exactly what it is. U Maybe it's just a coincidence, but one way you can measure the importance of this corner to our national psyche is the number of times it shows up in motion pictures, specifically the action adventure kind Bruce Willis, Samuel Jackson, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey There's barely an actor worth the cover of Entertainment Weekly who hasn't been in a film with a scene shot right at the corner And why Because these films are about the motion of planes, trains, automobiles, boats, helicopters, motorcycles, every modern means of transportation And so where better to film them than the place that three centuries ago was spotted as our country's leading transportation hub by Hollywood's favorite unintentional location scout. Lewis Sholeyet In one typical offering, chain reaction, Kanu Reeves plays a fugitive motorcycle riding University of Chicago Machinist being framed for murder, treason, and terrorism Being framed is usually a big part of all these movies Atempting to elude the police, he's chased down Michigan Avenue to the Michigan Avenue brridge. The bridge starts opening, and Kanu scurries up, a cop not far behind He does a little better than Vincent the Semer Duchci did in the twenties, but then Kan who's a movie star, has a stunt double, and can do retakes. As the angle of the race bridge gets steeper, the cop slides to the bottom. Kanu's at the top. What should he do He looks up, a police helicopter. He looks down, a police boat It crawls into the bottom of the bridge as it's lowered and ducks into a garbage truck to safety When he meets his fellow shapely fugitive who nervously awaits him at the train station, the conductor asks, What took you so long? too which Kanu deead pans. The bridge was up Down, north, south, whatever. The point is that the bridge was. Right at the center of attention in the middle of the action at the hub We used to ship grain from this corner. Now that entertainment is America's second biggest export, the product we ship is She hand who I don't know what you're talking about Jesus Sarah. If you like that story, you'll like even more. her seven books that feel a lot like that about American history and culture. This story is collected in her great book of essays, Take the Coli our program today? Ab four different visions of America told at four different street corners across the country. We have arrived at A two L For Scott Richard and Julie Rriiggs at the corner where South Fth Street in Louisville, Kentucky meets the alley behind the West End Baptist Church Things between them changed forever Iirrevocably I think buuilt and built continually until it got to the point that brought us to the corner where everything was so outrageous, our emotions were so careening wildly out of control that we all we had to do was stand there and look at each other for it to be a monumental event in our lives The situation was Scott and I had been madly obsessed with each other for years, but we had always just been friends and u I was in a relationship at the time So on this summer day and this time in our relationship in our friendship when we were just friends I stopped by his apartment or his house over on Broadway to visit him Yeah, and we had a really nice afternoon. I think we hadn't seen each other for a few weeks, but when we saw each other we always laughed and always had fun always made each other happy And then Scott, was this a day for you that was like of particular torture Uh huh A lot of days when she came over, it was U it was fun, but it was bittersweet She's always able to go away from it being happy And like, Oh, that was so much fun and Meanwhile, I'm sitting there going this This is horrible You know, how can she be happy about what's happening here? It was almost like twisting the knife. It was like a So then I got in my little red Volkswagen and left and said goodbye. I was sitting on the back porch of our house This is a very Kentucky setting, steamy hot summer afternoon and my roommate Jason came out and sat down and could tell that I was affected by emotion and He said something to the effect of sometimes you would rather have a feast or famine I think it was something about a drought or a flood. A drought or a flood. Yeah Yes. So decided, well, enough of this then and I, um decided to take the gamble and I got in my car and raced down Broadway In afternoon traffic, weaving in and out of cars trying to catch her. I'm just cruising along. I hadd left like fifteen minutes before that, I think. Yeah. I had promised myself, well, if I catch up to her before we get to Central Park then I'll pull her over and I'm going to kiss her And I did catch her like right at Central Park. Right at Central Park. I'm driving in my car and I look over and there he is. And he's like, pull over, pull over. I'm like, what's going on? Completely confused. So I pull over into this parking lot, right on the corner end the list South in Baptist church parking lot And we both got out of our cars and we just kind of stood leaning against our respective cars just kind of U making not even small talk, it was just like everything around us kind of stopped and Nothing moved and it was impossible to describe Everything around you stopped and nothing moved. It was like, you know, like in a movie or in a dream, if you're having a dream and