Abstract
In this 2025 interview, Joyce Fields-Ray discusses her life growing up in the Union-Miles neighborhood. She describes frequently-visited businesses, such as restaurants, ice cream parlors, and roller skating rinks. She recounts her garden plot at the Miles Elementary School garden, early experiences of racism, and other memories from along Miles Avenue. At the end of the interview, she summarizes what has changed and stayed the same throughout the neighborhood.
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Interviewee
Fields-Ray, Joyce (interviewee)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
3-14-2025
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
54 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Joyce Fields-Ray interview, 14 March 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483021.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1366
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:00] So we’re recording now, and I’m going to read my script I read at the beginning of these interviews, which is today is March 14th, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia, and I’m here at NuPoint Community Development Corporation in Cleveland, Ohio. Interviewing Ms. Fields for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed today.
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:00:20] Thank you.
Ava Carubia [00:00:21] Can you please state your name and the year you were born?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:00:25] Joyce Fields, 1962.
Ava Carubia [00:00:27] Okay, great. And then can you also answer where you were born in particular?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:00:31] I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, at Forest City Hospital.
Ava Carubia [00:00:36] And I just want to go right from there. Can you talk about your early life? What part of Cleveland did you first grow up in?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:00:44] Going back as far as I could remember, we lived like 126 and St. Clair briefly, and then we went to 40th and Woodland in the Long,Longwood Projects. We stayed there briefly. And my father bought a house on 108th and Miles in 1969. That’s where I grew up. I was like. I think I was like seven. So I grew up in the Miles area.
Ava Carubia [00:01:21] And what do you remember from that area? You were very young.
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:01:27] What do I remember? I remember going to Miles Elementary School. I didn’t change schools a lot because we grew there, grew up over there. And now my sister has the house on 108th and Miles. So I went to Miles Elementary. I went to A.B. Hart Junior High, which is Albert Bushnell Hart. And then I went to South High, where I graduated in 1980. I remember when we moved on 108th, it wasn’t. It was still integrated. And I don’t remember. I want to say it was the Ledgers, the Woods. What’s their last name? The Millers. Ms. Oleatha Wilson, who was real, real active in the community. I remember she started the street club on 108th. But we were like maybe the fifth. I want to say maybe the fifth. Woods, Walters. No, Woods Ledgers. The Millers. Who else was over there? We were either the fourth or fifth Black family on that street at that time. I remember across the street from us we had neighbors and their name was Georgia Sue. And they had this big black poodle, one of the large ones. And we would go over there and they would play games with us and sit out on the porch and they sold candy. She would bake. We was, you know, the kids on the street, you know, we would go over there and buy potato chips, cookies, Doritos, maybe something to drink. And they stayed over there a long time. They was an elderly couple. I remember being at the 4H Club, going to the YMCA, it was called then, on 113th and Miles. I learned to swim there. We did a lot of activities up at the Y at that time, growing up. And I still go to the Y. Well, I call it the Y still, Earle B. Turner Center. I still go up there now. And not even my grandkids go up there. Going to school, walking from 108 to 119th to Miles Elementary. I remember it was a store. It used to be Star Muffler on 113th and Miles across from the Y. You get to 114th. And if you walking up Miles, Searcy’s store was on 114th and across the street from it, which is now a hair store. It was Horace’s. That was his nickname. That’s what we called him. And in Horace’s store, he sold ice cream. You could tell, like, probably was like an ice cream parlor or something. He sold ice cream as well as, you know, the store itself. And they were. It was Black-owned then. And he held, Horace held that store for a long time. Him and his sister would be in the store. And I remember my favorites and still today is like Reese Cup, Laura Doom cookies, and sunflower seeds. Going past there. It was a pool, a pool room right next to the Horace’s Store, which is now owned by the Mystic Knights Motorcycle Club. We would go. As I got older, probably in junior high, maybe they started having dances there in The Camelot on Sundays. It might have been from like 6 to 10 or something like that, 6 to 9 or something. And it would always be a group of us that, you know, went together because my parents didn’t allow me to go, you know, if it was just me and a friend, you know, we. We