Bring Us to This Hovel
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union BRING US TO THIS HOVEL BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Kent: Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest.... Lear: The art of our...
...Why should I want to leave my house...
...They played music all day and all night—the kind that thumps...
...Her monthly Social Security check is mailed directly to the bank where she has a checking and savings account, as are her fuel and tax bills...
...I can't think of the word...
...Once it was rich in copper and lumber, but all the mines are shut down now and the logging isn't what it used to be...
...They are a deep blue...
...Minnesota storms have cracked several windows and torn away some of the roofing as well as many of the gutters...
...she finally responds...
...Pooleremains trapped inher own cage...
...Even now her large eyes hold me...
...Poole...
...The other three apartments are empty, so it's not as if she gets any rent money...
...I found him one day chopping wood on his knees...
...You areatallone," shesaystome, extending a skeletal hand in greeting...
...When we bought it, it was just a ramshackle...
...Well, maybe shewon'tgotoLaurium just yet...
...The down payment took all their savings...
...Nothing gets repaired...
...People are running out of wood before the winter's half over...
...She didn't pay rent, she just squatted there with her children and her boyfriend...
...It is an empty bird cage...
...For food she depends on Meals-on-Wheels, which delivers two meals each weekday...
...What will become of her, tucked away among all those strangers in a citified building...
...Fisu...
...We walk up the groaning staircase and enter a shadowy room that smells of stale food and urine...
...Not like those tenants and their music...
...Yet none of Aten's clients seemed ready to move...
...Thanks to Aten's efforts, the house has both electricity and running water, though the water is not for drinking because the new well is shallow and sandy...
...surely portions of their rent could be paid in services—in home maintenance work, for instance, and in home care for Mrs...
...A Little Piece of the United States...
...The house she has lived in much of her life is falling down around her...
...Among persons 75 years old and older, some 70 per cent still reside in their own homes and nearly half the owners have incomes below the poverty line...
...Her husband died in 1978: "I miss him terrible...
...She must have been a beautiful young woman...
...Poole...
...Fisu...
...We shall not be moved...
...One sees a reverse symbiosis at work here: House and owner are simultaneously deteriorating, growing less and less capable of protecting each other...
...The Finns have a word for it— fisu—which means to "keep on going,'' or simply "guts...
...She ties the plastic jugs together with string, for easier carrying to and from the bus...
...They didn't have anything, you see, and we had this house, a little piece of the United States, and when I woke up I could step out on my own little lot...
...Michael Aten, a young man, has been living up there for six years, working for the local branch of an international care-giving organization called Friends of the Elderly...
...We lack the programs and institutions needed to help these determined homeowners age gracefully in place...
...I said to my husband, 'This house looks like an old pirate's nest, but to us it's a palace.' My friends, oh, how they made fun of it...
...Mayme Kemppainen is 76...
...A few months ago a woman on welfare moved into some of the rooms downstairs...
...All I cared for was...
...and because the logging bosses they worked for commonly paid them in cash, their current Social Security benefits keep them poor...
...We didn't have much money, but my husband was smart with his hands...
...It drove Thelma bats...
...Accidentally I kick something that is large and round, and it rolls across the floor...
...Come, bring us to this hovel...
...This is not an uncommon condition in America...
...Now Miss Kemppainen is confined with her dog and two cats to a single room, 10 feet by 12, where she does all her cooking, eating and sleeping...
...He wants to know how you are getting along in your house...
...In the language of gerontology, we prefer to "age in place," and at times the preference shades into obstinacy...
...She can name people like herself, folks getting on in years, who tried that peculiar way of life and didn't last six months...
...The city finally got them out of there, so now the place is empty again except for Thelma upstairs...
...A kerosene space-heater works some of the time...
...Mrs...
...The question seems to perplex Mrs...
...Our very walls take on new meaning...
...The bus won't stop for her any more because the walker slows her down and the driver is impatient...
...Nothing seems to matter any more...
...Even in Thelma Poole's case, where helpful measures seem obvious, none has been taken...
...Itisa two-story, wooden-frame "fourplex," only a mile south of downtown, which she and her husband bought in 1938 for $2,700...
...It'snot a pleasant place tospendtimein," shehad warned...
...That wasn't music at all—just crazy crazy sounds...
...My husband was a chauffeur and a gardener for a very rich family," she told me...
...There was a man I knew—he must have been in his 90s—who actually had a stroke and still wouldn't leave his place...
...There are leaks in the pipes and holes in the plaster...
...Thelma Poole is lying beneath blankets on a bed in the far corner, her white head resting on a dingy pillow...
...Julie says, "Thelma, this gentleman is writingabook...