everything's spinning really quickly and then all of a sudden, just the one spot where you're standing stays still We no idea what happened there. We both felt something tremendously powerful. Our hearts were racing so fast All the background noise just kind of drops out and all the colors get really saturated. So then you kissed her. No. No, no. Nothing happened. He just stood there Well, something must have happened because we're here talking about it now. So what exactly did happen next? I think what God, I don't know. there was something something happened, but It just seemed to me It seemed like being there, that was my confirmation there was something defefinitely still going on inside Julie that involved me everything wasn't hopeless. And every time I drive by the parking lot and I actually went there at least twice that I'm sure Scott doesn't know about just sitting in the parking lot thinking God. So here our story ends. Julie's old boyfriend lived a block from the corner, so she passed it every time she went to see him. and thought about that moment with Scott. And finally, ditched the boyfriend. She and Scott have been together for three years to now live together. The funny thing about the situation was it wasn't the first time that we were destined to have our first kiss and missed it. Really Because we were in Paris together eight months earlier And we're having a really great time and stayed up really late one night in the corridor of a youth hostel in Paris talking. We should have kissed then, but we didn't. Because you werere with the other guy Because of the other guy. Even after I broke up with the guy, it still took so long. Oh really Yes. How come I wanted it to be perfect I wanted it to be something I wanted to wait tntill springtime upon a beautiful cliff somewhere. And you know, I thought, well when we were in Paris, I thought, well, there's the other guy and we're in Paris and you're supposed to fall in love in Paris. so we can't do it here. so tyypical to be in Paris. Oh our first kiss was in Paris I didn't want to be a hallmark car You can you can you only have one One opportunity to have your first kiss with someone. And you miss so many of them They finally had their first kiss in Scott's living room She had to make the first move Cing up dogs, dead people in a mystery, and what it takes to become an American. That's in a minute. from Chicagoub Radi program continues Support for this American life comes from Schwab. With the new Schwab Ten Investor account, teens can gain hands on investing experience and build positive money habits. It's an account co owned by you and your teen, so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money Learn more at schchwab. com Su for this Ameran Life and the following message come from Red Fin You're listening to a podcast, which means you are probably multitasking. Are you scrolling homelistings on Redfin? saving homes that you don't really expect to get Redfin wants you to know that they are not just built for endless scrolling. They really are built to help you find and own home. Red Vin agents closed twice as many deals as other agents So when you find the one You got a shot at getting it Let's get started at redfin. com own the dream Support for this American Life comes from Squarespace, the all in one platform for creating a fully custom on brand website. Choose from a wide range of professionally designed award winning templates with options for every user category. Showcase your offerings with a website designed to grow your business, and manage payments seamlessly with branded invoices and online payments Visit squarespace d. com slash American to get ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain This is American Life for I class Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variy of stories on that theme. Today's program is a rerun corners bring you a portrait of life in America by telling four different stories of four different street corners in four different parts of the country This if are in our program, weveard about the past, we've heard about matters of the heart, and now we have arrived at act three Neighbors Mike Paternitty has this story of what makes a community in a cemetery in Portland, Maine. whose entrance stands at the corner of Vaugh and Clifford The West End cemetery is full of oldld Dead Sea captains and soldiers from the War of eighteen twelve. Kids that died of cholera and wives who after six or eight or ten children just gave up There are rich people under monuments The Longfellllow family in a vault poppers without so much as a wooden marker No one's been buried here since the middle of this century, and so the place has fallen into disrepair You see a lot of the marble and shell headstones and puzzle pieces on the ground are standing at crooked attention About ten years ago, the cemetery was a popular hangout for prostitutes and junkies But now it's just dogs and their owners . When I first moved to town a couple years ago with my girlfriend Sarah, we walked our dog in the cemetery There was this guy there named Jeff, a big Brawnie American Indian from the Duckwater tribe, Id think who sort of qualified as my first friend in Portland He told me how he grew up in Nevada and was adopted by white parents and then raised in a little redneck town where people didn't really