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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
Southern hospitality cultivated in Roxbury
By Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe Staff, 8/7/2001 ''The worst beating I ever had as a child was for busting open a
watermelon and then just leaving it,'' Jimmie Toodle is telling Evans.
Leaning on the fence after a day at work as a carpenter, this North
Carolina native doesn't seem to notice the bugs are biting and the sun is
stinging. He's totally focused on Evans - a Mississippi native - who is
straddling rows of collard greens as he weeds.
Toodle continues: ''My mother used to preserve watermelon rinds. She'd
put sugar and cloves on it and cook it on the stove. It would end up like
jelly. You'd eat it with toast or biscuits.''
''Jimmie, why don't you make me some?'' Evans says.
''I'll get my sister to make some and bring it. I'll call her today,''
he says with a soft Southern accent, before walking off.
This is what life is like in the Wakullah Street garden. Neighbors -
most of them African-Americans born in the South - meet here daily for a
laugh about old times as they tend to collard greens, okra, mustard
greens, and other Southern staples they've planted.
To them, this isn't just a garden. It's an outdoor community center
sorely needed in an era when being neighborly often means little
more than waving ''hi'' and ''goodbye.''
''I'd shoot myself in the head if I had to live in a condo, where I
just paid a fee and never knew my neighbors. That's a type of death,''
says Evans, a 33-year-old teacher.
On Wakullah Street, ''Nobody just walks by,'' he says. ''They all stop
and say, `Hi! How's it going? Got some rain today?' Something about the
garden makes people stop. It's like a little newborn baby. Everybody cares
how it's faring. It's brought people together who otherwise would never
have gotten together.''
It seems incongruous that Evans is the magnet attracting people to this
plot of land. He's a single man with no family ties here. Yet many of the
neighbors call the 6,000-square-foot garden Evans Plantation. It sits at
the foot of Roxbury's Malcolm X Park near the house where Malcolm X lived
in the 1940s. A six-family home once stood on this site, but it was razed
in the late 1960s.
''I come out whenever I see Derrick, which is morning, noon and night.
He's always out there. I don't know how he does it. He'll say, `Go get a
plastic bag. I have some cucumbers and tomatoes for you.' He's made
everybody stop and look,'' says neighbor Cheryl Williams, a South End
native.
Evans wasn't the first person to plant in this empty lot. Residents
Mattie Jerkins, Dora Freeman, and M.B. Wornum - also former Southerners -
planted a few rows of tomatoes, peppers, and beets as early as 1963. A few
others joined in. Most of the lot, though, remained overgrown with weeds.
When Wornum died in 1998, Evans decided to carry on.
Since he was off in the summer, Evans began to treat the garden like a
full-time job - arriving at 8 a.m. and sometimes not leaving until past
midnight (he used street lights and halogen flood lights to see in the
dark).
He chopped down weeds, rented a rototiller, and planted seeds. He took
many of the loose rocks on the plot and made a mortarless wall. He
collected old crutches to hold up tomato vines and crib boxsprings to use
as gates.
Most important, he attracted attention.
Neighbors who hadn't interacted much before wandered over to see what
the fuss was about. Impressed with Evans's dedication, they offered to
pull some weeds and plant seeds. Chatting as they watered their hot
peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, and romaine lettuce, they gradually
discovered they had a lot in common. Nearly all of them are migrants from
the South who moved here for better jobs and educational opportunities -
some as early as the 1940s and some later. They all grew up tending
gardens. And they all love to talk about it.
''We used to have to get up early in the morning to pick cucumbers to
take to market,'' Mattie Jerkins, 66, is telling Evans one recent
afternoon. The Trenton, N.C., native moved to Boston in 1959. ''I had a
billy goat as a pet. My grandfather built a cart with bicycle tires and
the goat pulled it. I thought I was doing something, it went so fast,''
she says, chuckling.
''My mother would can everything - tomatoes, beans, pears, peaches,''
says Dora Freeman, who moved to Wakullah Street in 1962 from Tupelo, Miss.
''It was so beautiful the way she used to line everything up on the shelf.
I used to get angry, though, because I had to wash all the jars.''
Evans moved here in 1984 after growing up in Turkey Creek, Miss. He was
raised by his mother, a Methodist minister, and his step-father, a truck
farmer.
''Everyone had a garden in Turkey Creek,'' says Evans, dressed in baggy
black nylon pants, canvas sneakers, and a loose T-shirt. Unshaven, the
6-foot-4 Evans stoops to check on the cabbage. He has dirt under his nails
and sweat on his forehead. ''My childhood was spent with some really
country people,'' he says. ''My mother used to make soap and ice cream by
hand. My stepfather would chop wood. We didn't have microwaves or computer
games. The kids used to say that Mr. Evans was so country, he's swamp.''
An only child, Evans says his best friends have always been senior
citizens. ''I like older people and kids. Folks in their 20s and 30s I'm
very particular about. I don't want to deal with people who have nothing
to teach. Now, Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Jerkins are my best friends.''
Evans came to Boston to attend Boston College, where he earned a
bachelor's degree in history and black studies and a master's in history
and education. He teaches history at the Phillis Wheatley Middle School in
Roxbury. He also teaches a civil rights history course at his alma mater
one night a week and, occasionally, a US history course at Roxbury
Community College on the weekends.
During the summer, though, Evans puts history teaching on hold in favor
of oral history. He says he almost never leaves the block other
than to visit Home Depot (for garden supplies), the grocery store, and the
gas station.
''I don't have to go anywhere,'' he says. ''I'm infatuated with my
little street. This is the coolest show in town. I don't need a TV. With
all the characters around here, it's like a multilayered soap opera or an
August Wilson play.''
Why is Evans so committed? He's not doing it for the food. His stove is
broken. ''I eat at the neighbors' every other day,'' he says, sheepishly.
He's not doing it for lack of other interests either. He collects maps.
His summer reading is E.P. Thompson's ''The Making of the English
Workingclass,'' not a gardening journal.
For Evans, the garden is a welcome retreat. ''I work in a dysfunctional
school system,'' he says. ''I go to Stop & Shop at 3 a.m. and some of
the kids I taught are now working there as cashiers.
''I disconnected my doorbell eight years ago, because so many kids
would come with problems and then you have to deal with them.''
Frustrated, Evans finds peace in the garden. ''I know this garden will
grow,'' he says.
''It's almost like this whole street is the garden, and I'm the seed.
I'm growing and cross-fertilizing with other seeds in the row. It's
yielded great results. I'm simultaneously teaching and growing.
''I figure that's what I was born to do.''
Suzanne Ryan can be reached by e-mail at sryan@globe.com
This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on
8/7/2001. |