OCR Text |
Show Dave Orr Recalls Park’s Old Chinatown China Mary, Matriarch of “Town, Honored at Park’s Biggest Funeral THIS WEEK END I've been watching the Nixon caravan on the tube and wondering what good will come of it, what it will bring us. Whether the trip will top that of Marco Polo who, his¬tory has it, returned with the recipe for spaghetti. (History had to wait for Columbus to introduce the tomato from this hemisphere to make the com-plementary sauce.) Perhaps Pat will bring back some new nutriment from that forty-dish banquet given them by the Peoples Republic; some¬thing simple and easy and cheap like spaghetti, something that1 help keep the food bill down. That alone ought to be good for fifteen Republican points in anyone's poll. There were five hundred eat¬ing at that banquet shown on TV. Watching, I imagined the sounds and the smells that were there in that great hall in China and my thoughts brought back memories of Park City and its bit of China. SIGHTS: Pigtails worn under round black silk caps. Shirts and sheets and long underwear flapping on endless lines in the breezes. Shoes with thick felt soles. Floppy thin trousers. Newspapers with strange char¬acters. Smells: Odor of hot irons on starch. Burning joss. Stewing chicken. All mingled-so I imagined—with burning opium. Sounds: Clicks of dominoes. Conversation. Sadirons being slid back onto hot stove. Con¬versation. Rustle of strange looking newspapers. Conver¬sation. Soft sounds and soft conver¬sation. Conversation Cantonese and sing-song. Musical con¬versation, foj Dad has told me that tones as well as syllables were needed in that language. Dad said that Sam Ascheim had told him so and that was good enough for me. Because Sam, who had been re-named Ascheim, was my godfather and he keptme in lichee nuts. CHARLIE LEE and Charlie Chong, gardener and restaur¬ateur respectively, spoke Can¬tonese. So didQ.N.L.De Grover and China Mary. China Mary was the mother of Yo Kee. Yo Kee was bilingual; he spoke English as well as Cantonese and the last as well as the first. The mother, by the fact of her age and that she was the only woman in the community of a hundred or so, was its matriarch. But hers was a remote rule for she did not live in China¬town where the work-dwellings burrowed into Marsac Hill but in a log cabin—the only one in town—whose back yard abutted the eight-foqt board fence sur¬rounding the) Ball Park in the Lower End. She lived alone for Yo Kee was away at school mostly and she seldom got away from the home. She was not infirm, as I recall, but insecure; age with its flesh was a burden. V at only because it was piled on small mishappen feet which had been distorted by the once fashionable, cruel, bindings of Old China. CHINA MARY, like Sam As¬ cheim, must have had another name. Certainly it must be in the old files of The Park Rec¬ord which are preserved and available to historians. In her obituary. But I am not that sort of precise chronicler to have the facts looked up for me and she will have to be China Mary here—any other name might outrage my memories. (And at my age I prefer not to tamper with them.) I remember her and her feet when she sat smokingher corn¬cob pipe and rocking her chair on the front porch summer¬times. I knew her and she knew me though we never spoke. I tipped my hat or cap and she nodded back on those days when I was on my way to a 'game of one-old-cat. I tipped my hat to all ladies when I passed and knew them. And since my elders were not my familiars I referred to them properly as Mr. or Mrs. So and So. BUT NOT MRS. China Mary. Politeness can be carried to the point of impracticality and my dad had too much humor in him to insist on what would be foolishness. He and she were familiars, what he called her face-to-face I don't know. She likely called him Tom as Sam Ascheim did. But whatever, the lack of prefix was no mark of disrespect. Far from it. One day when I was maybe 10 or 11 China Mary died. Now 60 some years later many mem¬ories are not precise. I do now know from what church her services were conducted. It might well have been one of any. Of four of Protestant de¬nomination or Catholic or Mor¬mon. I do not know what words were spoken. Or by whom. But the words must have been kind and elevating. And, in whatever language, the word gentlewoman would certainly have appeared. I was not there. I don't know, What I do recall is her funeral procession which passed our house. And I do remember its grandeur. What's a funeral procession nowadays? Here in Los An¬geles' hurried hoopla it's a mufflered motorcyclist in piped tight breeks leading a reflect¬ively black hearse and limon- sine followed by a kaleidoscopic trail of color out of Detroit. All he ad lit for cohesion and hell-bent against a deadline. That or the package deal with all the Facilities Under One Establishment. Utter Forest Lawn. CHINA MARY'S cortege too was led by men in uniform. But by the Park City Military band on foot, their pipings black on dark blue, setting the pace with the "March in