Finkbine Park Poem by Frank Avon

Corrugated metal
on a concrete slab -
our first home

(except a few months
in the Pink Palace,
a duplex in Texas) -

corrugated metal
left over from World War II
on a concrete slab.

No matter how much
you swept
and mopped and scrubbed

it still looked dingy
unswept, unscrubbed,
unkempt.

When I came home from work,
my wife was never weeping,
just scrubbing the shower

again - and again and again.
It was a metal stall
eroded at the edges.

* * *

The only furniture we owned:
a Lincoln rocker, a hi-fi,
and a hand-made cedar chest,

but the first thing I did
was to tile that concrete floor
and put down a remnant of carpet.

The oil heater - shoulder high -
sat in the middle
of our 'living room';

the water heat
sat in the corner; we
wrapped it with a plywood screen.

* * *

The overall dimensions
were about 18' by 32';
the windows, head-high.

The walls were paper thin:
not much went on around us
that we didn't hear.

The couple in the attached apartment
were newly-weds also,
obviously ill-suited.

They argued often and loud,
calling each other names
inappropriate for - well, anyone.

When a quarrel had gone on
long enough, we turned
our hi-fi up full blast

and put on an LP
of the Wedding March
from Wagner's 'Lohengrin';

that quieted them down
immediately;
we declared victory.

* * *

I was a graduate student,
living on half salary
and a measly teaching assistantship.

Finkbine Park with its
gravel streets and Dempster dumpsters
was called 'Married Student Housing.'

Technically, we were living
in poverty - would have been
eligible for food stamps,

but were too proud
even to consider
cashing in.

Our monthly budget for
groceries was $50,
which usually meant

potato soup
for the whole fourth week:
I loved my wife's potato soup. Still do.

* * *

But Finkbine Park
was home - oh, yes,
it was home,

where we brought
our first two sons,
where they learned to walk.

When one of them was born
ladies from our church
insisted that I let them

come and clean house
before mother and son
returned from the hospital.

Things were so scattered,
dishes and laundry undone,
so what they didn't know

is that I stayed up quite late
the night before they came
cleaning before they 'cleaned.'

* * *

When #1 son was born -
sooner than expected -
we were up all night,

but he didn't make his appearance
until noon the next day.
Never again, I told myself.

Never again do I put her
through such stress and pain.
And I didn't

for another fourteen months.
Right after the first was born,
I had my first major exam

scheduled at 1: 00.
I had studied for it
until midnight,

so I raced away
to take the test.
Out of over a hundred students,

I made the highest score -
the 99th percentile.
it was a very good omen:

that son completed his Ph.D.
never once in his school career,
making a single B - all A's.

* * *

When the second was born -
he was due on February 12 -
I told my wife

any day in February is OK,
except the 8th.
I would be conducting

a workshop in Keokuk that day,
and my consulting fee
would pay his birth expenses.

Well, of course, you guessed it:
he arrived on February 8th,
but not quickly.

At some point, he decided,
just to wait awhile, he
wasn't ready yet

(another accurate omen) ,
so finally I had to leave
to conduct my workshop - nervously.

I had known all along - but hadn't
told my wife that he was likely
to be born with a cleft palate

(something about medicine she took
for airsickness before she knew
she was pregnant) .

So at intermission of my workshop,
I called the obstetrics ward
at the University Hospital.

'You have a son, ' they said;
'he and his mother are doing well.'
'Are you sure? ' I asked,

and asked again, and yet again,
insistently. 'Everything is fine, '
they attempted to reassure me, but

I couldn't believe them.
After the workshop, I raced home
- well above the speed limit.

I bounded up to the nursery
and, after greeting my wife,
demanded that they take me

to the nursery so I could see
my son. He had a perfect
little baby mouth.

* * *

My wife nursed both boys
rocking in the Lincoln rocker
and reading Russian novels.

I pulled them around the park
in their red coaster wagon,
and carried them on my shoulders

to the abandoned golf course
next door (also 'Finkbine') ,
to the Iowa City park

where they watched the swans, and
the prairie dogs in their mounds,
and perched on a fire engine.

* * *

Ah, yes. Finkbine Park was home.
We didn't feel poor,
for, after all, all

the other residents
were also graduate students
with the same limited incomes.

We laughed with each other;
we cooked together and partied;
we babysat each others' kids.

I'll never forget our baked Alaskan:
the ice cream inside frozen
so hard that it required a hatchet.

Our boys and their friends
found a patch of woods
at the edge of the old golf course:

it became the Secret Woods.
Batman and Robin dwelt there
running through the park

wearing a mask and cape
(the cape, a turf towel
or maybe a pillow case) .