like Indians He'd moved around a lot and I pictured him as I was now The stranger in a strange place He walked with me in the cemetery sometimes twice a day, whatever the weather Or rather, we were both being walked by our dogs His was a wolf mix named Kiana with a vacant, slightly menacing glint in her eye, who liked to rough up young puppies In mine is a simple mutt named trout whose passion for chasing squirrels follows her lifelong commitment to rolling in poop It seemed like Jeff was always at the cemetery, sometimes up to eight hours in a row He said he worked at night, supposedly for a local scuba diving outfit, and that's why he had so much free time during the day He told stories, endless stories about his high school football exploits and the blown out knee that ended his college career at safety He talked about fishing, how he gill netted in the rivers of southeast Alaska And then how he and his girlfriend had bought a house and now they weren't together anymore And she had the house and he was here, a country away Walking his dog with people like me. He didn't seem angry at all Now, in fact, he seemed happy Like every day he was as happy as he'd been the day before And because of it, he was good at drawing people out at connecting the various factions inside the cemetery so that everyone stood around, nodding dumbly Listening to Jeff, our oblivious mayare holding forth on Kana's new collar. Perfect shampoo. while Kiana took her pound of flesh out of some hapless pup This was not the way things usually worked in the cemetery. The mere fact that I knew Jeff's name was unusual. Usually people didn't interact that much. Instead, we knew each other by handles There was Dalmatian Man, father of three speckled dogs, one to whom he spoke in sign language There was a greyhound lady regly walking her trio of greyhounds until the day that lightightning, her beloved, dove through a plate glass window during a thunderstorm and died. There was the man who walks and reads and Frisbee dude. In the lawn chair family, an old father and his fifty something son who daily set up their folding chairs near the cemetery gate forest around whom no one was safe And there was crazy shouting man. owner of three ragtag mutts and an elder statesman of the cemetery who when I finally talked to him wasn't crazy shouting man at all His name was Al There are loads of people up there that I see all the time Some of them I've been seeing for years and I don't know their names I recognize them. They recognize me. We talk about all sorts of things, and it just never really occurs to you to ask their name because you know their dog's name mean as a matter of fact, I've always had these you know these funnyccasions where you run into people that you've talk to a lot at the cemetery and you meet them somewhere. We were down at Granny Killum's when it was open one night and this woman came over and said, Al, how are you? How's the dogs? How's all this? And I was with a bunch of friends and I thought, and this is And I realized I had it wasn't that I had forgotten her name, it was that I had never known her name. Yeah. I knew her dog. I mean, I had no idea. And was I mean, this was not somebody that I just knew very casually. This is somebody I probably walked with three or four mornings a week But you always find, you know a lot more dogs than you know people s something about who's worth knowing anyway. Even today, what strikes me as amazing about the cemetery is that there are people here. People who show up twice a day and see other people here twice a day for years And many of them just don't know each other's real name, let alone what the other does for a living, or dreams of at night or loves or hates They just know each other's dog's name So when they refer to one another, they might say, Cersei's mom said milk bones are full of preservatives, which is why she cooks her own Or when they bump into each other downtown, Christmas shopping, they'll say, Elroy's mom. And then with nothing left to say, say u how goes it? Was this intimacy or a complete lack of intimacy? Sometimes it felt like both at once You had the warmth of intimacy and the comfort of hiding behind your dog And yet every day you saw people at their most naked, talking baby talk to their hounds kneeling to pick up poop I asked my friend Julie, Ruben's mother about this. I think you really get a sort of a window into people's I don't wantan to say well into people's souls. L you watch people very contentedly walking around Throwing the ball interacting with their dogs or totally ignoring their dogs. and going their own pace and every once in a while yelling for their dog. and you know. I mean, I really judge people by how they behave toward their dog. Here's Al again. I mean, when I see people hit a dog, You know, I'm really sort of appalled and amazed that you would do that Yeah I mean, I know who really, really likes their dogs and who doesn't I know people who've got trophy dogs and people who've got, you know, the scruffiest, ugliest dog, but you know they really, really love that dog I think it was a love part that kept me going back to the cemetery, and then it became my social hour, my escape, where more often than not I'd find Jeff and Kana The minute Jeff realized that I was a writer, he went to the library and over the course of a week read