Saul". Their muf¬flers clean white handkerchiefs tucked in the bells of the brass and folded under the snares of the small drum. The hearse with its gilded torches showed wreaths sand¬blasted on plate glass windows behind which were tasselled curtains. Dan Richardson the undertaker sat high alongside the driver just in case the horses got skittish. (They didn't, that team had followed the band too many times.) Then in rented rigs from the four livery stables which had sold out for the occasion came the mourners, her countrymen. All in new store clothes, stiff collared, stiff hatted and in stiff and uncomfortable shoes. EVERYONE and anyone else who had horses and buggies came next. DocLeCompteonhis high two-wheeled cart behind the roan. The Mayor and Council with the Agent in the Wells Fargo wagon—always kept in good paint-behind the big dappled grey. Father Gallahan with Doc Wilson. (Father and Doc had an under¬standing; if a parishioner had, been in a bad accident at the mines and if Father couldn't make it up the hill in time and extreme unction was needed Doc was to take over as sub¬stitute. Doc was a Mason. I guess Father made the sug¬gestion to keep himself on his toes; old as he was he never failed to make it up the hill.) All grouping, all clanishness was forgotten. Hibernian and Croatian, G.A.R. and Spanish American Vets, Elks and Odd Fellows. The stores had closed and the delivery wagons with boards spread athwart took on the overflow. I DON'T KNOW how many carriages there were and I'll not guess for I did not count them; It was bad luck to count a funeral procession then and at this late stage of my earthly tenure I shall not stick my neck out to be next in line. I shall only say that it was the longest I ever saw. The band was down by the D.&.R.G. wye before the last white-top had made the turn onto Park Avenue from Main Street. Maybe a mile. The white top bringing up the rear and thus separated from the lead far enough so that there was no clash of notes had in it another band, a three- piece one, a Celestial band with flute and symbal and a stringed instrument held like a cello. I suppose that the musicians were playing their version of sad music but it was not cad- enced and mournful like "the March in Saul". Their music seemed strange . . . Strange were two others in the same rig. Not strangers, however, but the night counter¬men at the Senate Restwurant. What they were doing-tearing to bits colored paper and drop¬ping the pieces over the tail¬gate—was strange. Dad explained later that it was their custom; that if a res¬urrection happened (again?) the lost one could follow the con¬fetti trail back home. I suppos¬ed that with China Mary that meant back to her porch and rocker and pipe. THIS TIME none of the kids fell in behind the parade. But later after the band had come marching back-for once not playing "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight" - some of us went down to the city Cemetery to see the gave and find out if what we had heard was true. And it was. , There atop the fresh mound was all sorts of food, left (such is hope eternal and universal) for hungry resurgence. The crew at the Senate had outdone themselves in the piece de resistance, a duck whole and glazed brown all over. It was all so tempting there late in the afternoon getting onto supper- time, so mouth-watering. But of course we didn't dare and went on home talking about it. One of the kids said that Charlie Lee, whose vegetable garden and shack and barn and pig pen adjoined the cemetery would come over and swipe the cooking after it got dark Someone else said no, that Charlie would be too scairt. BUT CACTI Birdwille Clark said that wasn't right either, Charlie was too honest—but the 'coyotes Weren't and they'd get it before morning. I guess he was right, too. Because when we were on our way to swimming at Dorrity's twin ponds next day the mound was bare and Charlie Lee was gaunt as ever. Those preparations for a possible return bothered me for a while; the food, the paper trail and the silver coins which were said to have been placed on the eyelid. (Ferry fare back across the Styx?) Didn't seem to make sense. Not with her feet and being pumped full of Dan Richardson's formaldehyde. China Mary would never have made it. And so I stopped look¬ing for her as I passed on the way to the ball grounds or to the swimming hole. All that was before Sun Yat Sen said that there would be no more pig tails worn and that there were to be no more bindings on little growing girls feet. Mao Tse-tung, still in his teens, was thinking about join¬ing Sun in cutting old bonds. Chou Enlai was sneaking away with his kid pals to go swim¬ming in a forbidden fish pond. That was when John D. Rocke¬feller was selling China coal- oil in five-gallon cans and giv¬ing away dimes. It would be two or three years before Richard Nixon would be diapered. That was when Park City turned out to honor in passing an old neighbor, an almost cit¬izen who couldn't vote, who couldn't even own property.- Dave Orr. |