* * *

Our unit was near
an entrance to the park,
close to the gravel street.

It did have a nice shade tree,
so I decided to make a little lawn
with a picket fence around it

(the picket fence, of course,
I found at the Dempster dumpster -
it was our place for sharing) .

Our sons played on their 'lawn, '
with their trikes and trucks,
wearing only diapers

(and sometimes, not even those) .
We adults sat reading
under the old shade tree.

But not all park residents
were good at parallel parking,
so every so often (too often

my wife insisted) one of them
crushed our fence with
the bumper of his car.

My furious wife
threatened to sue,
and bawled them out publicly

whenever she heard
the crash. That evening
I just rebuilt the fence.

* * *

Eventually, piece by piece,
we added furniture of our own:
a sofa bed, a decent refrigerator,

a mattress with a metal frame
(which we promptly broke
when we jumped up one night

to see the window peeper
who had been caught by police,
their red lights flashing) .

We bought an air-conditioner!
Even a television set so our sons
didn't go elsewhere to watch

Batman & Robin
and the Cisco Kid
and Saturday morning cartoons.

I built a room divider between
our tiny kitchen and
our little 'living room':

it was simply a bookcase
with stained slats on it
reaching to the ceiling,

slightly slanted
with space in between,
and behind these slats,

the envy of our neighbors:
a huge orange light fixture
suspended from the ceiling,

by a bright brass chain -
a special from Sears-Roebuck,
as I remember.

* * *

We had a floor-to-ceiling
book shelf next to our front door,
One was the 'boon book, '

The Red Ballon, our first son's
first book, hardly appropriate
for a one-year-old, but what

did I, a graduate student in English,
know about books for children?
He loved his 'boon book'; we read

it every night. Another book,
displayed on the shelf, visible
to anyone passing on the street,

was by William Shirer:
'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'
from the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Prominent on the spine
of its book jacket (you may remember)
was a large, graphic swastika.

Our neighbors just across the street
were from Scandinavia
(maybe Norway or Sweden) .

Iowa's winter weather
wasn't cold to them;
it was a home away from home.

We were shocked (and curious)
when they parked their infant
outdoors in a baby carriage

in Iowa's icy weather.
But they were even more shocked
(horrified, indeed)

when they saw that we
publicly displayed
a swastika!

* * *

But Finkbine was home
to all of us;
we were more than neighbors,

we were family. Just
around the corner from
our unit, a Japanese family;

just back of our unit
a family from Utah - Mormon -
with eight children (they

rented two adjoining units) :
one of their daughters
was a tour guide

to the neighborhood,
leading all her playmates
around our picket fence,

pointing out that little boy
who (can you believe it/)
had removed all his clothes.

* * *

As neighbors, we were close:
up the street a unit or two,
an engineering student lived, who

always found the best sales,
the neatest give-aways,
treasures at the dumpster.

'Come along, ' he said one day,
'I've found apples for the picking.'
Of course, I went.

We climbed the tress (at some risk)
and picked (with great labor)
a bushel apiece, only

to find out we were stealing!
Our hard-won baskets, of course,
we tendered to the irate owner.

* * *

When, at last, I finished my degree
and secured my first position,
we were on the edge of affluence,

we imagined.
So I bought my wife a fine white coat
with a collar of silver fox fur.

I have a snapshot I took
of her standing by - get this! -
our shiny new Camaro,

the first of its kind,
dark navy with a fine white line,
our very own Batmobile.

It's December; the car is parked
under the old tree,
outside our picket fence.

* * *

Finkbine was a fine time.
We think of ourselves as Iowans
yet. We never, ever wept -

er, that is, we rarely wept.
There was the case of the carrot cake.
My wife was trying a new recipe;

something went wrong:
the cake just tanked,
it refused to bake.

She wept - and took herself to bed.
I babysat the cake in our old oven,
until it finally revived, hours later,

and began to rise. It was fine.
The only other time
that I remember weeping

was when we left.
We swept and mopped
and scrubbed,

and in spite of our efforts,
824 Finkbine still
looked dingy.

I had rented a truck
(we had furniture now) :
I left with our older son.

My wife was still cleaning,
scrubbing and scrubbing again.
Then she followed

in the Camaro with the second son.
Both of us driving our vehicles
with an excited boy beside us,

laughing and chirping,
and we in our separate vehicles -
both of us weeping.

Corrugated metal
on a concrete slab -
it had been our home.
Finkbine was just fine.