Memories of machismo and a midnight ride to Mabel’s

From The San Diego Union-Tribune

After months combating a deadly hepatitis A outbreak mostly centered downtown, city officials are increasingly focused on another aspect of homelessness: the growing number of people, largely out of sight, camping along the San Diego River.

The San Diego River Park Foundation counted 116 encampments along the river in October, nearly twice last year’s 61 and the most since its tracking began in 2009. San Diego Councilwoman Lorie Zapf has called attention to the river for months. “Right now, to be quite blunt,” she said, “it’s being used as a big toilet because there are so many encampments.”

Zapf and Councilman David Alvarez have proposed using the former Chargers training facility on Murphy Canyon Road as temporary housing for people living along the river. It makes sense.

The venue is near the river; it has showers, restrooms and ample field space for tents like those the city now allows at a site on 20th and B streets; and while the city is erecting three massive — and expensive — tents elsewhere in coming weeks that can accommodate 750 people, that won’t help all who need it.

A mayoral spokesman said no site is off the table but raised cost concerns about security and transportation and said the focus now is opening the three large tents in coming weeks. Yet none of those are reasons not to study simultaneous possible solutions now.

Winter cold and rain is coming. Why wait?

It was more than 100 degrees. I didn’t eat breakfast, slept poorly the night before, and nearly passed out at the Brewery Art Walk. A stranger came to my aid. She brought me water and held ice to the back of my neck.

She murmured encouraging words and stayed at my side until my husband arrived. I acutely regretted my lack of magic powers.

I wanted to be her fairy godmother and, with the sparkly ping of my magic wand, make all her dreams come true.

Alas, I have no magic other than good intentions and, of course, that other magic power: money. It would’ve been tacky to dig a crumpled $10 bill and a handful of change out of my purse to give to my good Samaritan, wouldn’t it? But a $1,000 bill would’ve been nice. Do $1,000 bills even exist? Ah to be rich. We always feel that other people, wealthier than us or luckier or less encumbered by dependents, are in a much better position to be generous than we are. Take, for instance, the creep building the monstrous mansion behind my house. I’m sure he thinks he’s a hell of a guy, kinder and more generous than strictly necessary with his underlings, his lazy relatives and his church.

He originally designed his monster house with an eight-car garage to accommodate his snazzy vehicle collection, but he has since downsized the car park in deference to neighborhood complaints.

The master bedroom, however, will still be 1,200 square feet, and the house itself, 6,000 or 8,000 square feet, I can’t remember which (and does that include the pool house?).

He’s free to do as he wishes with his money and the land he bought, even if what he’s building looks like a mini-mall and has wiped out what used to be four lots of trees and deer and butterflies.

I assume he picked our modest neighborhood to construct his behemoth so he can look like a lord among serfs. And that too, is his right.

But now that his garage will fit just six cars, maybe he could sell the other two and use the money to fund an elementary school lunch program, or pay the annual salary for a school librarian in his new neighborhood. He could, if he wanted to. The mind boggles at what the rich could do, if they gave the least damn. I paged through a fashion magazine recently and was gobsmacked by the price of handbags. Actual people must pay those prices for a purse, or the purses wouldn’t exist. That means there are people who think those prices are reasonable.

Of course, it’s way easier to note the excesses of others and ignore our own.

For example, I was taken aback by my dinner bill the other night.

The tab was at the far finger-tip reach of my idea of the appropriate price for sake and sushi, but I don’t find myself or my dinner companions reprehensible. I may not return to that restaurant, but I won’t be advocating for it to be shuttered and the proprietor reprimanded.

I’m reminded of a joke: One guy says to another: “If you had two houses, would you give one to the poor?” The second guy responds: “Yes, definitely.” First fellow: “If you had two cars, would you give one to the poor?” “Sure.” Finally, the first guy asks, “If you had two shirts, would you give one to the poor?” The second guy scoffs, “No way, that’s ridiculous.” “But why?” Answer: “Because I have two shirts!” We think we are in the reasonable center, right? We have wiggle room in both directions, but we consider ourselves and our views to define the reasonable spot, where reasonable people stand.

