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A Onetime ‘Jungle’ Feels the Winds of the Past
THE crime occurred early on the morning of Wednesday, May 21. Mike Young, a handyman who is president of Padre Plaza community garden, arrived to find his saws, power drills, clippers and shovels — 24 items worth a total of $1,352, according to the list he keeps in his wallet — had been stolen.
Mr. Young discovered the theft when he was walking by the garden on his way to pick up his tools en route to a client’s house. A member of the garden called out to ask if he had left the shed open. Mr. Young said no but thought the question was odd. When he went to check, he saw to his dismay that the shed was empty.
Mr. Young is a stocky 46-year-old with a thin mustache and matching goatee who wears his work boots even on Sundays and spends much of his time maintaining the garden, a third of an acre at St. Ann’s Avenue and 139th Street in Mott Haven in the South Bronx.
During the night, someone had apparently broken into the garden’s aluminum shed, which was locked, and taken nearly everything inside.
“I sat down,” Mr. Young said the other day, ensconced beneath a canopy of redwoods, “and tears came to my eyes.”
The theft was an unsettling echo of the garden’s troubled past. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the surrounding area was plagued by problems, Padre Plaza was infested with drugs.
“It wasn’t a garden; it looked more like a jungle,” Mr. Young said. “There was one guy working in here, and his nickname was Flex. He had no ladders, no tools. He had a pair of scissors.”
One day last spring, Mr. Young offered to bring over his tools, and the two started working nights, cutting branches from overgrown plane trees, pruning unruly shrubs, trimming bamboo and pulling weeds, their work accompanied by the music of Marvin Gaye and KC and the Sunshine Band. Members of local nonprofit groups, along with residents and passers-by, started asking if they could help.
Today, Padre Plaza is the neighborhood’s backyard. An elevated wooden stage and a bricked-over area sit just inside the front gates, the perfect place for barbecues and birthday parties. In the back, next to the vegetable plots, is a greenhouse. Trees shade the middle of the park and rose bushes and snapdragons grow along the wrought-iron fence.
Last Saturday, the brick path that winds through the site was scattered with rose petals, white streamers hung from the pergola Mr. Young rebuilt with volunteers from Thessalonica Christian Church, and a couple recited their wedding vows on the small bridge.
The garden’s 22 members, who pay dues and have their own plots, take home what they grow: lavender and thyme, sugar snap peas and summer squash. Mr. Young, who grew up in Jamaica, Queens, perfected his skills in the field last summer, when he took classes with Just Food, a nonprofit group dedicated to the growing of local produce. Now Mr. Young knows the difference between a red pepper plant and a green pepper plant.
“It’s the size of their leaves,” he said.
After the robbery, Mr. Young had to cancel the carpentry and farming classes he teaches for local children at the park.
“What he was teaching them, they could use through life,” said Gwen Kennely, a Mott Haven resident for 32 years who is a member of the garden. “When someone broke in and stole his tools, it stopped all of that.”
Last Sunday, a nonprofit organization called For a Better Bronx sponsored a fund-raiser to help Mr. Young buy new tools. Among the 18 people who attended were Gordie Cooke, a coordinator for a group called Community Supported Agriculture.
“Look at it, it’s gorgeous,” she said, standing outside the greenhouse and pointing around her. “This is the South Bronx.”
Ms. Cooke sold bars of handmade lemon-thyme soap for $3 apiece. Although the day was rainy and the raffle tickets got soggy, Mr. Young tended the grill, the peanut butter cookies stayed dry, and a total of $250 was raised.
“Everyone feels kind of responsible,” said Gordie L’Dera, Ms. Cooke’s mother, who also attended the event. “His livelihood is gone.”
According to a detective at the 40th Precinct, no one has been arrested for the theft and there are no leads.
Although the stealing of tools is hardly the most serious crime to occur in the precinct, which covers Melrose, Mott Haven, and Port Morris, for Mr. Young the theft was far from inconsequential. He supports a daughter, Jada Nicole, who is 7, and his wife, Sheila, who is 46 and worked as a mail clerk before she had surgery last October for a brain tumor.
Patricia Jackson, who works as an outreach coordinator for an organization called the Bronx Health Link, described the garden as being like a family. Ms. Jackson suspects that the culprits looked through the garden’s gates and were jealous of what they saw.
Tags: 139th Street, Bronx Health Link, Bronx Neighborhood News, Bronx News, Bronx People, For a Better Bronx, Melrose, Mike Young, Mott Haven, Padre Plaza community garden, Port Morris, South Bronx, St. Ann’s Avenue, Thessalonica Christian Church“You try to get ahead,” she said, shaking her head, “and then there’s always something to pull you back down.” Still, she smiled at the mention of the basil and oregano she grows in the garden. “Everything is nice, even though it rained,” she said. “But now the sun is back out, somewhat.”
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