The Beginning of His Life: A Poem

Life in the River Road historic Black community, Bethesda, MD

by Ms. Jacqueline DuPuy

Railroad crossing in Takoma Park.

Poor.

Rural.

Huge, loud steam engines pulling clickety-click box cars rattle the house.

The inside is the same temperature as the outside.

Hunger.

In a black neighborhood formed from blacks moving from one bad place to another.

It’s a shack; not much better than an old slave cabin.

Filled with children, struggle, moonshine, slaps, punches, hate, death, longing, ambitions, determination.

Each commit to getting out; most do.

1930s trauma

It doesn’t get talked about on a Better Help app

Burying it is their mental health.

It can never be truly forgotten

But it becomes the foundation for a desire for better.

I can only imagine that this was my father’s childhood.

Putting together the fragments he shared.

Old pictures in archives.

Stories gathered by historians.

This is the beginning of MY life

Because it is the beginning of his.

The rundown shack, the neighborhood, all now covered.

By a McDonalds, office buildings, parking lots, businesses, and a huge antenna

Ghost of the train tracks are still there, under a bike trail

Where yuppies and hipsters with their I-Phones and Fendi baby strollers exercise

Ignorant to the secrets, the pain and the trauma that is right under their Nikes.

My dad looked at the antenna and saw his painful past.

The death of an infant sister, burned

Another sister, already a mom, begins her alcoholic path to an early grave.

His father’s alcoholic rants and abandonment.

If the house were still there, would he throw rocks at it?

Maybe it is good — that it is gone

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Ms. DuPuy's father, Robert J. Lewis, Sr., was born in Georgetown in 1928. The family moved to the River Road area sometime later. Mr. Lewis became the first Black volunteer firefighter in Montgomery County. Ms. DuPuy's poem talks about her father's experience growing up Black during the Depression.

Poem posted with the permission of the author.

Reference

Horydczak, Theodor, photographer. Railroad crossing in Takoma Park. Takoma Park, Maryland, United States, ca. 1920-ca. 1950. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/2019675882/