There was no way I was backin’ up.

And it’s because I was right.

Of course, the woman driving the SUV positioned directly in front of me – hood to hood - thought she had the moral high ground.

So, we sat there this past week in the late afternoon on a two-way street that only had room for one lane of passage.

It’s what I like to call a Snowstorm Standoff. If you’ve ever traveled the streets west of Washington, particularly in the winter, then you know going up any street requires a careful glance down the way to make sure no car was barreling up the opposite direction. One gets expertise at knowing how to dip and duck into empty parking spaces to make room for passage – or knowing when to surrender and back up if the other car has you beat on the merits of the situation. It is a delicate dance, and no doubt I’ve seen fisticuffs result, certainly a lot of screaming and even last summer two middle-aged women brawled it out right on the street as neighbors watched from their porches.

“I can’t believe that woman,” the losing party screamed to all of us watching as she hurled a flip-flop towards the retreating car. “She’s my neighbor.”

The old standoff is certainly not exclusive to the west side of Washington in Dorchester.

I think Savin Hill folks know. Parkman Street and Centre Street are a college-level lesson in how all this works. But the fact is most of the streets on the west side of Dorchester have been left wide open for decades.

Two-way streets with parking on both sides and schools plopped in the middle of it all with zero parking. It’s a hallmark here unlike other hamlets in the area. Perhaps the other areas have been more organized and proactive in heading off issues with the city and the Transportation Department. Mostly, over here, people have just left well enough alone. And there’s something to be said about that, but as a consequence we get the old standoffs, which are only made worse in the snowy season.

In my standoff this week, I was but one block from my home, and I was about 50 feet from the intersection. My adversary was well in the wrong, having been far closer to the intersection and needing to back up. But she wasn’t going anywhere. She just shook her head back and forth to signal to me, “No way I’m goin’ anywhere.” So, we sat hood to hood for about two or three minutes.

Though she didn’t know it, I was at a deficit, as my “passenger” had a desperate need to use the bathroom. If there’s one time that you can’t need to use the bathroom, it’s during a neighborhood traffic standoff.

“Here’s what we do,” I told my desperate passenger, who was growing more anguished every minute. “We’re only about 50 yards from the house. Take the house key and run to the house. You gotta make a big show of it when you pass by her, or I’ll be here all day.”

So, the mission was carried out. My passenger ran to the house, made a show of it, and then let herself in the front door – all in complete view of my adversary and her “passengers.”

It wasn’t more than one minute later that she slammed it into reverse and peeled out backwards about 40 yards and let me by.

In my view, it was a big win for the Dorchester rules of the road.

On the flip side, she probably thought I was just another jerk driver.

But a win is a win.

Tet new year
Last month was unique in that many of our neighbors here on this side of Dorchester celebrated the Tet (Lunar) New Year. That’s kind of old hand in most of Dorchester as those celebrations have been going on for years in Fields Corner and up and down Dorchester Avenue. However, it’s all new over here – brand new. It was only a few years ago that the first Vietnamese families moved across the Washington Street demarcation line. The area is still predominantly African American and Caribbean of all types, but now there are groupings of Vietnamese also living in the mix of African Americans and Caribbean immigrants. At no time is that more apparent than during the new year celebrations, which happen in the cold days of February when most of the rest of us don’t dare go out the front door.

It’s living proof of the turnover and change in this Dorchester neighborhood. It reminds me of when I was remodeling my house 20 years ago and busted through the wall of a strange alcove in the foyer. Behind the wall were the makings of an ancient sink – drainpipes and all. I had no idea what it was all about; it didn’t make sense to me to have a sink there. Naturally the old-timers around me explained that the area had been a Jewish neighborhood at one time. So, it was probably the case that a Jewish family owned my home and had installed a second sink. Two sinks west of Washington is a hallmark of a former Jewish home, I’ve learned, as the second sink was needed to keep the kosher diet going – separate sinks for meat and dairy and washing of hands. Jewish, Irish, African American, Caribbean, Indian, and now Vietnamese. What an interesting history of the world that’s filtered right through this small enclave or Dorchester, USA.

WOW Park
The new West of Washington (WOW) park on Norwell Street is getting moving with its design and such, according to the last WOW meeting in February. Some bad news is that government red tape is holding up some of the design progress, and the MBTA has some sort of easement on this city-owned property – preventing basketball and similar recreation. A piece of good news is that a swath of land on the side is being ceded to the effort by the city, with some extra space now for a potential piazza or kiss-and-ride turnaround for the train station. The park isn’t even past the design stage and already there’s some excitement for the summer on the existing lot – with a Paint Night now planned in July that will potentially run in conjunction with some live music. The Norwell Park is increasingly taking on the identity of an art-focused space even before the ground has been broken. Already, there is some great graffiti art hanging on the fence that was done live during the 2021 summer BBQ, and the Black Lives Matter exhibit that was in Fields Corner has found a home there. Not to also forget that the land was owned at one time by late neighborhood resident and famed painter William Tolman Carlton. I’m sensing a trend here…

All that happening on Norwell Street still kind of gives me a mental double-take. Knowing the area from the past, it doesn’t seem possible, but what a blessing that it is possible – and a lesson in not limiting ourselves due to old mindsets.

Seth Daniel’s West Side Stories column appears monthly in the Reporter.