were friends, like with the neigh-, you know, the neighborhood. Everybody knew each other. Well, a lot of people knew each other. It was a lady’s house on 104th. She was closer to the Harvard Inn. And I don’t remember her name, but she. We would go to her house for the 4H club. And she would tell us it would be the girls, though. And she would tell us, don’t run because my house is old and it’ll fall down. And we really believed her in saying that her house would fall down if we ran in her house. But I remember doing that too, learning how to crochet. Hmm. I still try to crochet a little bit sometimes now, but I’m more into, like, making the knot blankets, now. And I’ve made one for my children, my grandchildren, my siblings, close friends. And I just give them away. Go get it and make them and give them away. Walking. Still walking up Miles. Now I’m at 116th and Miles. And you had right on the corner across from the gas station, it used to be a donut shop and they would make fresh doughnuts. And we would go in there in the mornings before school and get us some donuts and finish walking on up to school, you know, up the street to the school. Mr. Harris. Is that his name? Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris. I wrote it down. I wrote Mr. Lewis. Mr. Lewis was his name. Lewis. He lived on Elmarge and he opened Ice Cream Palace. Is now, now right there since that senior citizen building right across from the school. And we would go in there and I don’t know remember quite how much his hamburgers or cheeseburgers, but they was good. And he saw ice cream as well and you know, candies and stuff. And it might have been 50 cent or for cheeseburger or something like that. That became a habit, getting out of school, going there too, as a treat.
Ava Carubia [00:08:26] And would you go after school? Like, I guess the other schools were kind of further away, but just after elementary school. Are these memories from elementary school?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:08:36] These are elementary. Yeah. Elementary memories, yeah. He. He held the Ice Cream Palace for a while. I’m not sure. I can’t remember when it closed, but he had. He like, had his own ice cream truck too, you know, as well, he wouldn’t come down the street with the ice cream truck, but I guess he would go buy it in the, you know, big containers and, and whatnot. And one of his great nieces went to school with me. They also grew up on 108. That family did. The Sunken Garden. It was a sunken garden in the front of Miles Elementary School. I think they tried to put it back there when they rebuilt it, but I don’t think it’s not the same. You know, they had like a little hill and I don’t know why they called it the sunken garden, but that’s what they. They called it. I had a garden over at the garden right there, like 120th, I guess I had a garden. I remember I would go up there and till in my garden with my little basket on the front of my bike. And I would be proud coming down Miles with the vegetables in my garden, you know, in my bike to take home. And I did that. We stayed busy back then. You know, it was. It was a lot to do in the. In right on Miles for us kids. And then you come up to 131st, you got Poochie’s store across the street from Miles Elementary. It’s been there for years as well. And I’m going up, Miles getting. I’m still maybe in elementary. It used to be a Woolworths right here where they said it was. Where the clinic is now on up right past 131st. They said that was Woolworths. I thought it was a little closer. I think it was a little closer than that. We’re still in that same block. And you know, they sold lunches and we would go in there and buy little fake fingernails and you know, stuff that little girls want to do. Hurry up with my chores at home on a Saturday and we walk up and go to Woolworths. And then as I got older, it’s been a lot of places there. But I remember it was the Cotton Club at one time and we used to go in there. Now I’m a young adult. We was partying in there. I was always wondering what this car place was. It’s about 135th and Miles. And then talking to some of my friends today, they said that it was a Chrysler and they sold cars. It was a lot of businesses on Miles, you know, back then. And it was, it was a, it was a car place. The building is there all bricked up. But they still got like a sign on that wall to let you know that that was a. They sold cars and they said it was a Chrysler. They sold Chryslers there. And across the street from there was John Barnes, or am I up too far? There was John Barnes. He was a councilman. His office was across the street. And they would do like different little events in there. You know, I remember going up there like they were modeling or something like that up there. He was real, he was real popular in the neighborhood. And I remember Oleatha Wilson, that’s. The park is named after her on 108th . And really, my sister is the street club president down there and you know, she runs stuff across me and she was asking me like, well, you know, give her ideas like what the park name should be when it was redone. Because it used to just be a ball field, a big field with dirt and grass and. And I remember climbing up in the, in the trees. They had. We climbed everything. But it had like crab apple trees in there. We would get. I