Farewell St. Hedwig

Well here goes nothing.

 When I left the Navy in 1996 I moved back to Delaware.  Wilmington specifically.  I had 3 little girls and very little money.  I left as an e-4 and was happy as heck to get a job at Sears in Prices Corner I got a huge increase in my salary and was able to convince a mortgage broker to give me a mortgage for $70,000.00.  I used my VA Loan chit and bought my very first house.

716 S. Franklin St.  It was a HUGE house.  I had just moved out of Substandard housing in Portsmouth, VA.  The home in VA was about 400 sq feet, so this house was a little more than double that.  It was a mansion as far as I was concerned.  After living on a Submarine, hell the substandard house was a mansion. 

I was home now though, in Hedgeville.  I attended St. Mary Magdallen as a child and my wife (ex wife) attended St. Hedwig.  Her mother did too, and her grandmother and several relatives.  So it was a no brainer we wanted our kids to go there too.  They would be 4th generation students.  Something I will forever be proud of. 

One problem though, we didn’t register my oldest soon enough the summer of 96′, because I didn’t get my DD-214 until July.  Long story there, but anyway since we didn’t know exactly when we were leaving Portsmouth, Va or that I was going to get the mortgage we couldn’t make solid plans for my daughter’s school.  The oldest (call her #1) was 4 and she was going to have to go to Pre K or something like that. 

The first of many reasons why I stuck with the kids going to St. Hedwig’s occurred shortly after we arrived in Wilmington.  The ex’s Baci had pull in the church.  You make a few thousand perogi’s for the festival, go to church every day and make the bread with cloistered nuns that used to live over by St. Thomas school, priest’s listen and accomadate small requests for family members. 

We had Baci put in a word with the Pastor, and well a few “Our Father’s” later #1 was in at St. Hedwig’s Mother Angela School.  It was great to live in Hedgeville.  My neighbors were a bunch of Pollocks.  One guy Grabo (Yes, he even instructed me to call him Grabo)  was the nicest man I had ever met.  He smiled and said hello every morning and night you saw him.  To this day, Grabo is smiling.  His wife and son were like family to us.  Hiw wife would always have a few minutes to ask you how you were doing.  Accross the street was a family that had a son a year older than #1 and a daughter the same age as my daughter #3.  #3 is still friends with their daughter.  They have been friends since they were baby’s and I hope that friendship will continue on similar to a friendship their mother has with a childhood friend. 

A few blocks down on Harrison St, was the ex’s mother and father.  Around the corner on Md Ave was her Caci.  A block from the Church was Baci, and across the street from St. Hedwig’s was another Caci, a great caci (God rest her soul)

I mean it was awesome.  I wanted nothing more than my children to be surrounded by family in an area that was safe for them to walk to school, play in the park and go to the corner store when they got old enough.  they would be able to make friends with other kids in the neighborhood their same age. 

That was in 1996.  I had a lot of dreams fresh out of the Navy.   The next several years were great too.  My neighbor, Randy was disabled. He said he had a keg of beer fall onto him I think when he lived in Colorado.  He was messed up mentally and physically.  If you have gone to St. Hedwig church you have seen him.  He walks with a limp, more like he drags half of his body with him.  He couldn’t count or remember much. He had to count starting from one to get to the number he wanted.  He also would repeat the same sentence over and over again.  But I didn’t care.  I would sit out on the front porch and have beers with him. 

Then Randy moved out.  The rent got too expensive.  the house was vacant for a while I missed the guy but not having a neighbor wasn’t a bad thing either.  We had neighbors to our left move in somewhere around a year before Randy left.  That’s is when I noticed the change.  The neighbor’s weren’t polish let’s just say.  They had 5 cars, for 3 people that could drive.  2 of the cars never moved.  The city eventually took 2 away.  They managed to get one of the other ones started often enough to play games with the city.  I called the abandoned car people enough to know the number by heart.  (I don’t know the number anymore 571-8??? I think).  Parking was a nightmare with them there.  They showed no courtesy when they parked taking up 4 spots with 2 cars.  They didn’t give a shit about anything including themselves.  ahhhh, it was great living next to them. 

they also had a Doberman.  FULL SIZE, 120 lb doberman.  I never talked to the neighbors.  I had no reason too.  They were different.  Not polish different.  Socially different, class wise different.  They weren’t trying to get to another station in life, this was the stop they wanted in life and as high as the plane flew for them.  Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with settling in life, it is just the way the “celebrated” their lives that was horrible for me and the block. 

I didn’t talk to the neighbors until the day their Doberman got out.  The dog hopped their fence, came into my yard, where I was shoveling out some tree stump.  I had a shovel in my hand, the dog was staring me down and growling.  I was yelling at the top of my lungs, “GET YOUR FUCKING DOG!, GET YOUR FUCKING DOG PLEASE”.

I had the shovel ready to beat the ever living shit out of the thing if it charged me.  I didn’t know this dog from Adam, but I knew he barked and growled an awful lot. I knew him will enough to tell my kids to stay away.  The dog scared the shit out of me.  It was a huge doberman.  In fact the alley that ran between our house used to be an area my children would play in, not once the dog got there.  They were terrified as was I. 

So there I was staring down a full size dog, growling at me.  Yelling at the owners to get their dog.  What does the owner do, when they see their dog is in my yard you ask?  Apologize and tell their dog to come?  Swear it will never happen again?  (see where this is going?)  NOOOOOOOOO, the lady says, “don’t you fucking hit my dog, don’t you dare fucking hit my dog!”

