On our last night living in Buckeye, we throw a party in the Possibilitarian Garden. The occasion? To thank all our temporary neighbors for welcoming us into their lives, at least for a short time, and sharing their stories with us.
When Julia, Seth and I walk into Sue’s Wigs and Fashions, the elderly Korean owner -- the store’s namesake -- gives us a polite greeting.
But she doesn’t want to talk to us.
“You come back later and talk to my daughter,” she tells us, covering her mouth with one hand. “She’ll tell you about the store.”
In the front window of Larry Freeman’s house is a handwritten sign, fixed to the glass with dozens of pieces of yellowing tape.
“Smile, God loves you,” it says, in large block letters.
His wife made it, Larry tells me, before she died in 2003. “I’ll never take it down,” he says. “It’ll go with this house.”
A man with white hair and a matching mustache is the only person sitting in Calvary Evangelical United Brethren Church, a grand but faded red-brick building at Shaker Boulevard and Woodhill Avenue.
He doesn’t hear me and Seth enter, so we tap him on the shoulder and introduce ourselves. He smiles and tells us his name is Mr. Primm. He’s a block club leader from a nearby street in the Woodland Hills neighborhood - Buckeye’s immediate neighbor.
Reggie is snapping photos of the Possibilitarian Garden with a couple of friends when Seth, Julia and I step outside on a cool Tuesday morning.
“I’m sending pictures to Fox 8 News,” he says, with his familiar grin. “They’re always showing people’s gardens.”
At the corner of Buckeye and East 117th, Ego Adigwe runs Som Di Mma Elegance, a beautiful shop filled from floor to ceiling with clothing, jewelry and carvings from her home country of Nigeria, as well as from Senegal, Mali and India.
She was kind enough to take a few minutes to share a little about her background with us ... and to demonstrate how she crafts hats right from her storefront.