would take the salt shaker out the house and go sit up in the tree and eat crab apples with my friends. And you know, we played kickball in the ball field. Baseball, chased each other. We fought, we fought down there. Then we became friends again because that’s what kids did back then. It wasn’t all these guns and knives and stuff, but we played with each other and the naming of the park, you know, when my sister asked me, I decided something like when we came up with the idea probably as a street club, you know, But I had put it out there like Oleatha Wilson, name it after Ms. Wilson. Cause Ms. Wilson was one of them neighbors. She was gonna tell on you, she was gonna make sure the street club went on. I mean, our parents were active and so I just thought like she was still living, you know. And we got the name Oleatha Wilson. And she had met, she was self proclaimed our godmother for whatever reason. Cause her and my mother was good friends. And when my mother passed, she said, your mother asked me to tell watch out for y’all. And we was grown, like she our godmother. It was a little joke between us. And let me see, I told you about that. It’s a place right here. Which way? I’m on 131st, going back this way, about 128th and Miles. It’s a big white old church and it’s got the gates across and now it’s empty. And I remember my father, he would do security work up there when the entertainers would come into the city. And like well I had one to say, but like the Blues BB King or the Staples Singers or Johnny Taylor, you know, he would bring home pictures, autographs signed, you know, to him from them. And he’d security, you know, a lot of events up there as well as other places. Hmm. Okay. I’m looking at Miles coming up. Miles starting 93rd. It was the Miles Park Library down there. And we would go to the library often, you know, down there you had to walk up all them stairs to get to the library. But it was something that we did, you know, we read, we did like if the neighborhood was open for something. We did, we swam, we skate, skated, the 4H. The. I don’t ever think I was a Girl Scout. Maybe. I don’t remember. Walk into the library down on 93rd. It used to be a. They had built a Church’s Chicken on 93rd and Miles. And I believe I was in junior high and I wanted a job so bad they wouldn’t hire me because my parents income was so much. I could never get a summer job. And all my friends had summer jobs and I couldn’t get one because of the income, you know. It was a Red Barn on 95th, about 96 or 97th and Miles. That was there early on and, and what’s there now? It might be a couple of houses there. Now we got Calvary. We used to ride our bikes through Calvary Cemetery. Get lost because it’s so big. On 102nd it was right before the railroad tracks. It was a Clark Gas Station. And I remember walking down there, my father would send me down there to buy cigarettes and they was like 50 cent a pack. He smoked Kools. And it was a bar down there. I don’t remember the name of the bar but that was right after the tracks. And then you had Eddie, Eddie’s towing right there across from the high rise. I said Star Muffler on 113. That was run by Eddie’s. Was ran by. I think their family was like on 111th or 112th. It was a lot of family-owned things in the neighborhood. Okay, let me look at my notes.
Ava Carubia [00:17:59] Well, I also have some questions about things you said. You said that your family was like the fourth or fifth Black family on the street. How did that feel to you when you were growing up?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:18:10] It didn’t matter. All of us played and it wasn’t, it wasn’t a Black and white thing for us. You know, we was kids, we played. But it seemed like, well, it don’t seem like, it was like they started moving away, you know, it was more. Started to be more Blacks moving in. But this one lady on the top of 108th street, she stayed there the longest. Her name was, besides Sue and George, I think she, she might have been there after they passed. But her name was Ms. Gavener and she was the meanest lady. She was. She didn’t even walk on her grass. Don’t drop orange peeling, nothing. She watched us like when we came down, you know, coming from school, going to school, going wherever. She was like a hawk. She watched us. But we didn’t have any like racial tension then. I didn’t feel racial tension until I was in junior high. And that’s going to A.B. Hart down Broadway. And it’s down in the side street off of Worley. And it was bad. They used to chase us from down there, you know. And they started sending the CTS bus down to the end of the fence so we could get on the bus there instead of walking back up to Broadway. Because you know, we were young. I think I was 12 in the seventh grade. And I remember coming out of school, me and one of my friends, Birdie was her nickname. And we must have had a detention or something. And it was a seventh grader boy. He was a big boy, though, for to be in the seventh grade. And we watched him, like, get kicked in his mouth. Jumped. Kicked in his mouth. And that man’s tennis shoe went as high as the, the wires on the telephone pole. And we ran. We ran all the way up to the post office, the Newburgh post office. And then it was like we not standing for no more detentions, you know, I mean, it was. It was. It was bad.
