Stand and Deliver

There are two worlds in Dallas, Texas. Usually they run North to South, the frontier being the Trinity River that ravaged and then shaped the city at the onset of the 20th Century. The modern city has been stitched together by the thread of longitude and latitude, the Seamstress History. Today the land north of the river sparkles in the sun. This is the solid, touchable limb of the American dream. The modern day Miracle Mile. 

South of the river is a township, annexed by its north-lying big sister. This is a land that on first glance has been left in the 1950's, the only pieces of modernity being Shell stations and medium size high rises, perhaps a McDonald's that was planted in that organization's quest at world domination. This land has also been left behind not only chronologically, but also economically. There are not glittering glass buildings that claw at the sky, no sparkling European imports. Here in this land there are only modest bungalows built using money from a GI Bill that now house those coming from a land even more foreign in search of that which has brought many before them; prosperity and hope. 

I teach in this foreign land south of where I live. This is the true face of the American Promise, not the one dipped in gold but rather the promise that calls to the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,". In the span of two generations this part of the city, that still bears the name of the town it once was, has seen first whites, then blacks and now immigrants from Mexico teeming in its streets. 

Oak Cliff is a mix of all these things. My children (and the world around them) the products of the winds of change. They are part Mexico, part America, a healthy dose of poverty and not enough hope to fill a teaspoon, but they are mine. This is the first in a series of entries to come weekly about some of these children in particular and all of them. Faces that draw my complaints, my frustration and most of all (though they know it not) my care.