 Editors note: This was a post on social media a couple weeks back that we asked the author Destiny L. Smith, a local artist, if we could share it with our readers. | 1973 my mother and I lived in little Italy a rundown two story, tucked between two larger buildings split into two apartments we lived downstairs 200 block of west 18th at night my bathroom had water bugs the size of monsters they would scatter when you turned on the light it’s gone now that house someone tore it down now a place where old men sit on folding chairs smoking cigars talking about the good old days in that kitchen mom was crying praying to the silent god by the corner window Ian Kirk’s mother called from Scotland to say her son was married with two kids and to stay in America my first passport was never used Saint Patricks day at the corner bar offered a remedy mom and dad married not long after dads mom, my Polish grandmother looked my mom up and down when they first met, I’m sure she was tired already raised her many children on delicious food and lots of prayers mom got the big family every orphan craves dad got a second wife and a fourth daughter small me felt loved three new sisters, the eldest tender and kind the middle indifferent and the youngest traumatized all of us abandoned in our own way trying to find our place in the world Polish people use butter like a fairy godmother uses her wand Everything gets covered with it butter on bread before the lunch meat, butter on noodles before the sauce, butter on all the cooked veggies and butter on warm cake for a hungry child butter was a simple joy dad likes his toast buttered corner to corner I’ve always had a memory like an elephant my mind is like a time traveling ghost I have the ability to open any door in my past wandering all I want in each moment as if it was happening now not long before my parents met I was sent to bed without supper mom had a blue floral Avon lady’s suitcase with tiny little sample lipsticks and to my luck some leftover crackers to tide me over why did parents put “bad” kids to bed without dinner? I turn the page in my ghost travel memories and my dad is passed out in his vomit on the second floor of my aunts house before he found sobriety, it’s a testament to how far he’s come we lived in my dad’s sister house at beginning of my parents life together a swimming pool in the backyard and skinny dipping with my sisters in the rain I was so afraid of getting into trouble same house had a claw foot tub mom bathed my great grandmother her breasts floated in the warm water like clouds great granny Sophie taught me that #1 was pee, #2 was poop and #3 was diarrhea what a thing to learn at three her hands were knotted up with arthritis curled like a crows feet on a branch her accent thick as molasses she’d come over from the old country took a boat and left her whole world eventually married an Armenian tailor In Philadelphia not a very nice man as my uncle tells it he died early with a bad heart granny moved to Erie she left this world in 1976 scent is the safe deposit box of memories bacon grease in a tin can and I’m in my grandmas kitchen the one that adopted my mom from the orphanage a stern human but her pie crust made with lard was so tender and flaky and her garden as lush as Eden I tell these little bits of my history because there is so much to say but mostly because I feel everything with the intensity of the sun memories burning my mind and heart Others I here, don’t remember things or feel so deeply that they are paralyzed are they empty vessels that can float through life unbothered? why am I the ghost traveler why are others midnight with no dreams? my blood, my kin are plagued with generational trauma an oil slick of wounds we can not heal each one runs through my mind like a horror film with no end and I drown over and over still I search for a solution, resolution and peace the people are living in some fantasy world that everything is okay we could discuss this philosophically but we know how it ends. there’s an endless supply of memories but for today that is all. Destiny L Smith 8/23 |
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 Oil City artist CJ Hurley will hold the inaugural show in the new Graffiti Gallery space at 228 Seneca Street. Hurley's show, titled "The Lyrical Landscape", will be a five-week, multi-faceted exhibition featuring recent paintings, a program on Romanticism in art history, an artist demonstration, and community outreach with programs for students. The opening reception for the show will be held from 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, Sept. 8. The exhibit will run through Saturday, Oct. 14.
  The Barrow-Civic Theatre is a mad house these days with four productions on the burner and youth theater camp just ending. Cued up next for an audience is the Off-Barrow production of "Harvey," which opens Thursday in the Little Theatre. The 1944 Pulitzer Prize winning play, written by Mary Chase, follows Elwood P. Dowd and his imaginary six-foot tall white rabbit as Dowd naively goes through life happy while others think he's a bit nuts.  Dress rehearsal on Tuesday found cast and crew working out the finishing touches in order to be ready by 7:30 p.m for the already-sold-out opening night show Thursday. 
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