The Indianapolis Anthology by Norman Minnick

Author:Norman Minnick [Minnick, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781948742917
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 2021-05-04T00:00:00+00:00

WALKING TO THE CIRCLE: 25 MILES THROUGH A DIVIDED CITY

MICHAEL McCOLLY

Last summer, I was sitting in what was my old bedroom, staring out the window, distracted from what I was writing by a man with a briefcase walking down 71st Street. I watched him stop to let cars go by and then continue on his way to the bus stop. Every day, morning and evening, I saw him, as well as teenagers with basketballs, a young Black woman with a Kroger t-shirt, and other young people no doubt also heading to work or school along a road never designed for human beings who might want or need to walk along it. When I last lived here in my teens in the late ’70s, only those with a flat tire or people peddling the Lord or poor souls with dementia would you find walking on 71st Street.

But since I moved back to Indy to help my sisters care for my mother, everywhere I go—now, of course in a car—I see people making paths on the side of the road or walking in the streets: young, old, Black, white, women with strollers, Hispanic guys on bikes.

So, the next time I saw this guy walking by my parents’ home, I got off my bike to talk to him. “I walk as much as I can,” he told me. “Everywhere I’ve lived I’ve walked, New York, Miami, and now Indianapolis. It’s how I deal with stress of my job.” But isn’t that dangerous? He rolled his eyes. “I’ve been hit more than once—in Miami, and once here.” Last year he’d been hospitalized and pointed to his leg. “The police can’t do anything, they say, because, like the guy who hit me, they never stop.”

Then this spring, I didn’t see him anymore. But what I did see were city workers and engineers building something for the long-term health of me and my neighbors and the citizens of this city: a six-foot-wide, two-mile-long path along 71st to Binford Ave. And so, when it was completed I decided to christen it, by exploring on foot a city I never really knew nor ever believed I’d once again call home.

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