Ava Carubia [00:20:25] What would you say the racial demographics were at the school during that time?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:20:34] It was way more them than it was of us. And I don’t mean to say it like that. Them and us, but it was at that time I had. Let me see, did I have any. I don’t even know if. Can’t remember if I had Black teachers there, but I remember I went. I went. I went there and really, they couldn’t give me free rent to live down there. Now, that’s. That’s how it much is. It, like, scarred me as a kid. You know, I hear people living down there and it’s like, I wouldn’t. You can’t give me free rent to live down there. But by the time we got to South, it had. It had mellowed out. You know, we had learned. I guess I like to get along because we had been around each other, you know, so long that we learned how to get along with each other. But you still had, like, the tension at times. But it was not like at A.B. Hart in school. In school, in the building. I want to say we were okay. But when we came out the building, it was like they didn’t want us there. And by us being kids, I mean, we thought they were so much older because they had facial hair and mustaches and beards. And it just looked like it was grown people. But I know today we probably weren’t as old as we thought they were, but it was. It was. It was. It was bad when they would send that bus down there, you know, And I could still picture that. And I could ride past A.B Hart, the new A.B Hart, and I could still, like, picture it in my mind with a ball. It was. It was a ball diamond or whatever. And we would have to walk from the school down the sidewalk. And a lot of fights broke out between the school door and the bus, you know. And that’s to say that nobody was angels, you know, we weren’t angels. They weren’t angels, you know, we were. We were. I don’t know what it was, but it was tension. Basically, when we got out of school, that’s where it showed. In the building, you know, it was like we could sit in the classroom together. But when we got out of school, and I don’t even think that people went to school with us, you know, I don’t. I can’t remember any of them going to school. And it was. It was a store and a donut shop down there too. It’s closed now, but they had started selling flowers. Plants. That’s all he sell was plant. He closed the store and started selling plants because we would get off the 19 bus and go in there by the bus load before we went to school to get our candy and, you know, stuff. And he sold donuts as well. That was that. And South, I don’t know why they closed it because it was a new school, you know, but we had to take swimming. I have always had a love for water, so I didn’t mind that. Except in the winter months, it was too cold to begin in the water. But South High, you know, I don’t regret going to those schools because, like, part of our street went to A.B. Hart, and then the other half, like up near Harvard, they went to Nathan Hale and Adams, and we went to A.B Hart and South. I don’t know why it happened like that. And my last year of school, that’s when the buses started, you know, and they started busing the kids. So we had a chance to, like, pick a high school we wanted to go to. So I could have went to Kennedy, Adams, or South. I. I was already at South, you know, so why would I switch my school now? And I could tell somebody I went to South today, and they’d be like, who goes to South? Like. Cause it wasn’t a lot of us until after the busing, you know, when they was bringing them from across town, you know, but they say, who goes the South? You know, and it’s a joke.
Ava Carubia [00:24:48] Do you know what people’s opinions were of busing?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:24:53] Do I know what their opinions were? I don’t think so, because it was so new. But I don’t. I don’t. I didn’t like when my children had to go from here all the way to Biddulph to go to school. I didn’t. I didn’t like that when they could just walk out their house and walk to school. So I think busing has done a lot of negative and good for our neighborhoods. And I have three children, and I don’t think busing was the answer. You know, they said, so everybody could get the same education. But I don’t. I don’t. No, I didn’t like busing. I don’t care for it. You know, your child gotta go way over there, way over there, for school and stand out and wait in the wee hours of the morning for a school bus. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t. So that’s where I’m at with busing.