everything I'd ever written And then to my horror, wanted to talk about it And he did this kind of thing with others too. When the leaves began to change during my first October in the West End cemetery, Jeff was already talking about a Christmas card he was planning, a photograph of Kana and himself. He brought it up obsessively. about how Kiana was going to have a haircut and shampoo and have her nails clipped and how he had arranged for a photographer and how they were scouting locations There were ups and downs in the saga as it played out over weeks A good location that might not work out the day of the shoot if a oror Easter hit. The need to time everything just perfectly so that Kana would leave the beauty parlor, and then immediately sit for her picture before she could come back to the cemetery and get muddy In retrospect, there were little clues even then that something strange was going on with Jeff While he said he owned a truck, I only ever saw him at bus stops around town. In the scuba diving, later, when I called various outfits in Portland, no one had ever heard of him In the end he had the photograph taken at sears, He and Kana in the stiff, unsmiling pose of a Civil War era husband and wife. He in his familiar blue sweatshirt hulking behind Kiana who was perfectly quffed. He was beaming when he handed the Christmas card to me literally beaming After Christmas I left the country for several weeks, and when I came back sometime after a massive ice storm, he was nowhere to be found The cemetery glittered with glazed headstones dazed to unravel the story because people didn't seem to want to talk about it didn't seem to want to talk about anything Everyone just bundled into themselves. In Jeff, he was a very touchy subject, one that suddenly made us all feel defensive What I learned was this He'd had health problems, an infection of some kind. He went to the hospital at the same time that he was apparently forced out of his apartment. Money was tight. He'd asked someone from the cemetery to put him up. Another line crossed, but that hadn't worked out Kiana was taken to a kennel by Megan, Maddie's mom And now she was calling the kennel regularly to see if Jeff had picked her up, but he hadn't Week after week, she called until it was clear that Jeff couldn't or wouldn't pick up Piana that he was gone That's when Keyiana was adopted by someone else Here's me again You just you start talking about this stuff with somebody and then you realize I didn't even know this person. Like with Jeff. I mean, it was like you knew everything about his life. But in the end, how much of that was actually true. You know, you didn't even know this person. It was like August to December and he was gone But it seemed like forever There were completely unsubstantiated rumors that he'd robbed a bank. Someone knew someone whose cousin had seen his photo on a Boston newscast, maybe. But then most people were quick to accept this as fact. In a weird way, I wonder if we felt betrayed. betrayed because Jeff had broken the simple rules of the cemetery. He'd become too intimate Now he was gone, and it was hard to say hi, let alone catch someone else's eye. During those dark winter months, the cemetery became a kind of haunted, trustless place In one of the endless conversations we had about him later, some people worried that he knew where we lived. Someone threatened to track him down But what for so that he might never again bamboozle other hapless dog owners in other seaside towns into chatting about doggy shampoo Sarah and I kept the Christmas card on our refrigerator right up until a couple of months ago, actually when it quietly fell to a new rotation of refrigerator photos. We kept it there in hopes I think, that he would come back and explain where he'd been, for I was pretty certain he couldn't have robbed a bank And if he had, I told myself, maybe it was because he had to. Maybe he'd been inches from a life he'd imagined for himself, with a dog that gave unconditional love, with friends he was guaranteed to see every day, and he'd had a couple of bad breaks, got sick, ran out of money, lost his dog, and then panicked Now time has passed. People come and go and every six months the galaxy inside these gates breaks apart and reconfigures. Dogs die, people leave for nursing homes Others move, more arrive And every day, today even, people are here walking in spectral circles like they're in Mecca circling the Kaba In general, I'd say things are back to the way they were Intimate, but not intimate We stand around in dumbfounded joy with ten, twenty, thirty other gaping grown adults reveling in the simplicity of stupidly entertaining dog play De Dalmation Man still flashes sign language at his Daf Dmation. The pickup artist still works as magic The lawn chair family still ss up by the cemetery gate each day and cover their legs with wool blankets The fact is, even without somebody like Jeff pulling people together, if you stand on a corner with a bunch of strangers for long enough, eventually something happens that brings you together Sometimes something small The other night I went to the cemetery at sunset. There were the same broken headstones, the same sea captains and paupers And there are all these living people too who only know me as Trout's dad. or is the guy who stupidly named his dog trout? or