...Such a plan does not appear farfetched, yet it would require initiatives and arrangements for which no agency, not even Friends of the Elderly, is prepared to take responsibility...
...There are quite a few Finns in Houghton County, Michigan, where the elderly make up about 10,000 of the 40,000 residents...
...Too many rules...
...Quicker than you'd think they packed up and went back to their little cabins...
...As in other parts of rural America, most of the county's aged (four of every five) own their dwellings, but these are mainly hovels that lend scant friendship against the tempest...
...People can invade your space and do anything they please...
...Oh, what music they made...
...She never goes out...
...The voice is Scandinavian and husky...
...The housing reflects the poverty...
...He knew what he wanted...
...People from Friends of the Elderly and other agencies look in on her from time to time, but beyond cheering her up and making her comfortable, there seems little they can do...
...Getting along...
...The doors to her kitchen and bedroom seem permanently shut, and the room we are in, the living room, is indeed the one where she does all her living...
...Rural people like their independence," he told me...
...It is a recourse I hint as we take leave...
...One of his responsibilities is to help people move out of their freezing backwoods shacks and into warm, subsidized "senior housing" available at modest rents in towns like Hancock and Laurium...
...she has no telephone...
...Wouldn't she receive better care, I ask, in a different kind of place...
...In tabulations made during the late 1970s, about one-quarter of such dwellings were found to have "persistent deficiencies" like leaks, unvented room heaters and lack of adequate plumbing or electrical wiring...
...Houghton County is part of the state's northern peninsula, separating Lake Michigan from Lake Superior...
...Her alternative—the main option society has granted her—is to pack up and surrender body and soul to a nursing home...
...When you' re very old, you're helpless...
...She remembers that the project does not allow pets other than caged birds...
...Part of it caved in after the blizzard of 1981, when she had felt too weary to climb up and shovel the heavy snow off the roof...
...But ever since her arthritis got so bad that she had to start using a walker, transportation has been a problem...
...Lear: The art of our necessities is strange...
...It has not been easy...
...Every winter Aten reminds Mayme Kemppainen that she doesn't have to endure the isolation, the temperamental kerosene stove, the sagging remnant of a house: She can move into the senior project at Laurium...
...The front door is unlocked...
...The house, meanwhile, is slowly reverting to its ramshackle state...
...It is a good house...
...Thelma Poole was born in Sweden in 1891 and has lived in the same house in Minneapolis formore than half her years...
...She has outlived all her close relatives...
...We've had 150 inches of snow this month alone...
...No, I think I die here...
...But later they kept quiet...
...My feet find trash with every step—twisted cans, plastic dishes, crushed paper bags...
...He couldn't even stand up, but he refused to switch to an apartment in town where all he'd have to do for heat is flick the thermostat...
...I used to have canaries...
...The facilities are notthebest,butin Houghton County neither are they the worst...
...It's going to be tough this year," he said...
...This lady stays forever in one room...
...Maybe she can tough it out just one more winter...
...I'll take you there...
...I came to Mrs...
...Poole no longer steps out...
...He had been cutting wood all day and delivering loads to those on his "Most-In-Need" list...
...All she has to do is say the word...
...I interviewed Aten last month, the day after Christmas...
...She does not eat on weekends...
...Surely tenants could be found for the vacant apartments...
...Too much noise, they said...
...Well, you see me here...
...Poole's house one win-tery afternoon at the suggestion of Julie Gamber, a young woman who works for the Minneapolis chapter of Friends of the Elderly...
...Poole is not much bother to the rest of us...
...But then comes the thaw, and with it second thoughts...
...It took longer for the other side to go—it just seemed to rot away...
...King Lear, Act III, Scene 2 I it is not surprising that younger Americans change their residences three times more frequently than do older Americans...
...I can't really blame him...
...He fixed our house just right...
...It is then that we may dig in for the duration, whatever the cost, and let no one persuade us to venture forth...
...In old age our bones demand more predictable consolations: the rose bush in the yard, the family photographs on the shelf, the dog at our feet...
...They wanted to know how in the world we could buy such an old ramshackle...
...For potable water Miss Kemppainen must travel 12 miles to a public restroom, where she can fill up her six half-gallon milk jugs...
...And each time she promises to do that, swearing this will be her very last winter in the woods...
...What will become of her dog and her cats if she moves to town...
...The old people there were never prosperous in any case, not even in their prime...
...In youth we turn outward, itching to spread our wings...
...It's something like 'togetherness' but that's not it...
...So Mrs...
...Deficiency rates in rural areas reached 35 per cent...
...Now, when she runs out of drinking water she must wait for Aten or a neighbor to come by in a car...
Vol. 69 • January 1986 • No. 1