Ava Carubia [00:25:56] I have another question that’s going far back again, but what did your parents do?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:26:01] My father. When I was younger, I believe my father was a detective. And then he went into. He was a corrections officer. When he retired, he would work side jobs, like I said, the security. You know, at different events in the city. He also was a security guard down at the Hippodrome movie theater, downtown Cleveland. And all of his buddies, it was like, all the buddies, you know, they. They were like. They were like our uncles. And one of them really was my uncle. But they would either. A lot of them were like, down. And it wasn’t that many, but I said a lot. They were security guards at the Hippodrome. So on the weekends, I could go to the Hippodrome with my friends, take a friend or two because I had passes, and then we would go. My father would take us to the Forum Restaurant down there to eat. To me, it was a big cafeteria, but it was the Forum. And my mother, she worked at. I can’t think of the name. I want to say Boston something, but she basically worked in a warehouse. In a warehouse. And both of my mother worked that job, like, ever since I could remember. And my father was always in police work ever since I could remember. So he used to take us up to the workhouse. They had a pond, and you could. They could go out there and fish and they. Some little boat. He took me out and it wasn’t. It wasn’t a big, big pond, but he took me out there and I had asthma attack. He never took me back, you know, but those are just childhood memories that I have, you know, where he would take us up there. And it don’t even look the same up there no more. So that’s. That’s what they did for a living, you know, and they took. They took good care of us, you know, I remember the Seven Bells skating rink down here on 131st and Marston. We went up there. It was a little skate. It was little compared to the Eureka or 93rd and Sandusky. You know, we would come up here, but this one was a smaller skating rink. So we would go to the Eureka. We could walk over there. Everything we did, we like walked in groups, you know, and we would go skating and I learned how to skate, you know, we would skate up and down the street. The bigger kids on the street, they would play with us outside, make go karts and race us down the street. We, like I said, we climbed everything. It used to be all kind of fruit trees around. So I remember next door we had a cherry tree. We just couldn’t go in her yard and get the cherries, [unclear]. But if you go up 110th through the. Through the. Through the ball field to 110, it was. That was the playground up there. And you could go down the hill and we caught it. It was in woods. And we would find the cherry trees, the apple trees, the peach trees, grapevines, and we would just like run through there. They had a playhouse down there. I don’t know who playhouse it was. We were going to play house, you know, and nobody ever told us, like, don’t go down that hill up there. We would be like everywhere, because he was. It was. We was living in an innocent world, you know. Now my grandkids live on 108th, and my daughter has a house next door to my sister. And it’s like I tell my grandkids, don’t go down that hill. You know, don’t. Don’t go down that hill. You know, you gotta watch them so close now. I tell my granddaughters, don’t go up there on 110th. We used to cut through from 100. We would come up off 108. You could cross over on 110th and you could come out like 111, 112, and go out to Miles, it’s, you know, they got a fence or something blocking it now. But, you know, that went on for years, you know, and it’s like, don’t do that now, because there’s all kind of stuff out here, you know. Not to say that I don’t remember things happening to us back when we were kids, because it was happening. It just wasn’t. So I wouldn’t say plain sight, you know. I remember walking home and I must have been by myself and a man was following me in the car, you know. So it happened then, you know, as well. And I told my parents, you know, that he followed me down, you know, trying to get me to get in the car with him. And I’m in elementary, you know. But that. That was a thing where, like, the parents watched out for the kids. You knew people on the street, you know, it was a safe house, you know, because your friends, parents, you know, live right there. You could run in their house. It was so many, like, little spots that you could go around, like 110th on the other side. It goes around like Elmarge and comes back out at 100. So I don’t know if you can drive through there now, but you used to, so. But they fixed the playground up on 108th, the one, Olestra Wilson. And it’s real nice down there. You know, it’s kid friendly in that playground. And they still got the playground up on 110th. But a lot has been done through there for the neighborhood, you know, to give kids something to do because they don’t have a lot to do. You know, they don’t want to go this way because somebody want to fight them or they heard something going that way. And it’s. It’s like fearful, you know, I. I’m really like. I got a whole lot of faith, but I’m still