however they see me The dogs were playing hard, racing in circles, not wanting any of it to end And a gigantic moon came up, came up tangerine It was a kind of moon that steals everything, and we stood in a circle watching it rise For a minute or two, we just stood there, glowing orange The dogs didn't exist at all les in Portland, Maine. Since we first broadcast this show, dogs are no longer allowed to roam the west endnd cemetery with the ownoners. The whole scene has migrated south to a wak beach E four, How to Become an American. We have this story about a few of the things that are hard to understand standing on a corner when you come to this country. is' from Ajiobehas It was exactly noon and the last of the weekend breakfast crowd filtered out of the diner from the booth line back wall. A young woman made her way to the front to pay her check She was tall, with reddish brown hair to her shoulders She had a tattoo on her left wrist delicately etched, silver and green double headed ax. All around her, the bus boys and waitresses kept moving The dish is clattering on the large trays A voice called from behind her She turned around than frowned Standing next to her was a dark, stocky young man few black hairs poking sharply out of his chin He smiled sheepishly He carried a tray of improbably balanced plates and glasses Hello, Raoul, she said resigned to his recognition. I didn't realize you worked here. Yes, he said, his English too formal ling with Spanish underneath He glanced at the axe on her wrist Bedro got a job here. Then he brought me I've been here a few months already, so I should be a waiter soon My English is much better now, don't you think? he asked The dishes on the tray rattled as he struggled to keep them from crashing to the floor. Yes, she said. Sting at the door of the diner Charul hurried to get rid of the tray and followed her out to the corner She pulled on her sunglasses I haaven't seen you in a long time, he said, now in Spanish She noticed him studying her hands and made a fist. cause the axe to expand I haven't seen you since well, you know You said some very cruel things, he continued But I always look for you anyway, out in the streets, wondering how you are? You could have called What for Just then a pair of young men walked around them, one carrying a sheath of fliers, the other a roll of tape and a stapler They stopped and put up some of the papers on the telephone pole next to them Two men Young and girlish left after they'd laiered the poll with announcements about an upcoming dance contest at a local club Lupa lowered her glasses enough to read and register the information Trol watched her Well, you could call sometimes just a call notot for anything in particular, but to let me know how you are I worry about you, he said I'm sorry I didn't call, Lupa said She pushed the glasses back up her nose It's just that Rll said Pouting I mean We're married after all Lua laughed No role You're married, she said You knew damn well, this was just a convenience for me, a business deal. I can't help but that you've spun all these stories for your family. But it's not right, Joe said. I thought we would live together I never agreed to that If it had been a condition, I never would have married you She was squinting Her mouth was dry paid me for something All I'm doing is keeping my end of the bargain. And that doesn't include hanging around with you, your friends. or your family Well I think you need me, he said his lower lip jutting out like a fleshy ledge. Good man can help you You don't get it, Raouul, Lupa said shifting her weight from one hip to the other She stood at an angle, scratched her hand I don't know that you'll ever get it, but suffice it to say that I don't need you We're not family, no matter how many justices of the peace we stand in front of Ofour course we are No, Rl, you have your people and I have mine But yours, that's not your family You need me to help you stay in touch with your family With your Latin self, he said angrily He shoved one hand in his pants pocket and used the other to poke at the air. In Mexico, this wouldn't happen and you'd have to do as I say. There are laws, you know loop it left again in Mexico would never have married Rl. In Mexico, you wouldn't need to marry a nice American girl that you're American is an accident of geography, he said You're running away from your Latin self, he insisted. I know who you are. And I know who you think you are I'm a man who' seen a little bit of the world I may not have gone to college like you, but I know people and I know you Please, she said, and started to walk away from the corner He shook his head sadly and looked down at the tips of his grime covered shoes Then he took off, following a few steps behind her I didn't want to do this, he said 've given me no choice Suddenly, he grabbed her and threw her against a flyer covered telephone pole. What do you think you're doing? she demanded, kicking and scratching at him I didn't want to hurt you, he said in a voice that cracked tried to carry this around with me all by myself But now you give me no choice He yanked her up pressing his body to hers and forcing her face to face with him She could see his pores He held her like that for a moment then, seeing the men with the fllyers across the street. Go Hit me and I'll kill you, Mother