The Apartment on Midwest Boulevard

By Joanne Edwards

The great experiment of the worldwide web of the internet has connected the world globally and recreated the world into a global village. The outcome of this experiment remains a mystery.A civilized and progressive society succeeds when it remains private. A savage and regressive society succeeds when it remains public and is governed by the laws of the tribe. Will artificial intelligence one day do all our thinking for us?The invention of the television was the world's first addiction to screens. And like the internet, is now open twenty-four, seven, every day of the year. Both inventions are used by societies in homes and businesses for entertainment, communication, information, and shopping. Now we live in the modern world of the digital age of handheld mobile devices of screens that are also open twenty-four, seven, every day of the year. We can now access entertainment, communication, information, and shopping while moving around in public places and riding metro buses and subways.The availability of screens has moved the global village to a more socially isolated global village rather than a more connected global village. Face to face conversations are becoming rarer simply because it is easier to use a screen.I have found myself to feel frightfully alone among a crowd of people who are looking at their handheld mobile devices while in public places and riding metro buses or subways.Physical diseases can be controlled or cured with medicines. The only cure for hopelessness, despair, and loneliness is human companionship, love, and a hug. Perhaps our modern lives have too many different pieces which are changing too fast for many of us to understand. A wise old owl lived in an oak;The more he saw, the less he spoke;The less he spoke, the more he heard;Why can't we all be like that bird?-Edward Hersey Richards

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647011109

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Chapter 1

Places I Have Called Home

I didn’t always live at the apartment on Midwest Boulevard. Before the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, I lived in a small rural town in northeast Texas with a population of approximately five thousand residents who were attending sixty different churches located there and watching approximately one hundred thousand cars and trucks pass through their small rural town each day. That is because the small rural town in northeast Texas was located on a major highway connecting north Texas to south Texas, and cargo and people were on the move in both directions every day. I could see the major highway from my living room window.

The majority of the residents in the small rural town in northeast Texas were white evangelicals who believed that the consumption of alcohol was a sin, so the sale of alcoholic beverages in the small rural town were banned, and it remained a dry community.

It was there, in the small rural town in northeast Texas, that I became the only piano teacher that offered private piano lessons to children and adults. For five years, I owned a monopoly and earned twenty-four dollars per hour for each lesson. My monopoly thrived because the majority of the white evangelical residents of the small rural town in northeast Texas wanted their children to learn to play the piano so that they would one day be playing the piano in one of the sixty churches that were located there that they were attending.

Before the small rural town in northeast Texas, I lived in a condominium that was across the street from the University of Texas in Brownsville, Texas, where I was completing a master of arts in interdisciplinary studies degree. All the windows of the condominium had bars on them. In the backyard of the condominium was the Rio Grande River. The Rio Grande River separated Mexico from America, and many days I would see clothes lying on the sidewalks and in the streets that illegal immigrants had discarded after swimming across the Rio Grande River to enter the United States in Brownsville, Texas. It was there that I learned about illegal immigration from Mexico to America. Spanish was the language most spoken there, and at the time I was residing there, the population was approximately one hundred and seventy-five thousand. Approximately seventeen thousand of the total population was white. I was part of that minority. It was rare to see black people there.

Before Brownsville, Texas, it was two different ocean view apartments overlooking Reeds Bay on Banyan Drive in Hilo, on the big island of Hawaii. Before Hilo, it was a house in Volcano, also on the big island of Hawaii. Prior to Volcano, it was an apartment in Kona, also on the big island of Hawaii. When I first arrived in the state of Hawaii, I resided a short time in a condominium in Makakilo, on the island of Oahu that was near my place of employment. But after a visit to the big island of Hawaii, I knew that was where I wanted to stay. And so I did for eighteen years.

