After another typical berating from our corner crossing guard for walking my kids to school on such a cold day, she and I launched into a relatively long discussion about what problems she is seeing from her twice-daily post at Oakland and Dickinson Streets.
Today she reported to me that there is a slight change in the cast of characters living in the brick apartment building at the corner, where a lot of subsidized tenants live. Her perception is that there is a one-bedroom apartment in the building being occupied by an older man, a younger woman, another younger man who may be a boyfriend or husband, and two young children—a boy and a girl.
The crossing guard tells me that she suspects their living arrangement violates regulations of subsidized housing, which often stipulate that a boy and a girl need separate bedrooms. This was unfamiliar to me, but I suggested to the guard that I could get her a copy of the Forest Park Civic Association’s handy "How to Solve Neighborhood Problems," which is sort of a Cliffs Notes version of our municipal bible.
I asked how the crossing guard could possibly know the level of detail about the family’s arrangement. She proceeded to list for me all the people she knows who live in the apartment building, and how big their apartments are. Two other residents—one who lives in the building, and another who lives a couple doors down—are also often hanging out on this corner and they provide additional information. The three of them together watch the resident traffic come and go: they know who parks regularly in front of the building, when they leave, when they return, and which faces are unfamiliar. The one-bedroom apartment folks are new faces, the crossing guard said, and the only apartment that had been empty, for them to fill, was a one-bedroom. She speculated that the apartment must not be in good shape.
She then told me all about a young mother, under 20 or so, who lives just down Oakland Street with her three-year-old daughter. Every day, she walks to the bus with her stroller, takes her child to daycare in the North End, and then goes to STCC for classes and a part-time job as a secretary. She also has a new job at Food Zone International. The daughter apparently is having trouble at daycare, with the director of the school complaining about her behavior and demanding that she withdraw. The crossing guard said the girl is "the cutest thing" and that the young mother is very nice, too, but has no one to advocate for her. She struggles with the landlord, who controls her apartment’s heat, and has been turning it down a lot without communicating about it. The crossing guard has been telling this mother that she has got to get on the phone and advocate for herself. I told her, "It’s good someone’s telling her that."
A few weeks ago, the news was that a small, ferocious dog on the loose had tried to attack a young African-American boy as he attempted to cross the street. The crossing guard told me that the same dog had passed by two white boys without incident, but went straight for the black boy. This troubled her. She called the police, who sent an animal control officer. By the time I passed through the intersection, I could see the officer wandering Oakland Street between Dickinson and Belmont, searching for the dog, who had disappeared. The crossing guard was spooked and adamant about needing to find the dog. She calls the police a fair amount on her watch, for anything from middle school kids fighting (she watched one break a bottle over another’s head one day from half a block away), to dangerous drivers, to dogs on the loose.
She told me her father was a cop, and taught her to look out for every detail. She memorizes license plate numbers.
Today, in fact, she mentioned to me that the car the "new face" drives—the mother of two the crossing guard suspects is living with several people in a small apartment—actually shares a license plate with another vehicle, a black pick-up truck. She said the woman’s car is missing a front license plate and she has noted that the truck, which is occasionally parked on the street as well, has the very same number. As we spoke about this, the woman pulled up and parked right in front of us.
Police might consider posting themselves every morning and afternoon with the city’s crossing guards. They would learn a lot.
