Plaster girls in bonnets--Marcia

Today, the kindergarten literacy aids were sent into the streets of Medford with door hangers, announcing the upcoming Kindergarten Round-up.

We need to boost enrollment. Next year is going to be a hard sell. We will be moving out of our shared housing at Hoover and back into our brand new school in the middle of the year. (YEAH!!!)

The three other aids and I showed up in our mobile-trailer library with our prerequisite coffee cups and water bottles. I dressed Kindergarten-y--floral skirt, white blouse, and black Mary Janes. The other aids dressed for battle: sneakers, running pants, and sleeveless shirts. I was impressed.

We decided to hit the financially challenged neighborhoods first, as a group. This is always a good eye-opener. The HUD apartments are immaculate. Everything is swept and tidy. No beat up Barbie cars or sun-dyed Big Wheels strewn about. There is nothing to tell you about the people that live within. Order and quiet force us to keep our voices down. Where moments ago we'd been joking about ditching our propaganda in a nearby dumpster and heading to Donut Country we're serious now. We fan out. I am the leader and direct my comrades left, right, and center.

We move swiftly trying not to jostle doorknobs or rustle our fliers, we don't really want to have anyone come out. There is a sense of people behind doors. But nothing moves.

We pack up and head back out for the circa 1970s Woodlawn Apartments. I used to think there were maybe 24 apartments at the Woodlawn. But the lot is really deep and wide, and there turns out to be over 100. At first I am not sure they are all part of Woodlawn, I check to see if all the street lamps have that big white ball and that all the window trim is forest green. We divise a plan and attack. Here the doorknobs are a little grottier, the stairwells a tad more like the projects. I pass a bicycle with a sticker on it that says Suck My Dick. Seriously. Are there people that say "OK!"

I start to worry about blond, blue-eyed April. She looks like she's 23, and her knickers are the tightest. What if some meth freak drags her into his apartment. How would I find her?

I climb a cement staircase. There is a jug of bleach by one door and a can full of cigarette butts by the other. I wonder about the bleach. Do people bleach their feet before entering? Is he/she bleaching the stoop? Is it for recycling hypodermics?

We decide to do the apartments across the street and move forward with great vigor. I can't keep up with these ladies. My whole family had the 24-hour flu, only staggered. So I've either been cleaning up barf since Sunday, or adding to the mess for three days. I'm not in top shape for the mission.

The sign says "Something Estates" and in small letters "living opportunity--Equal Housing Something". We wonder if this is a place only for the elderly or for the disabled.

We start hanging our little yellow papers. "Oh goody" I think, there's a rolled up diaper and an empty Huggies carton, "Ages 3 and up" out front of this one. That means Kids!!!!!

At the same time we spot a shoeless little boy up the driveway. "There's one!" We say, confidant that we will find Roosevelt converts here.

Knowing my population I can't help but wonder if the boy has been sent outside while mommy "works" or takes her "medicine". But I'm wrong. He follows us silently up the sidewalks. An older hispanic woman pokes her head out and shouts at him to come back in, to get his shoes on. But he doesn't listen. He smiles and follows us until we are finished.

Our next stop is East Medford's drug den. A lovely old neighborhood with broad sidewallks, old Elm trees, porches and camelias that must have been planted in the early 1900s. But unlike Bend's Westside and Ashland's Railroad District, few are gentrifying down here. Craftsman bungalows are decomposing before our eyes.

What is amazing though, is that even at the lowliest hell hole, people try to make the space their own. Despite a derelict house, a hibachi in a flower pot, curtains that are water stained, someone has planted a few zinnias by the stoop.

Another porch is made cool and welcoming with a handmade broom propped in a corner and a cute iron table with matching vinyl covered chairs. I hang my flier on the stoller handle as I duck under the pine boughs that arc over the pathway.

On one porch I go to hang my doo-hickey, registering, porch, stoller, plush couch, ashtray and then ahhh . . . Where others have put plaster statues of frogs fishing or doing a jig, sun-bonnetted girls, myriad aryan angels, bleach bottles, or cans for butts by their door, this person has propped a romantic painting of a flaxen-haired woman either in the process of buttoning or unbottoning her bloozy white blouse. She just neglected to put one globular rosy-tipped breast away or forgot to air out the other. It is unclear. Different, however, from the cross-legged frog and windchime crew.

What do people think when they come to my door? I think I better run home and put away the scooters, basketballs, shoes, gatorade bottles, and Shark Men, that litter my front door. I think about people's need, no matter the circumstances, for a little beauty or humor, or something to call their own. I see how at the Stevens Street Apartments where people are being given a fresh start, they are following rules, keeping things tidy, being proud of their little patch of a chance. At the others, they are maybe at their last chance, and things are not so pretty. Some don't even have real front doors just sliding glass doors hung with sheets and a worn out rubber mat from Bi-Mart. These are the only places that make me want to wash my hands. The stripped bike and heavy chain, the reek of so many cigarettes is depresssing. No Cat Crossing sign here, just an abandoned Dora the Explorer backpack and a cardboard carton with a stray chile in the bottom.

Then the little houses, however hard the life, however many children, there is the stab at expression.

We finish off in the neighborhoods that have stopped sending their kids to Roosevelt. The families that have opted to send their kids off to private or Christian schools, or transfer into the wealthier districts like Lone Pine or Hoover.

Here the driveways and borders have had their dose of Round-Up, the tulips and jonquils are still in bloom, lawns are mowed, dogwoods are in bloom and only one house has a plaster statue and a hibachi. I know who lives at this one, and she does send her kids to Roosevelt. She's one of the most active parents in the PTA.

All of us noticed how all but the meanest situations flowered with this desire for a spot of beauty, the will to express. It leaves me today, with this great desire to take care of what is mine. Remember how lucky I am, and to show my gratitude on occasion.