Baltimore Community Fellowships
Baltimore Community FellowshipsApplication Guidelines | Fellows & Grantees | Fellows Profiles
Photo: Bruce Weller for the Open Society Foundations
|
Baltimore, Maryland
2009
When Herbert Johnson was a boy growing up in Cleveland, his grandmother often would "cure" his occasional headaches with an unusual remedy. She would part his hair into even sections and sprinkle salt on his scalp. Then, she would tie brown paper to the ends of his hair.
"She said the salt ran the pain from the headache up into the paper. And then she'd take the paper and throw it away and burn it up," says Johnson, now 73. "I don't know if she really believed it worked or if she knew that I would believe it and feel better."
Looking back now, Johnson is warmed by the memory of his grandmother's love. He's also intrigued by the way she used food—salt—to solve a problem.
Today, living in Catholic Charities Senior Housing at Basilica Place, Johnson has learned that many peers have similar stories. So as part of his fellowship, the retired social worker and business owner will tape-record the oral stories of older adults. Each story will be accompanied by a recipe. Johnson hopes a local historical society will preserve the collection.
The project, "No Easy Ridin' Here: Stories and Recipes of Survival," initially will focus on the approximately 250 residents at Basilica Place, but Johnson hopes to expand it to other senior housing buildings.
"Way back when there was no TV and no radio, we would all get together and dance and tell stories and laugh," Johnson says. "Today, when I tell some of those stories to my grandchildren, they laugh and feel good. This is what I'm trying to do, collect stories that have some practical application and that make you feel good."
He tells of a grandmother upset with her granddaughter for bucking family beliefs by converting to Islam. "Well, the grandmother liked sweet potato pie and so did the granddaughter. So the granddaughter said, I can make a bean pie that would taste just as good, " Johnson says. "That was a bridge that brought about some understanding between the grandmother and granddaughter."
Another story, meant to help those weathering the recession, describes a group of fun-loving people who would get together, sell fried fish and chicken at a party and pool the proceeds to pay the rent of someone in need. "That was a combination of food and surviving," Johnson says.
The goal is for these collected stories to educate and entertain not just those who hear them now, but future generations too. "I heard one time that when an old person dies, it's like a museum burning down," Johnson says. "I'm really trying to capture that history before it's gone. And maybe the young people might hear the stories and, after a while, maybe they might pass them on."
