Category: Blog

By Kendah Ballout

The house next door to my childhood home had a garden. A smallish one, but the man grew grapes and I used to spy the tendrils of vines wind their way around the trellis whenever I trespassed into their yard. He and his wife were retired. Everybody on the street called him “Frenchy” because his last name was LeClair.

            They had a big family, lots of adult children and grandchildren. I’d sit on our back porch and watch them all come over. They’d sit outside and smoke cigarettes, the odor and their laughter rolling in heavy waves into our yard.

Every Friday, they’d make pizza. Now and then, I’d be invited over by a granddaughter and I’d watch the women pound the dough with their flour-covered fists, while others cut the freshly picked vegetables. Thick slices of zucchini and eggplant sprinkled with salt lay on damp paper towels by the sink. Tomatoes passed through the grinder, exiting as sauce.

            My eyes were two moons, reflecting the bright, colorful display through clouds of flour. They’d call me to the sink to see all their garden’s bounty. That was the first time that I ever held fresh basil leaves in my hands. I lifted them to my nose and the scent wrapped itself all around my nostrils, giving my nose a hug.

            There were so many other firsts for me in that small rancher even though I wasn’t invited to pizza night that often. The first time I saw Jaws was in their living room, seated on the floor with all the grandchildren while the suspenseful music played and people screamed. The first time I ever ate mushrooms was at their table. I devoured pizza slices with the topping, and eventually, they sent me home with a bowl of the sautéed leftovers.

Over slurps of garlicky fungi, I asked my parents why they’d never given me mushrooms before. They looked at me bewildered, unsure of the answer. My mother washed the bowl and I returned it later that night, the scent of olive oil smacking me in the face as my neighbors opened their door.

Almost thirty years later, I began my own backyard garden. The first two years, I had an extensive patchwork of pots, overplanting some very large ones with four tomato plants each. I had no idea just how much fruit a single plant could produce. Whenever we went outside, I’d watch my then four-year-old daughter pick the small Sungold tomatoes and pop them in her mouth. I’d remind her to rinse them in the outdoor sink, where she’d run with handfuls of the orangey orbs.

In the same pots as the tomatoes, I placed basil plants. This one with lemon basil, that one with Thai. Before the yellow flowers became ripe fruit, I’d bend to smell the tomato plants and get a whiff of the basil as well. Though I was steps from my patio, I was also back in that flour-filled kitchen, and the packed table, and their living room floor, where even when the shark comes up as Brody’s head is turned, I remain calm, smelling the lingering basil oil on my fingertips.

I taught my daughter to pluck the tender leaves and lift them to her nose, inhaling the herbaceous aroma. We hold out the bottom of our t-shirts to create a pouch where we collect plucked tomatoes and herbs when we forget to bring a bowl or basket outside.

Last summer, a local farmer to plowed a bit of earth in our backyard, and my mother bought forty-four tomato plants for me to painstakingly press into the ground. I bought myself two pairs of overalls, hoping to feel the part as our basil variety increased to six, and I fought all season to nip the flowers from the heads of the stalks so that they wouldn’t go to seed.  

As I pruned, I’d watch my daughter drive around the perimeter of the garden in her pink electric car. She’d lift the large straw sunhat from covering her eyes and resituate her teddy bear in the passenger seat. And I hoped, one day long from now, when she has the chance to touch basil again, she won’t be too shy to hold the leaf to her nose. I pray she’ll remember these summer days in her own yard, picking Sungolds and running to the outdoor sink.

It is my pleasure to introduce the 20th installment of mojo online. This issue marks the return of our online journal after a 4 year haitus since the Covid-19 pandemic.

This issue signifies a kind of rebirth, which I believe is reflected in the works we’ve selected. Our editorial team took their time to carefully curate each of the final submissions, combing through hundreds of entries to arrive at a diverse collection of stories that supports

On April 5^th, 1968, the day following the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., three black undergraduates purposely knocked me out of their way as they came through a library door at the University of Chicago. Too astounded to respond, I thought: “Didn’t they know how sickened I had been by the killing? Why knock me out of the way?  Considering this incident later, I recognized that victims of racism tended at times to act irrationally.  I had seen this trait within my own family, in holocaust survivors who found trouble accepting the existence of “Good Germans.”