Figure Lupa tried to step away readying her hands martial arts style for him Hey, she yelled in English to the two men across the street. This guy's trying to kill me. Can you call the cops? The two looked at each other wararily, then back across the street to Lupa in her battle stance Raouul was crying. The things you accuse me of They arere all the things that you do, he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his fists Well I finally went and did one of them. It hurt me to do it But I'm a man. I couldn't put up with this any longer Hey, leave her alone. onene of the men yelled from across the street that it was lackluster. The second man walked slowly back to the diner where a blue metal flag advertised a public telephone inside Joel I don't want you near me. Do you understand? Lupa said, switching back to Spanish I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but I'll tell you this much. If you keep this up I'll file a police report and the government will figure out what we're doing and you will be shipped back Do you understand? He didn't react to what she said Instead, he took a deep breath and looked up at the sky. did it, you know, he finally said. D did what? she asked, confused cheated on you, he said She stared at him. Her fighting posture loosened as she struggled for comprehension I was with another woman, he said Since you wouldn't act like a wife, I just couldn't take it anymore And I had an affair behind your back Lupin wanted to laugh didn't She was stunned by the hopeless sincerity of his unnecessary confession Good, Raoul, she finally said. I think it's good that you get out and get involved Draw We're not really married. were only legally married She smiled a little as she talked, trying desperately to be supportive Charl closed his eyes. Tears escaping from under the lids. Oh, you are a cold, cold woman he cried His voice cracking again as he threw his hands in the air Why did I have to marry such a cold woman h You didn't marry a cold woman You married a lesbian He covered his ears with the palms of his hands I don't want to hear that, he shouted. No, no, no beside and shook her head This is absolutely not worth it. She said more to herself than to him The cops are on their way, said the man who'd gone back to the diner He strode back across the street to his partner, who had been serving as witness to Raouul and Lupea's argument Raoul, she said Her voice softer now If the cops get here and we're still fighting probably be in trouble Well let's just go our separate ways, okay care? he pleaded Yeah, I care, she said That's why I'm telling you this Please go back to the restaurant I'll just leave And when the cops get here, they won't be anybody to file charges We're still married, he insisted, as if nothing else mattered For just one more year, Rou. bllow it for yourself, she said Please don't bother me anymore You're trying my patience Remember that I can put you right back on the wrong side of the river? They feel silent again What's that? he asked, nodding at her wrist She said He smiled a little, but he'd already given up Men's balls, I suppose Yeah, she said, if necessary They both laughed lightly, a little embarrassed. Charles shoved his hands in his pockets I hear you bought a house with Kate With my money, he said, not meeting her eyes She nodded It was my money I earned it but she refused to make eye contact You should get back to work, she said flatly The cus will be here any moment And I have to go come by, see my mother or maybe just call sometime? he asked never give up to you No. Well, you should, Lupa said then walked away. Her sharp strides put her across the street in seconds Trol watched as she talk to the two men After a moment, the men turn and left Tal turn two even quietly wandered back to the diner. By the time the squad car arrived at the corner Nobody was there iojas, This story is from our collection of short fiction and we came all the way from Cuba so you could dress like this O greatest collection of poems is the boy Kingdom, Alreino de Vos Vodonas U along with me My program is produced today by Julie Snyder and myself with Elise Siegel and Nancy Opdeke, contributing editors, Pa Toff, Jack Hittit Margy Rako and Consuleri Sara Val, productuction up from Horhe Just, Todd Bachman and Slvia Lemis, h w on today's rerun from Adrianne Lillily, Mollay Marcello, Katherine Raymondo and Stone Nelson. This American life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange Thanks today to our this American L partartners, Nisha Gulotti, David Vanderpool and Rebecca Reid. Please consider joining them as a life partner and become one of the people who help us keep making the show To thank you, we're going to give you dozens and dozens of bonus episodes we've made I just started experimenting this week with a little email newsletter. We'll see if that keeps going. Join at thisammericanlife. org slash life partartners The link is also in the show notes. Thanks as always to our prorograms co founder,r. Tori Malatitia who describes our program this way Booking guests whose near constant profanity makes the show into an unintelligible barrage of bleeps. I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of this American life the bet bumps on like you So welcome to our little corner ofver. Next week on the podcast of this American Live.