Along Richmond Streets

By Margaret Barker Seward

Persons who live within smelling distance of dumps have a lot to be thankful for.

I learned this hard-bought lesson by smelling a dump every night for two weeks. For I have been going to see a patient for some time at the Sheltering Arms Hospital and the odor from the Tenth Street dump makes you ill. The patients who lie there in their beds not able to move have enough to bear without this evil smell floating in through the windows, but day after day and night after night the smell comes floating in.

The Tenth Street Dump

A "No visitors" sign doesn't mean a thing to the dump. Its smoke goes where the wind listeth and the wind that sweeps across the Tenth Street dump blows this smoke into hospitals nearby, into museums--also nearby and usually crowded with visitors--and into the homes of the people who must live near the dump because--well, because maybe they can't find any other place to live or afford any other place to live.

I'm not singling out the Tenth Street dump because it's worse than any other of Richmond's dumps, which are around eight in number. It's just the dump that I know best and the one that I have smelled most. I know that it catches on fire and that when the fire is big so that the flames leap into the sky that a fire engine comes speeding along and puts out the fire--but not the fumes. For the wet mass of refuse--sprinkled over the creosote for sanitation's sake--burns and burns and on warm humid evenings this smell of burning creosote and refuse is enough to make you ill.

Can anything be done about dumps? Probably there could be--for I talked with a city expert--but like many of the good things in life the price is too stiff.

Besides, said this city expert, the dumps do serve some useful purpose--they reclaim land that would be but a steep ravine unfit for anything but--an air-minded goat. For Richmond's seven hills have also along with them a number of ravines. Refuse poured over the sides of these through the years gradually extends the land, and pretty soon people move in on this land.

(The Tenth Street dump by the way is a block and a half further from Broad Street than it used to be some years ago, from this constant dumping.)

Besides, said the expert, didn't the fumes from the plant at City Point used to eat the clothes off the line? And was the smell of a dump comparable to the smell of a tannery factory in full blast? (There is such a thing in Richmond.)

Often the city incinerator at the foot of Eleventh Street gets blamed when it's really the tannery's fault; for the smells of civilization are manifold and far-reaching.

But I still say that it's a tough proposition to lie in a hospital bed flat on your back and smell the sort of fumes that a dump sends out, and if something could be done about it there are thousands of people in Richmond who would rise and call the man who did it, blessed. No more would the citizen sniff the evening breeze and say with emphatic confidence: "The dump's burning again."

I went into the sun parlor of Sheltering Arms on the second floor and looked down into the back yard which has been fixed into a most charming little garden with a bird bath, bench flowers and enough shade to make it a welcome spot in summer. But if you try sitting out in this garden, you will find that the sweet smell of flowers is successfully killed by the sweet smell of the dump.

One afternoon just before it began to get dark I decided I would go over and take a look at the dump and find out what witches' brew was causing the smell; what make of bicycle tire it was that could burn so steadily yet never burn up.

There was a fine drizzle in the air and the cold wind whipped it about sharply. I came to a place where they were cutting a new street and from then on it was one long stretch of mud and rusted tin cans and rotten planks that somebody had thrown across mud puddles. The earth was like a sponge underneath your feet. A grayish dead looking earth created by God-knows-what refuse.

By jumping from plank to plank--not always successfully-- I finally arrived at the edge of the dump. It was nearing nightfall and the wind was blowing stronger and the sky was getting dark. The drizzle smacked you in the face.

There before me stretched the dump and rising from it like listless volcanos were piles of filth and refuse burning and burning away. The grey black smoke clung close to the earth and the wind was blowing it into the city. It didn't need any wind to blow it into the homes that skirt the dump. The smoke is with them always whether the wind blows or not, and don't think that they get so used to it that they don't even notice it, because I talked with some of the people in the houses and they said they didn't.

It was as spooky a jumping-off place as you'd be likely to find--there on the dump that rainy twilight. On the edge at the top are two black dead trees, their inert limbs showing black and lifeless against the sky. They rattled a little in the wind and I began to wish I hadn't come, it was getting dark so fast. Down in Shockoe Valley below was a green haze, for green things were growing down there. But in the midst of the valley was the spurt of white smoke from locomotives sliding along on first this track and that and sending out great cloudy masses of smoke. On the other side of the ravine you could see dimly the white houses in Barton Heights and Highland Park.

I walked around the dump and poked around for a while. There were watermelon rinds, old broken, overstuffed chairs upholstered in some sort of dingy brocaded plush; paper from a thousand homes and offices blowing about and a sea of tin cans; so many that you wonder if the present era won't go down in history as the Can Age, for it looked as if everybody in the world had taken nourishment from a tin can.

There were heaps of whisky bottles, there were chicken feathers, old rags, boxes and hunks of automobile tires smouldering away. Fire purifies but this was no fire--this smoke oozing out of the mess . . . . Just a reminder to citizens all about that the dump was burning again.

