Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do Read Online Free PDF Page B

to seal the deal?”
    “I'll need to move the papers once I get settled,” I said. “Move them?”
    The idea made him nervous. Archivists like to keep things locked up so they can't wander off.
    “I'll get Ms. Davis's permission.”
    He rewarded me with a smile. “Of course, of course. You can't very well work in the basement, can you?”
    I shook his hand again, promising to let him know as soon as I finalized my living arrangements. We had settled the big questions. The rest of the details could wait until later. It was time for me to find a place to live.

5
    I WAS LOOKING FOR A PLACE NEAR the campus so I could walk to meetings. I had rented a car, but I like to walk. My own car had been traded away for dope a year ago, and I haven't had the money to buy another one. At first, it was horrible. I bitched and moaned every time I had to leave the house and walk the three blocks to the mass transit stop. I bummed rides and tried to borrow my friends' cars until they made me stop asking.
    After a while, I had no choice, so I resigned myself to it, complaining mightily all the while. Then I started seeing the same people at the station every day and started speaking to them. Before I knew it, I was enjoying the chitchat we'd exchange until the train arrived.
    After a few more weeks, I even started enjoying the walk. I'd take the long way instead of the shortcut, and, pretty soon, I even started recognizing my neighbors. After I got out ofrehab, they all welcomed me back like I'd been away to war. The little old ladies around the corner actually baked me a pie and brought it over covered with a clean white dish towel like they were going to the county fair. That's the kind of community I like—a bigcity neighborhood with a small-town sensibility—and it's just like the neighborhood that surrounds this campus.
    A few years ago, the idea of taking an apartment around here by choice would have been problematic at best and foolhardy at worst. The Morehouse campus, like a lot of black colleges, was then a small oasis in the midst of an area plagued with crime, drugs, homelessness, and unemployment. I never lived in this neighborhood during my five years in Atlanta, but the stories that made the news about it did not inspire confidence.
    But then things started to turn around. The crime went down, and the spirit went up. The mall reopened, and restaurants were always full of paying customers. Trash on the street disappeared, and community gardens dotted the landscape. Kids walked home from school in safety, and women moved around at night without looking over their shoulders.
    Ebony and Jet had both done stories, and the Washington Post hailed the area as a model for African American urban communities. I remember being struck by how vague the articles all were when it came to answering the obvious questions: How did this happen? What was the catalyst for this kind of dramatic change?
    More police? The city says no change in routine patrols. Better sanitary services? City trucks come every week, just like always, but nothing extra. None of the official explanations fit here. It was a mystery and one that had intrigued me since I first heard about the transformation. If somebody has figured out a way to get a neighborhood full of black folks to live together like they have some sense, I was more than a little interested in how they did it.
    There was no denying the neighborhood had undergone a startling transformation. Gone were the boardedup crack houses and overgrown vacant lots. The streets were clean of litter, homes and lawns were uniformly well tended, and garden plots, lying fallow until next month's spring planting cycle begins, were fenced off and identified with signs proclaiming their membership in the West End Growers Association. It really did have the feel of a small town, even though you could look over your shoulder and see the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta less than ten minutes away.
    I left the campus with no