Hawaii is a unique mix of races. There are the Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders from many different Pacific Island nations, local Hawaiians, and of course the white people who have migrated there. The local Hawaiians graciously accepted all these races, but the race of people they most disliked were the white people, which in their Hawaiian language were known as haoles. The history of the local Hawaiians and white people remained tarnished because of the arrival of Captain Cook and his crew of sailors who introduced and spread venereal diseases among the local Hawaiians after having sex with the local Hawaiian women. Many local Hawaiians died as a result of the sailors’ sexual activities. It was also the cultivation of sugar cane, by the white man, who seized the Hawaiian peoples’ lands and left them homeless and unable to make a living, because the local Hawaiians had always depended on their land for all their needs.

And then in more modern times, it was the loss of the Hawaiian people’s sovereign rights as a territory when the United States changed the status of the territory into a state and built military bases on some of the islands. When that occurred, the white people from mainland America migrated there, bought cheap real estate from the local Hawaiians, and demolished their shacks and built mansions. As a result, real estate prices soared in those neighborhoods. And once again, the local Hawaiians were homeless, and many ended up on welfare and living in Hawaiian Homestead Apartments, which was subsidized housing by the state of Hawaii. It was rare to see black people in Hawaii. After all the obstacles and difficulties the Hawaiian people were forced to overcome, Hawaii is still today the perfect model of living in peace and harmony with all different races of people for the racist mainland of America to study and replicate.

Prior to the Hawaiian Islands, I resided two years in Glen Orchard, Ontario, Canada. I was an illegal immigrant who worked illegally in a German restaurant that catered to tourists. My bosses were a husband and wife team who were German and spoke very little English. Once again, I was a minority there among all the Canadians, just like I was in Hawaii and Brownsville, Texas. But what I remember most about all the places where I resided was that I never stayed in any one place much longer than five years. Here at the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, I have just begun my sixth year of residency, and I am beginning to feel like it is time to move on, to someplace new, to someplace I have never been. I am considering letting go of the apartment on Midwest Boulevard.

I had moved to the small rural town in northeast Texas after completing my master’s degree at the University of Texas in Brownsville because the health of my elderly mother, who resided there, was deteriorating. After my mother’s death, I decided to move to the state where my three sons were residing. My sons were all residing in different areas of the state, and after many months of researching different apartment complexes that were located in the central part of the state, I decided to rent the apartment on Midwest Boulevard because of its close proximity to two metro bus stops that service the area and the apartment’s affordability.

When I left the Hawaiian Islands, I sold my car and promised myself never to own another one because cars had become computers, and they were expensive to own and maintain. In Brownsville, Texas, I walked, and on occasion I took the metro bus. In the small rural town of northeast Texas, I walked or borrowed my mother’s car because there was no public transportation, not even taxis.

When I left the Hawaiian Islands, I got rid of my household stuff. I had made a decision to move toward smarter, greener environmental decisions both in my everyday actions and the products I buy. The apartment on Midwest Boulevard is small and simple, which coincides with my lifestyle change of becoming an everyday environmentalist.

Between the two metro buses, each with different metro bus routes that service the area near the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, I can travel any direction in the big city where the apartment is located. The apartment on Midwest Boulevard is a downstairs end unit with a view that overlooks a park area with a picnic table. The park area has large old trees that house birds and squirrels and is much more pleasant than an apartment that overlooks a parking lot. Because of the apartment’s affordability, the view overlooking the park area, the beautiful sunsets I see looking west out the windows of the apartment, and the apartment’s close proximity to the two metro buses with different routes that service the area, I stay.

But I am considering letting go of the apartment on Midwest Boulevard because I have begun my sixth year of residing there. In the movie Mermaids, Cher told her daughters, The definition of death is staying in one place too long and living in the past. That statement has always stuck with me.

My decision to move to the apartment on Midwest Boulevard was based on the thought that my three sons, who lived in different parts of the state where the apartment is located, would occasionally come and visit me. Their visits have rarely happened. For several months after moving to the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, what I missed the most was human companionship and a meaningful face to face conversation with another human being. And then I met Tommie.