It was too late, and the weather was too bad anyway, for anybody to be picking around the dump and salvaging this and that. There in the half-darkness it lay silent with the wind beating the rain about and gathering up into its whirls pieces of paper. My feet went down into the soft jelly-like mud as I started to go. I took one last look around and there were still those black mounds smoking and smoking.

Just as I cut through a vacant lot to get to Tenth Street, I asked a colored man, who was piling up wood, if he lived near by. He pointed to his ears and mouth and shook his head; made a peculiar sound in his throat and pointed to a house. A little child came running out. I said something about the bad weather and then I mentioned the dump.

"It sho' smells," she said. "It smell all the time."

As I walked on down Tenth Street to Clay I asked a few other people about their neighbor, the dump. None of them liked it. All of them said that it smelled worse at night than any other time and that in damp weather, especially, it sickened you. Besides it was next to impossible to keep the children from going out there to play.

When I saw the stuff that created the fires I wondered how such a fire and such a smoke could help from harming people.

It was pitch dark now and the street gave back a bright light. Rising high in the distance was a spire of the City Hall and just across the street from it--a huge bulk it looked in the mist, the dark--the Life Insurance Company of Virginia Building. So near the dump as that.

When I got back to Sheltering Arms I was drenched and tired and flopped in a chair to rest.

Slowly but with infinite certainty my nostrils were invaded once more by the smell of the dump.

"Ain't it the devil," said the patient.

But let me say that when I wrote these paragraphs above I had not made the acquaintance of the Rev. Palm Beach, proprietor of the Tenth Street dump.

Reverent Palm Beach

Just as I got out of the automobile with the photographer I almost stepped on a vast hunk of metal disks all hanging together in a state of disarray.

"That," said the Rev. Palm Beach, "is a piccolo machine somebody's thrown away. We're mighty glad to see those piccolo machines. We get a few cents for them and every little helps.

"You see, all these people working around here with me makes their living off the dump. We pick up paper and sell it to the paper factories; we sell iron to junk dealers. We split up the wood. And we divide the money we make out of it.

"Some weeks we don't even make enough to live on, but the next week the good Lord sends us a little more so we manage somehow or another to get along."

Just at the edge of the dump is a house made of pieces of tin and rocks and other things--all from the dump. In this house, which is locked at night, the workers keep the valuables. Old rags and blankets are piled everywhere in it and anything else that a hard-up person would be likely to take away. And in a row of houses such as this tin house which you see in the picture live some of these workers on the dump.

The Rev. Palm Beach has been proprietor of the Tenth Street dump for 30 years now. And I should add that all those watermelon rinds I spoke about seeing on Saturday vanished on Monday, and the fires were out. (The smell was still there, though.)

"I keeps the dump nice and pleasant," said the Rev. Palm Beach. "In fact, this dump is the healthiest place in Richmond. Yes ma'am I keep it nice and pleasant.

"This Tenth Street dump," he went on to say, "is the healthiest place in Richmond. All that stuff the hospitals send out here that's all been sterilized. You hear of people dying everywhere else, but you ain't never heard of one dying on a dump."

I said no, I never did.

"No ma'am, and I ain't either. You take all the people that works on this dump; every one of them is as healthy as they can be. No ma'am you ain't never heard of NOBODY dying on a dump."

Most of the time when fires break out they break out at night when the Rev. Palm Beach is not around. Then, too, on wet rainy days the workers on the dump hardly ever show up. He has a fire hose always ready and if he's on the scene the fire gets out in short order, although fire experts say that dump fires are the hardest of all to extinquish.

On Sundays the Rev. Palm Beach is a preacher, and a good one. He is what is known as a "whangdoodle" preacher.

"The Rev. Palm Beach always leaves a good collection," one of his friends told me. "He's the only preacher in town who has a congregation of poor people and they follow him around everywhere. He just lets 'em know what church he's going to preach at the next Sunday and everybody shows up. He's the best whangdoodle preacher in the country, and I mean he can railly whang it."

The Rev. Palm Beach is short and fat with a kind face and a gentle voice. I am sure that as dumps go, this Tenth Street dump could not be better kept. There's nothing he can do about the smell. And he can't be always hanging around waiting for a fire to break out. His workers all look up to him and I am glad to have met him.

And nobody knows except the Rev. Palm Beach just how much gruelling work in the broiling sun and the freezing days of winter is behind those words, "I keeps the dump nice and pleasant."

Time was when he used to make a good living out of the things people would throw away. Nowadays, he should know times were hard if for no other reason than people throw away few things of value.

"But," says the Rev. Palm Beach, "the Lord always provides."

Aunt Rosa

If you don't know Aunt Rosa, you don't know what you're missing. She shells butterbeans down on the market but all the butterbeans in the world--as good as they are--cannot match the philosophy she dispenses as her fingers fly from early morning until night.

Aunt Rosa sits, not underneath a plane tree, but beneath the shade of the awning of a store at Sixth and Marshall Streets. Sometimes she is almost alone, but on Saturdays when there are more people than there are butterbeans to go around she has plenty of company--boys and girls and women, all shelling butterbeans and black-eyed peas. You'd think that they'd all talk together, but when Aunt Rosa is around something tells you that you ought to listen to her instead of talking yourself.