like on edge when it comes to my teenage grandson getting out and walking down to the store on a hundred, on 100th street, you know, because it’s so. And there’s not even any space there, you know, like, where are you? Tell your mother where you going. Don’t tell her you going this way, but you’re going the other way, you know, you just really have to educate them, like on their safety out here now, too. I remember the Arcellane brothers was on 100th street at my house for a long time, you know, and it was a big building, you know, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know what they were when I was like, in junior high school. Brothers. What are they? You know, they got the rug place, you know, and then they moved up toward Emery and Miles. So it’s a lot of history on Miles. It’s a lot of history on Miles. I’m gonna look at my paper again. Okay. Okay. I told you about Poochie’s and Horace’s and you got Coneheads on 100, oh Corlett. 131st and Corlett. They said they. They the best chicken wings up there, and they sell ice cream up there as well. 131st and Corlett again. They said it was a Jackson’s Grocery. I don’t. I don’t remember. But we went to Holy Trinity Church right there too, as kids, when we was in the choir and, you know, ushers and you went to Sunday school. And, and all of that. They said on 128th and Miles it was the LaVert’s recording studio. You know, they’re from this area too. Lavert. And. And there’s one on 93rd and Way. I think that was their last. His son’s last recording studio on 93rd and Way. We would see them in the neighborhood, you know, moving about right there. When the dollar store used to be on Miles, it was a A&P grocery store. And then it went into a Pick-N-Pay grocery store. So we had the grocery stores and whatnot. And we had a lot of banks in our neighborhood. We don’t, you know, we got Fifth Third right here, which is relatively. This is kind of new, you know, but all the banks disappeared. It used to be a bank right here on 131st and Marston, you know, you didn’t have to go far to. To go shopping. And on 131st and Harvard, it was a Fisher grocery store. Fisher Fazio’s grocery store right there. Speedy’s used to be right there. I know you’d have heard about Speedy. Speedy’s used to be right there. You had the Seven Bell skating rink and I told you about the Chrysler dealership. We had Value City up Miles. I used to love Value City because you could go in there and find like clothes for the kids, household stuff, shoes, suits, dresses, hats. You know, you could dress up in there or, you know, fill your house up and value sit. They should put it back up there. That’s what I got on my on my list. I tried to, like, do a little history before I got here.
Ava Carubia [00:35:51] No, that’s great. I have some more questions. Can you describe in particular what the two skating rinks you mentioned were? Like you said, one was smaller and one was bigger.
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:36:00] We roller skate. It was a roller. They were roller skating places. The one right here. I guess the building just wasn’t big enough for all of us kids. And you would really have to go in a circle. You know, you go in a circle, but most of them are, you know, kind of oblong, where you kind of go like this. I think Seven Bells was more like that circle because it wasn’t big enough, but they stayed open a long time. And then The Eureka on 93rd down by Sandusky, it was bigger and it was more bigger. You had the Blue Goose that was across town. We used to go to, like, if I was at my cousins, we would go to the Blue Goose, you know, that was the skating rinks, you know, and we had. Even if, like, I remember having outdoor skates where we skated up and down the street. You know, we would come up here and we would race skates and some kids had their own skates. Yeah. So it gave us something to do.
Ava Carubia [00:37:09] And you talked a lot about how the area around Miles has changed over time. But if you could summarize it, what would you say about the area changing and when those changes were taking place?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:37:23] From then and now? It’s a, it’s a ghost town. You know, we had everything that like we could we needed in walking distance of our homes today, you know. Yeah, you can walk up to 131st to the bank, but everybody don’t bank at Fifth Third. So you have to have a vehicle to go to the grocery store. We don’t have any grocery stores. Like right here. We don’t have any. Any. I want to say fast food right here on this Miles strip. You have to get in your vehicle and you have to go one way or another. You know, whether you shopping for your. For anything, you have to have a vehicle to do it. And like I said, it’s a ghost town. You know, we used to walk over the bridge at the top of 108th. We would walk over the bridge and be on Avon and Dove and all over there. The bridge is gone now, you know, it just deteriorated, you know. No, kind of say the bridge. You know what I’m saying?
Ava Carubia [00:38:38] What year do you think it stopped being usable?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:38:44] The bridge or the neighborhood?
Ava Carubia [00:38:46] The bridge or the. Both, really.