Yep, there goes the neighborhood.  It was pretty rocky from their on out.  About a year later, they picked up a new vehicle.  That sat out in front of my house and thiers it was so big.  It was so big in fact that I couldn’t see across the street to walk the girls home from playing at the neighbors.  I had to get up off the couch and step around this vehicle.  I even called the city about the vehicle.  they said that legally their isn’t anything that says you can’t park a 30 FOOT FUCKING BOAT ON THE STREET!

They eventually left in the middle of the night with their boat in tow to avoid the sheriff kicking them out I guess. The neighborhood was peaceful for a little while.  But that wasn’t an anamoly.  It was becoming the norm.  Not just for S. Franklin St, but for the whole of Hedgeville.

 I would play basketball at the park (don’t ask me to spell it) Koushozka something.  I used to play and get along with the kids up there.  I was the only white guy normally, but the black guys and Puerto Rican’s were ok with me.  The would challenge me a lot, but I had their respect.  But along the same time the boat people left, the court changed too.   I didn’t get respect anymore.  I got asked if I was a cop, then I was called names and eventually I stopped going.

I had known what is was like to be a minority for a little while and the treatment I got will stay with me for the rest of my life.  I don’t know what happened but socially in the 90’s black people at least with me, seemed to be angry with me being white and trying to play basketball on “their court”.  Forget the fact that the park was 100 yards from my house and they drove to get to it.  I wasn’t home anymore.  I was in their home and I wasn’t wanted anymore.  Overall that is the feeling I get in the city these days and it is sad, but it is reality, a sad reality of many parts of the city.  I blame the mayor, mayor’s for that.   

I would go up to the courts and see drugs being delt.  And people just hanging out having gotten high on something or another.  I didn’t let my kids go to the park anymore.  Somewhere between 1997 and 1998 our car got stolen.  It was found in front of what is now the Save-A-Lot store or whateve the hell it is now on 2nd street by the post office.   It reeked of pot, the cop said most likely they took it for a joy ride to get high in.  Nice….ahhh Hedgeville.  It got to the point where I called the area “Creeping Death” like the Metallica song. 

All the while though, Grabo, the neighbors across the street and some others old time Pols stayed tight and kept the block a good place to live.  It was a good block for the most part and they all went to St. Hedwig’s Church.  You would see them at church on Sunday, at the school picking up a child or just visiting a relative.  You’d also see them at the festival and exchange pleasantries.  You would see Baci, Grandmom and Caci often enough to remind you why you moved to Hedgeville and why you were proud to say you sent your kids to St. Hedwig School.

The school was an extended family.  Mr. Hart the Principle was in my opinion the greatest principle I had ever known.  He had the morale as high as I could remember any school having.  I hated school as a kid, my kids loved school.  They couldn’t get enough of it.  They had dress up days, dress down days, they did the snow dance, the rain dance, they did all kinds of neat things.  It was great.  The teachers were great.  The lunch lady was great, everyone was related to everyone in some form or another and the familial feeling you got was tangible.

I watched my girls grow up in that school.  I remember taking off from work to go watch them parade up and down the block in their Halloween outfits.  I remember going to Donuts with Dad’s, dropping off all of them early to school for Husky TV, taking them early for thier honor roll breakfasts.  I can remember coaching basketball.  I can remember how wonderful it was to be a part of a family of people that saw the school as more than a school, but an extension of a community they USED to be a part of.  I remember going to family mass to watch my daughter do the reading or present the gifts to the altar.  Holy communions, Penances and now onto Confirmations. 

As time went on, I moved out of Hedgeville.  I got divorced and met a new wonderful woman.  But had I not met her, it was still time to go.  My children didn’t want to leave and #1 and #3 a few years ago asked why we had to move.  It crushed me and crushes me to think about it.  It was time to go.  It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t the same, the city was changing, drugs were creeping in, the cops coming to visit the nieghbors was a regular occurence on the weekends. 

I never told them that one of the reason we had to move was because the neighbor’s that moved into randy’s house attempted to stab me one night fighting over a parking space after being shovelled out a day earlier, by me.  The heroin they smoked, the cops that came around over a dozen times.  The one guy fleeing the cops by running on the roof tops of the connected houses.  The creepy guy, barely speaking english high on herion or crack trying to give my daughter a kiss and then me almost murdering him.  So many things, so little time…..

St. Hedwigs and Hedgeville are one in the same to me.   That school closing is going to take so many memories with it.  It is a shame that the area and the school will forever be only memories now.  I don’t think the people of Trolley Sq, the Trinity area and Little Italy realize how lucky they have it.  To have the support of the city, to have people that have the money to support the area and enough pull in the state to prevent the creeping death.    Though those places aren’t perfect, they have been around just as long as Hedgeville has, but they survived for various reasons. 

Some say it was I-95 that killed parts of the city.  Personally I think it has something to do with poverty, the mayor and the lack of good schools.  (and yes a lot of other things I don’t feel like making this post about that though)

It is sad to see the school go and the community that surrounds it.  I had hopes that when the Blue rocks stadium came in and the shops started popping up that it would save the area.  It was nice to be able to see the fireworks from my house for a few years.  But eventually my view was blocked by a tree that was overgrown in the neighbors house that used to have the doberman. 

The tree symbolized the creeping death that has swallowed Hedgeville.  The life of the community was the school and the church together, without the School the church will too soon be victim of the various problems this city faces. 

Farewell St. Hedwig’s.  I will miss you.