Anyone who bathes more than me is a clean-freak, and anyone who bathes less than me is a slob. Anyone with less money than me needs help, and anyone with more money than me should provide that help.

I know that compared with many people on Earth, I am rich enough to make strangers’ dreams come true. And I’m hardly the first to sting with shame over my own comfort and unearned luck, my own two shirts. I like to imagine that I’d be infinitely more generous than I am, if only I had more to spare. I like to believe that after I bought myself a few absurd handbags at $100,000 a pop, or erected a grand garage for my fleet, I’d grant wishes at will. But I, too, am human. So what did I do for that sweet stranger who took care of me last week? Did I turn a pumpkin into a carriage and have her whisked off to the ball of her choice?

Not even metaphorically. I just thanked her, went home and wrote this op-ed.

Since moving to Rome several years ago, I’ve always heard stories about Rome’s famous brothel, Peggy’s.

Many locals have heard of the famous house of ill repute run by a lady called Peggy Snead.

But there was another similar establishment in Rome called “Mabel’s.”

I’m always hearing little anecdotes from Rome residents who are old enough to remember when Peggy’s was up and running and some even hint at being intimately familiar with the place. Of course many won’t admit publicly that they partook of its services and the...charms...of the ladies who worked there.

But I’ve never really heard anything about Mabel’s. I guess it’s always been overshadowed by its more famous counterpart. Cave Spring native and local historian Margaret Wright Hollings wrote in a 2014 editorial to the Rome News-Tribune:

“While a band of angry wives helped put Mabel (our second-best-known madam) out of business, by parking across the street from her house to take down her visitors’ car tag numbers, nothing of the sort ever happened to Peggy.”

So it seems Mabel’s may not have enjoyed the same popularity Peggy’s did. But I’m sure it has its fair share of stories.

Well I got a little story for y’all about a young man whose experience with Mabel’s is one he hasn’t forgotten for many, many years.

In around 1966 or 1967 my friend Terry was about 16 or 17 years old and was living in Cedartown.

He said that on one occasion, he and four other teenagers (all male) were hanging around and talking about their bravery and life experiences (no doubt embellishing a bit).

“One conversation led to another and the subject of women came up,” Terry says. “Oh, we was big talkers, we were. It was decided that we would pay a visit (to Mabel’s) in Rome.”

One of the older boys — who Terry won’t name — had been told of the general location of Mabel’s, that it was on 14th Street in Rome. He was told that it had a chain-link fence around it and that it was customary for patrons to enter the driveway on the right side of the house and drive around back to park.

“Well we checked our available cash and it seemed that it should be adequate for a short visit,” Terry said. “It seemed as though almost everyone knew about the place except me. The 18-mile trip to Rome seemed to take only minutes as I was in the back seat ribbing and joking with two of my best friends. Oh we were Big Dogs that night, maybe even had a beer each.”

So Terry and his friends arrived at their destination a little while later and sure enough it was fenced in.

They drove around back. He said there were all excited and grinning and talking about what they were gonna do.

His friend parked his car next to several cars that were already in the yard.

“We sat there a few minutes to collect our nerve, watching others go in and out the back door of the house,” Terry recalls. “That night we were walking 10 feet tall.”

The boys sat in the car for a while longer trying to decide who’d go in first. One friend said “Terry, you go.” “I ain’t going in first,” Terry said. “You go.” “Not me,” said another. “Me either,” someone else shot back. Well this went on for about 30 minutes and do you know not one of those boys could work up the nerve to even get out of the car?

They had driven all that way and talked themselves up just to back down when it finally came down to it.

“That night our egos and bragging fell by the wayside,” Terry said. “We fired the old Ford up and headed back to Cedartown. We were chickens. Wimps we were. On the return, we were sinking a little lower in the seats than we had been on the way there. It was kind of quiet on the ride back home.”

Terry laughs about it now and says that’s his closest encounter with the world’s oldest profession.

“As I look back now that I’m an old man, I kind of wish at least one of us had opened a car door and headed for the back door of the house,” he reflects. “No doubt in my mind that the rest of us would have followed.” SEVERO AVILA