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:38:48] Both. I don’t know what year? What year? I know what I want to say. I think everything started going downhill because you had a lot of Black-owned businesses in the neighborhood. I think stuff started going down, for real for real, when the crack epidemic came, you know, you started seeing like Chili’s store used to be on 116th and Benham. And it was just another store. And he sold it. He sold it. It was a gas station on 116th and Union. I think it was two gas stations. For real. You know, they just sold, you know, so you don’t have like. You don’t have the. I can’t think of the word. You don’t have like the commitment to the neighborhoods anymore. You know, it’s like you go in the store and they might say anything to you. Whereas before you could like relate, you know, it was a respect thing. Now it’s no respect at all. You know, we don’t own. We don’t own the things that we used to own to put money back into our community. All of our money go out of the community. And I think that’s a big failure too, you know, when I have to go to Great Northern Mall or South Park Mall or you know, somewhere like that and over into Parma to go shopping for a pair of shoes. Whereas I used to could go to Value City, you know, you used to go downtown, that 19 run both, you know. And we used to go downtown and walk, you know, to the stores and it was just full of, you know, downtown is dead to me anyway, you know, it’s nothing to do like for the kids to get on the bus and go to the movie, you know, you gotta go to Valley View for the closest one or up in Garfield. And so that means that you need a car, you know. I wouldn’t trust my, if my kids were younger. I don’t trust my grandkids out by themselves, you know, we take them where they need to go because times are so bad, you know. So I think, I really think that things started changing and people losing their houses and their businesses and their jobs with the crack epidemic.
Ava Carubia [00:42:16] And from your perspective, when did that really hit the neighborhood?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:42:21] The crack epidemic? About 80, 86. About I want to say got started about, I can’t remember about ’85, ’83, ’85 4, something like that is when I can remember and stuff just went from. My mother used to say sugar the shit. And. And that’s when it started changing. You know, we got a lot of abandoned buildings, abandoned houses with the finance, the home refinancing, you know, that was a, I want to call it a scam, but that’s not what I’m trying to say. But it was because people were paying maybe $300 mortgage and they refinance their houses for way more. And now your house note is five or six something and you can’t afford it so you lose your house. That was a big epidemic too around here, you know, they might come out and say, well we appraised your house for $80,000. Now your house now maybe between 5 to $600 a month and you can’t afford it, you lose your house, you got all these empty houses. That was a big thing too. So it wasn’t all drugs. It was a big scam with the refinancing of homes and a lot of people lost their homes. So that could have been a two edged sword, you know, that’s how I think that happened.
Ava Carubia [00:44:10] I asked you about the changes, but what are the things that have stayed the same in this area from when you were a kid to now?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:44:22] Nothing. I don’t think anything is the same. I mean, you got the schools, buildings, but even the education has changed. What is the same? The Earle B. Turner Center. I’m gonna say it’s kind of the same. They offer a lot in there, but they have not remodeled. And I would go down there, go there and get in the swimming pool and that locker room looks the same. That’s a shame. It looks the same. Like when do they remodel this locker room? And I ask them when I go up here, when they gonna remodel the locker rooms? That’s the same. That’s awful because people use the Y. And if I can remember the locker room from when I was a little girl and I’m in my 60s and it looked the same. That’s a doggone shame. That’s even though I think they said the last time I asked they supposed to remodel, you know, but they haven’t remodeled. And I think that’s a shame because there’s so much use that could be done in there. But like me, I don’t want to go there when it’s only one toilet working. You got these old fashioned showers where everybody’s standing there together naked, you know, put up, put a little panels in so you have some type of privacy. You know, a lot of people can’t access the stairs. Then they can’t go there to get in the water because they got stairs. So that hasn’t changed. Did I answer your question? Okay. Nothing is the same.
