It's blighted, now.

East Fourteenth in East Oakland. Iron bars on windows. Trash snared in chain link fences. Liquor stores like fleas on a dog. Dogs chained in yards. Barking. Sirens. Helicopters.

The police station is windowless, concrete and bombproof. The Chevy assembly plant —once a giant that sprawled for blocks— is gone, now, replaced by a shopping mall that's going broke. On Ninetieth Avenue —broad and residential— a wino, crack-head, psychotic junky tries to rise off a dead lawn. He sits up. Sways. Falls back. Sits up. Sways. Falls back.

Once upon a time, a car turned down this same Ninetieth Avenue —a light blue, fifty-two Chevrolet sedan with automatic shift and four doors. It was Christmas and my father was driving— passing that same lawn where, one day, hopeless children would do spray and the crack-head junky would rise and fall.

Over the river and through the woods. My grandfather's house was there. Dormer windows in the roof, a creaking porch swing. Out back was an old barn, a windmill that didn't work, a three car garage that had once been a stable, and a coop for chickens who laid mysterious brown eggs.

We drove down Gramp's long driveway, the gravel crackling under the tires of the blue Chevy. Aunt Rita, my mother's sister, was at the top of the back stairs, overlooking the old yard.

"What took you so long?" she called, a happy glow on her face. Aunt Rita always started early.

"Come on up and have a drink!"

Cats were everywhere. Ten, twelve of them, sleeping on the corrugated iron roof that stretched from the chicken coop to the top of the stairs, forming a carport. Aunt Rita could never resist a homeless cat.

Out of the car. We climbed the long wooden stairs. Father hobbled behind us because he had a bad left foot —broken in a fall, or so my mother claimed. At the top of the stairs, he handed Aunt Rita a carton of Chesterfields, one with Santa on it, and gave her a hug.

When she opened the screen door, cats ran in and cats ran out.

Warm in the kitchen. Turkey in the oven. My grandfather, my mother's father —Christian Gottlieb Frank— sat at a round table in a corner next to the pantry, cracking walnuts in his old hands. He lit up with a smile, opened his arms and called to me.

"Georgie, Georgie!"

In 1890, Gramp left his home in Württemberg, Germany, so the "gott-damn Proosians" —or so he called them— couldn't draft him into their gott-damn army. He walked to Stuttgart, then went up the Rhine, crossed the great green ocean and ended here, in East Oakland, in the Fruitvale, when it was a land of orchards and truck farms. He brewed brandy and beer in the cellar, drowned unwanted kittens in the fish pond, shot his last deer when he was eighty-eight, and had his heart broken by another grandson who took money then abandoned him.

Now, as Gramp embraced me, Aunt Rita gave my limping father a drink.

"Bourbon and branch," she said. Just the way he liked it.

Listen. This is how my father came to be how he was: extreme high blood pressure resulting in radical surgery to cut nerves in his back. His business partners dumped him. Depression. Electroshock therapy. After two days of that, he'd taken the long step off the roof of the hospital but, instead of killing himself, he'd only succeeded in breaking his arms and that left foot of his.

The dining room. Powdered dates, nuts, pickles. Plates of pitted olives that I liked to stick on my fingers, like rings. Atop the upright piano stood an old kerosene lamp with orchids glazed in the glass. Beside it, a black, iron clock that looked like a Greek temple and bonged a dirge on the hour.

Now, Father sat on the couch, drinking his second drink, talking with my grandfather —real estate, insurance, the world situation. Now, turkey, stuffing, peas, cranberries, long tables, cousins, aunts, uncles. Father was jolly, like Santa, lifting his glass.

Afterwards, an especially tiny kitten —the runt of the litter, slated for drowning— slept on my lap for what seemed like hours.

Father said, "Would you like to keep that kitten, George?"

I nodded my head very hard —yes, yes— afraid to say the words for fear he might change his mind if I spoke.

Still, Aunt Rita brought him drinks.

When it was dark and time to go, we climbed back down the long stairs, towards that powder blue Chevy.

"Goodbye. Goodnight. Merry Christmas."

Father stumbled. He slipped on the loose gravel of the driveway and fell, face first behind the car. He managed to get up, using the bumper for leverage. He bled from the forehead but was so drunk he didn't know it. Aunt Rita laughed and gave him a handkerchief.

Mother was furious.

"Oh, Father! Goddamnit!"

We drove home from Grandfather's house —over the streets of East Oakland, through a blinding labyrinth of headlights and street lamps and traffic lights and cops. We weaved down side streets to dodge the roadblocks where they scooped up drunks. Downtown. We got lost.

We circled the Lake. Found our way. On Broadway, the window of Breuner's department store was filled with animated mannequins that depicted a Victorian scene at Christmas, warm and merry —Santa stuck in the chimney, the family dog barking, the kids hiding behind the sofa.

My sister and I rode in the back seat, the kitten sleeping again in my lap. My mother sat in front, not speaking. I saw the reflection of Father's swollen face in the rearview. His eyes were drunk and heavy. He held the bloody handkerchief against his forehead with one hand and drove with the other.

His lips moved silently, curses and insults. Hate.

Ten years old, I called him on it. "What are you saying, Daddy?"

He never answered.

Listen. The junkies rise and fall, the hopeless children huff spray and my grandfather's house stands blighted now. The ghosts of Christmas past rot inside like mannequins: Aunt Rita, who died young; Grandfather, who lived to a hundred; my mother; my father; perhaps even me. The old, musty junk of life surrounds us —the piano, the long tables, the black clock, the flowered kerosene lamp. A thousand years before, and in his youth, my grandfather and his new wife, my grandmother, carried that clock and lamp from a train station in the Fruitvale through the fields and orchards of East Oakland to their brand new home. Life was good and filled with hope, over the river and through the woods.

END