I don't know whether it was because it was her sixty-ninth birthday or whether it was the soft dropping of the rains on the awning and all about the sidewalks . . . but Saturday a week ago she was in her best form. She gave me and everybody else who was listening enough good advice to last until the end of our days and talked and talked of the past, the present and the future of this world and the next.

Before she begins I will tell you as well as I can how Aunt Rosa looks as she sits there on the market square, a pan in her lap or on a little box in front of her; pint and quart boxes of butterbeans piled around the great hills of butterbeans in the hulls and out.

Saturday was a rainy day and she had a piece of black oilcloth pinned around her shoulders with two big safety pins. The wind was cool when you were sitting still, so Aunt Rosa had on an array of dresses and sweaters. "I got on so many rags I don't feel cold," she said laughingly. Her hair is gray and black and her sharp small eyes look you square in the eye when she looks up from her butterbeans to tell you something. She's got that fearless look of people who ask no favors; but her expression is gentle, withal, and you know she must have done many herself.

"No, chile," she was saying to me, "I ain't thinkin' "bout these here butterbeans whiles I'se shellin' 'em. I'se thinkin' 'bout how good the Lord is to me, to spare me all these years and let me work down here on the market. Winter an' summer you find me settin' right here. I got all my tools for my fire stowed away in dat white man's store. All my charcoal and everything and I sets right here spang in de middle of winter, shellin' these here big butterbeans -- lima beans they calls 'em. I thanks the good Lord every day of my life, that I'se got work to do. I nearin' my journey's end now, but I can still work.

"That's 'cause I was raised up right. I ain't never done no runnin' 'round at night like all these young folks does now. Nine o'clock come an' I was in the bed. Ain't no if an' an' about it. My mother died when I was three weeks old and my grandmother she brought me to Richmond from Washington where I was born. Then she took me out to the country to live and I wasn't nothin' but a chile when I started to work.

"I minded the cows, I minded the hawgs, I minded the sheep and I went out in the fields to find wheat. Ain't none of this here runnin' 'round all night long in my life. De worl's gittin' worse, honey. I knows that 'cause I seen it myself.

"Now you take when I first come to work on the market. The station house was right across the street there where that market house is. They warn't no patrol wagon in those days. They walked 'em to jail. You 'rested near de station house at Brook Avenue Station House; you 'rested near this one here, you brought here, and if you 'rested near the station house down at the First Market they done took you there. In them days they warn't no use of a jail. Warn't nobody in jail. Now that jail is full all de time and dey pile 'em one on top of the other.

"I tell you, honey, these young folks ain't got no raisin'. Run 'round all night. They ain't gittin' nowhere but the jail and the penitentiary. Ain't I seed it all myself.

"They don't want do no work. Naw ma'am. They want go to moving pictures and dance. Now I'm sixty-eight years old an' I ain't never gone to but two moving pictures in my life. I forgit that first moving picture what I saw . . . but I done seen 'Noah's Ark' at de Hippodrome. The water riz and riz. First the people runs from the first story to the second story, get out de way of all dat water. Then the water riz to the second floor, and people run to the third floor. Then you see'd 'em all a-fallin in de water and a-drownin'. I tell you those was mighty sad times on this earth. And then you see old Noah with his ark and a he and a she of everything runnin' into it, and then they sent the raven out and he didn't find nothin' and the dove went out and he come back with a olive branch in his bill . . . What I think 'bout folks dat don't believe all dat? I ain't thinkin' nothin' 'bout dem honey. I believe it myself 'cause it's so.

"An' all these people runnin' 'round the street and th'owing away God's time. They don't think the Lord gwine burn the earth up, but it's so. The Lord gwine set fire to this earth and the day of jedgement will be at hand . . . And honey, if you want to know the first sign, you look at de moon and when you see de moon turn to blood you go know dat Gabriel is tunin' up. And it's goin' mighty bad with all these folks I tell you.

"What I read? I read de Bible, honey. I don't care 'bout no other book.

"Now ef you acks me when I learn to read I go tell you that Rosa Brown was fifty-seven years old befo' she know her A B C's. I done went to night school, and I learned to read. Ain't while for folks to tell me they can't do this and that. You can do anything you set yo' mind to do and dat's the truth.

"Now when I went to night school I felt "shamed because I was jest beginning my A B C's like the chillun' but I kept on goin' and if Rosa hadn't broke her glasses she'd be at night school now . . . . Never mind. I git 'em fix befo' long and hang 'em on my eyes. Then I'se goin' to start into school in the fall and learn some more.

"You know, honey, folks dat don't know how to read don't know what it is. Every time you git a letter you got to run and asks de neighbors to read it for you. Pretty soon you find de neighbors know more 'bout y'o business than you know yo'self. And that's mighty bad. They jest knows all your business. If somebody give you a check you can't sign it. You jest in a terrible fix.

"So by an' by I get tired havin' folks know all my business. So I went down to de night school and I learned to read and write. An' I ain't sorry."