Ava Carubia [00:46:15] Another question I have is, do you have a particular happy memory that you remember really well from growing up in this area or even just living here?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:46:25] I mean, I basically grew up, I did grow up in the Miles area. Okay. From ’69 to. And I’m still in the Miles area. So I have good childhood memories. I have, I have a lot of good stuff, you know, of Miles, you know, and, and what’s going on and what’s not going on is a lot has changed and it could be improvement. What could be changed? Let me tell you. Why did they take down the street lights going down Miles? That’s awful. People are driving the center lane high speed to get around the car to get to the red light. I think that’s so dangerous that you have basically no street lights. From 131st, you got 119, 116, 113th. After 113, you can go straight down Miles to 93rd before you hit a light. And that’s dangerous. It’s dangerous for the elderly coming out of the these senior buildings. It’s dangerous for the children. It’s, it’s like a speedway. It’s a speedway. And that’s. That. That. That they need to put back the street lights. Mmhm. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:47:56] I have just two more questions. Growing up in Miles and living here for so long, how do you think spending so much time in this area has impacted you as a person?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:48:13] I would say. I would have to say positive because I had a steady home. We didn’t move around a lot at all when my father bought the house, you know, I grew up here. That’s our home. You know, Miles is my home. So Miles, to me, it helped shape the person that I am today, because, I don’t know, would I say my character of. My character of being a caring person, wanting my neighborhood to be better, you know, the memories that I have in this neighborhood that I could share with my children and my grandchildren, and they’re building memories as well from this area. I lived on 116th and between Union and Benham for, like, I don’t know, 20 years and probably more, because my mother’s. That was my mother’s house, and my aunt stayed across the street. So all of this community, Union-Miles area, you know, is home for me. You know, I know a lot of people in the neighborhood that grew up in the neighborhood. Then I’m finding people that grew up in the neighborhood that I don’t even know. But we’re all, like, proud that we grew up on Miles. So it’s home for me. So, I mean, I can’t say that, you know, I mean, it helped shape who I am today, you know, to care about my neighbor, you know, even if it’s just that I don’t bother them or they don’t bother me, you know, But I’m not gonna see somebody go in a house or. Or take something up theirs or destroy their property without me saying anything. Respect, you know, all of these things I got from my parents as well, you know, but respect, you know, I respect that person that live over there, you know, and if something is, like, going on or whatever, you know, I can watch, and then I know how to say something to them in a decent manner rather than getting out there cussing and showing my behind, you know, you can go. Go and say. You know what I’m saying? Like, next to my daughter is. Is an empty house, you know, And I’m telling her, like, y’all need to clean up over there. That’s not my yard. But when you come out your house, you gotta look at it. And that’s what I would tell my children. We had empty house on 116. They tore the house down and it’d catch trash. You know, you need to clean that up. We don’t live over there. We didn’t put that down. But we gonna clean it up. Because I take pride in where I live. So I have a lot of pride in my neighborhood, for my neighborhood.
Ava Carubia [00:51:42] This is my last question. What’s a message you’d like to leave for a future generations?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:51:49] Hmm? Take care of what we got. Cause if we don’t, we won’t have anything. And stop killing us. That’s my message for future generations. That’s it.
Ava Carubia [00:52:09] Well, thank you.
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:52:10] Thank you.
Ava Carubia [00:52:11] But is there anything I didn’t ask you about that you want to add?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:52:16] I don’t think so. Because I tried to walk it like, from 93rd up, it used to be William’s Fish Market on 93rd and Harvard. And we would go down there and buy. You could buy your fish, or you could buy. You could buy, you know, the raw fish, or you could get. Buy a fish dinner. I think it’s a mobile metro phone place now down on 93rd and Harvard. And it was factories coming up Harvard back there that were open and working, you know, all that’s empty field now.
Ava Carubia [00:52:50] Do you know what factories those were?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:52:54] I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I don’t remember. I remember. I could see the factories. I can see the fact- But I don’t remember the name of them. I don’t. You know, and we would hear trains all the time, you know, so I. I would always say, too, that I’m the girl from over the tracks, you know, I live over. Because anyway, you come over here, you got to cross railroad tracks, you know, to get to Miles. You got you going across the railroad. So I would say we, we, we from over the tracks, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So that’s it.
Ava Carubia [00:53:35] That’s it? Anything else?
Joyce Fields-Ray [00:53:36] No, I don’t.
Ava Carubia [00:53:37] Okay, well, I’m going to end the recording now, okay?
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