PORTFOLIO SEVEN:
MOSSWOOD
See “Fair Deal Meat Company”? This company's been here ever since I can remember. It's run by the original Asian family; I think Ronny Sato still works there, who is approximately my age. Now, if you look at what they sell here, look how they sell the meat—short ribs, country-style bacon, hog maws, pig tails—they cater to Southern clientele! You can go in there and get James sausage. You know what that is? That's pork sausage from Oklahoma City. There were lots of Okies in this neighborhood! People who came out of the South, you know, they came here.
This neighborhood—we used to call Thirty-Third Street “Shreveport”—’cause there was a lot of Shreveport northern Louisiana Black folks there. And Brockhurst had older people—like the Dellums family lived on Brockhurst. The Irvin family lived over here—Avey Irvin Sr. grew up with my dad in Luther, Oklahoma.
We used to just sit there all day.
Telegraph and Forty-Second Street
I was one of the first Eritrean refugees that came into the United States in the 1980s. And there were lots of organizations to support the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, fighting for independence from Ethiopia.
Golden Gate Donut café—we used to just sit there all day. I'm not kidding you. When I say all day, I mean all day. There are hardly any people there now. But you know, it's always been like that.
Those of us who didn't work on weekends, we'd get in in the mornings, we'd have donuts, and just sit there. Smoke and sit, until it's time for the meeting. At that time it was not political so much as getting to know other Eritreans, just being friends and starting in this new place.
The guys didn't mind us sitting there all day! And you know, filling the place up with smoke. This—we sat here, and this is what we saw. People would come in, buy donuts and coffee and leave, but we just sat there. Actually, people still frequented this long after independence, too. But I haven't been there since then.
So, different places, different buildings, have different emotions and different memories.