Chapter 2

Meeting Tommie

Many times while walking to or from the metro bus stop near the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, my path would cross the path of an older man driving a dark red, older model Cadillac. I knew the man that I crossed paths with was a resident at the apartment complex on Midwest Boulevard because I saw his dark red, older model Cadillac in the same parking stall on my trips to and from the metro bus stop near the apartment on Midwest Boulevard. Other times, I would be sitting at the metro bus stop, waiting on the metro bus to arrive, and see the older man driving his dark red, older model Cadillac past me on his way to the entrance of the locked and gated community of the apartment complex on Midwest Boulevard.

One day, while sitting at the metro bus stop near the apartment on Midwest Boulevard and waiting on the metro bus to arrive, I saw the older man who drove the dark red, older model Cadillac walking on the sidewalk toward me. When he reached the metro bus stop where I was sitting, he stopped and introduced himself to me. That is how and when I met Tommie.

He then asked me if I would call the police on him if he stopped his car when he saw me walking to or sitting at the metro bus stop to offer me a ride. I replied no. The reason Tommie asked me that question was because he was an old school, black generation who was taught as a young boy by his parents, to stay away from those white folks who will only cause trouble for you or get you lynched. Now in his eighties, those old teachings still remained intact, as well as many others, such as his belief that women should only wear dresses and never wear pants or shorts.

Occasionally, Tommie’s path and my path would cross, and when Tommie offered me a ride, I would accept it unless I was heading somewhere far away from the apartment on Midwest Boulevard. Our friendship began during those rides together in Tommie’s dark red, older model Cadillac. I was finally receiving some human companionship and some meaningful face to face conversations with another human being, which I enjoyed.

Chapter 3

Meeting Gerald

No matter what day, no matter what time, be it morning or afternoon, when I would get off the metro bus I most often take at the metro bus stop near the liquor store I frequent, I would see the same man walking around and socializing with the customers going in and out of the convenience store and liquor store located there.

Sometimes the same man I would always see socializing with the customers coming in and out of the two stores would be slightly intoxicated. Other times he would be greatly intoxicated. And if he was not drinking his pint of vodka in view of the public’s eye, he would not be intoxicated because he had no money to buy his pint of vodka. That is when the same man I would always see socializing with the customers going in and out of the convenience store and liquor store would begin asking the customers for money to buy a pint of vodka.

One day when I got off the metro bus I most often take, at the metro bus stop near the liquor store I frequent, the same man I always saw drinking his pint of vodka stopped me and asked me to buy him a pint of vodka while inside the liquor store that he knew I was headed to. He then handed me some money and told me that the owner of the liquor store had banned him from entering the liquor store and would call the police if he did not obey the ban. He then told me his name, and I agreed to buy him a pint of vodka.

That is how and when I met Gerald the first summer in August of residing at the apartment on Midwest Boulevard. And for years to come, Gerald would remain to be a fixture at his usual spot near the convenience store and liquor store I frequent. Gerald was always happy and full of life and loved having conversations with all kinds of people.

Chapter 4

Changing Demographics at the Apartment Complex on Midwest Boulevard

When I first arrived at the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, the majority of the residents who resided there were retired white people. The majority of the time when I made trips to the swimming pool during the summer months for a swim, I would have the pool all to myself.

However, shortly after I had moved to the apartment on Midwest Boulevard, the demographics of the residents who resided at the apartment complex began to change. Black people began moving in, and when the black people began moving in, they brought with them children, lots of children.

When the white retired residents witnessed the demographic change occurring, they began moving out. One by one, they began moving out. As this demographic change was occurring, I recalled a conversation I had with my sister many years ago. I asked my sister why she moved out of her beautiful home in Dallas. And her response was The black people were moving into the neighborhood. I remained and am now a minority resident at the apartment complex on Midwest Boulevard. A minority again, just like I was in Hawaii, Brownsville, Texas; and Glen Orchard, Ontario, Canada.

I stand firm in my belief after witnessing the demographic change first hand, that it is the white people and their tribalism views that are responsible for segregation that is still happening today in America.