Twice a year, in spring and in autumn, schools of Coho, or Silver, salmon migrated through Chicago’s harbors. At those times, I would take a study break, grab my tackle, run to my car, and head to Jackson Park near 63^rd Street, where a long stone jetty with a warning light for mariners at its end, curved northwards into Lake Michigan.

            On one beautiful afternoon, a few days after the incident at the library, I walked to the end of that jetty, right next to the signal light marking the harbor entrance, and tossed out my Little Cleo lure. I cast into the lake for the next four hours without getting a strike. Late in the day, my arms and shoulders aching, I decided to cast once more and quit for the day. To my surprise and glee, I hooked a two-pound salmon, but as I struggled to lead it into my net, I heard behind me what sounded like gunfire. I glanced toward shore stunned. Flames and smoke erupted from buildings on 63^rd Street while, along South Shore Drive, a long line of armored personnel carriers belonging to the Illinois National Guard inched

northward.  Sixty-Third Street was the center of the Woodlawn district, a desperately poor and crime-ridden black ghetto separating the University of Chicago in Hyde Park from the relatively affluent and racially mixed South Shore. Mayor Daley had called in the National Guard and, later, regular units of the 101^st Airborne, to suppress the rioting arising from King’s assassination.

            Dozens of people, mostly men but a few women too, stood rooted in place on the jetty and watched their all-black neighborhood burning down while a seemingly all-white Illinois National Guard invaded it with heavy military equipment. I had seen the guardsmen bivouacked in a park near my apartment the day before.

            Looking down the jetty, I suddenly realized I was the only white among all the people there. I stood at the tip of the jetty, faced with a long walk back to shore. This recognition did not immediately, however, translate into fear. I lived in South Shore in the first integrated apartment building in Chicago, felt comfortable among blacks, and had developed friendly relations with many. Still, I didn’t know any of the people on that jetty and, while I can’t say I became frightened, an inkling of concern began to course through my consciousness. At that point, one of the black fishermen, a man I guessed was in his late forties or early fifties spoke to me:

“You know,” he said, “if more people went fishing there’d be a lot less                           trouble in the world!”

I laughed, and agreed with him, certain he was correct.

            He spoke again:

            “That’s a nice salmon you have there!  Are you done fishing for the day?”

            “Yes, I am.”

“Then I’m going to walk out to the parking lot with you.”

We walked down the jetty, passed the dozens of people standing there watching the violence unfold on shore. Everyone was courteous to me. A number of fishermen in a friendly manner admired the salmon I had hanging from a stringer. The momentary feeling of concern I had experienced when I first heard and saw the clash on shore evaporated.  But when we reached the parking lot, a sudden realization hit me that I could be in grave danger.

            Dozens of black teenagers in gang outfits sat on cars watching the destruction of their neighborhood. It seemed to me I was the only white around for a thousand miles. At that time, ferocious teenaged gangs from Woodlawn, the Blackstone Rangers being the most infamous, terrorized both Hyde Park and South Shore. Murders, assaults, robberies, and rapes abounded. The gangs often ordered twelve-year-olds to commit murders for them; twelve-year-olds couldn’t be prosecuted as adults.  I was aware of this fact as I glanced around the parking lot. The teenagers eyed us. What they saw were two fishermen with their gear walking side-by-side, one black and one white, as if they were old friends.

            When we reached my car, I thanked my companion, but he just waved me off as if what he had done was nothing special, just one fisherman helping another, and then he walked off to his own car.

            It was not until I was in my kitchen, a few minutes later, putting that salmon in the oven that the full realization of what that man had done for me hit home. He may well have saved my life.  I hadn’t thought quickly enough even to ask his name, a lapse I’ve regretted ever since.