rock on, maiden lane

a week ago my mom and i went down to bridgeport, CT, about a two hour drive away, to pay our respects to her father's grave, and to see if we could figure out where he used to live. as a young priest who had recently emigrated to the US, he had parishes in new york, new jersey, chicago, and, finally, bridgeport, an industry town that used to prompt me and my siblings, on the occasions that we passed through on our way to new york city, to plug our noises and yell about the oh how stinky. it doesn't smell like that anymore, or at least not that i notice. maybe almost ten years of exposure to that special san francisco sewage smell has inured me to such things.

or maybe it's the development. we learned about that when we decided to check out maiden lane first, the address in my grandfather's early bridgeport diaries. after a near-comical turn of events, in which our car was caught on the wrong side of a police barricade, a grumpy cop told us we were going the wrong way. he turned us back in the other direction, towards downtown, and we turned our map upside down. a few blocks later we found ourselves on a straight shot to sky scrapers, the immediate area around us consisting of fenced off weeds and trash, one remaining house crumbling amidst the wild growth on each side of the road. our directions had us befuddled (damn you, google maps!) so we turned right. the wrong way. after thirty blocks or so we realized it was the wrong way. so we turned around, again. crossing back over the main street, we landed on a spit of land, ending in a large, industrial wasteland of some sort or another. the waste of weeds and fence grew up all around. the only street around ironically named california. maiden lane seemed to have disappeared.

on returning home, after an amazing tour of my mother's old neighborhoods, i wrote the city of bridgeport to find out what the hell. i was told: "This section of the Steel Point Peninsula is the site of a Major Development project called Steel Point. Any homes in the area were leveled to make way for the development project ... you will see Maiden Lane has been cleared." apparently completely. there is no evidence that there was ever a street there.

we have since found out that while grandpa jacob lived on maiden lane, his church was on that very same california street, around the corner. it seems everything there has been torn down, as well, since all we found was ramshackle boat clubs and shacks. added to the surprise we got in nearby stepney, where we found one of my mother's childhood homes is now a vacant, overgrown field with a no trespassing sign hanging from an ineffectual gate, it kind of made us more than sad.

yeah, i know, been a long time. things get torn down. but i guess we're feeling the weight of having put off this research until now. if we had gone to poland just a little bit earlier, we could have met some of my mother's cousins before they died. if we had started looking into my grandfather earlier, we may have been able to see where he once lived. hell, if we had looked into family history back when we lived on the same coast as each other, we may have been able to talk to my great aunts and uncles before they passed away. not that they would have said much. they were known for being taciturn.

this is all in my brain because today we went back to bridgeport and spent four hours in the history room of the bridgeport library, trying to find the exact timeline of jacob's residences, and to fill in some holes in my mother's memory. those history rooms are amazing, awe-inspiring things. aside from finding the addresses and neighbors and best friends of my grandfather, i was able to get copies of ship's manifests, listing the departure and arrival of so many of my relatives. my great-grandfather was only 16 when he made the long sea voyage to new york city. we haven't figured out, yet, how he met my great-grandmother. or even how my grandfather met my grandmother. he, like my own father, was married once before, to a volatile woman who threw his clothes out the window. my grandmother was born in america, brought back to poland before she could talk, and moved back to the US again at the age of 22. somehow their paths crossed.

we have shreds of evidence. ideas of how they felt about each other, how long they knew each other. like the picture of my grandparents, standing in the side yard of the house in stepney that has now been returned to nature. there is a note on the back, in his hand, that loosely translates to "me and my old lady." we're beginning to realize the depths of his sense of humor. that picture has been to poland and back. he sent it to his brother, in torun, poland, who's daughter gave it back to us. crazy.

so, maiden lane is gone. and the house on garder road is gone. and so many relatives are no longer around. and the history room can only tell us so much. not to mention that i only have about 6 weeks to help my mom with this and all the other things i'm here to help her with. she goes in for surgery soon. and there are still so many things to get in boxes.

but it helps, this research. we're learning so much. because while we're researching the history of others, we're writing her story. and maybe mine.

in the meantime, tomorrow is my day off, to hang out by myself and write letters and get my head together. i've only had one of these since i've been here, and i ended up squandering that on episodes of laying about, squooshed between bouts of doing things for my mother. and i'm not counting the three days i was wicked sick, and just lay, immobile, watching the first season of 24. awfully entrancing piece of propaganda, that 24. so now i'm going to get the fuck off this computer and go do something completely unproductive, to celebrate. hello, playstation.