Welcome to the Lindale Street Block Club. I'm Maryann Townsel, and I've been president since 1997, mostly because I missed the meeting where they voted. (Let that be a lesson to all of you.) I'm a registered nurse on the night shift, so if you see me on my porch at nine in the morning in scrubs with a cup of coffee, I'm not getting up, I'm getting home.

My grandmother bought the brick house in the middle of the block in 1958. I grew up in it half the time and spent every summer on that porch. She was one of the ladies who started this block club in 1964, and she ran it for most of the years I've been alive. When she passed in 1995 the house sat empty for a year, and I'll be honest, I almost sold it. Then I drove by one night and saw the porch light on next door at Mrs. Bates's, and I thought about who would be standing on this porch if I didn't. I moved home in 1996. Best decision I ever made, and some days the hardest.

There are 32 houses on our block. Right now 23 of them have people in them. Of the other nine, four are boarded up, three are open and need to be, and two are for sale and might actually sell. Eight of us have been here more than thirty years, led by Mrs. Effie Bates, who moved in in 1956 and has outlasted five mayors and two of her own refrigerators. We have retirees from the plants and the post office and the schools, young families, a couple who just bought their first house last year, three nurses (it's catching), a preacher, and more kids than you'd think. We are not giving up on this street, and that's the whole reason this club exists.

We meet the second Saturday of every month at 11:00 a.m. From May through September it's on my front porch (bring a lawn chair). October through April we move into the basement of the church on the corner, where it's warm and there's coffee. Every household on the block is a member, whether you come or not, but we'd rather you came.

Dues are $10 a year per household. Seniors pay what they can, and most of them pay more than that. Dues buy the school supplies for the back-to-school bags, seeds for the garden, flyers, and the Yard of the Month sign. Lillie Seay is our treasurer, and she keeps the books in a green ledger in pencil, and she can tell you where every penny went since 1985.

Next meeting: Saturday, October 9, 11:00 a.m., church basement. We'll be signing up for Angels' Night. The minutes from our September meeting are posted.

The empty lot on the corner, where a house burned down years ago, used to be nothing but weeds, tires and broken glass. In the spring of 1997 we cleaned it out, hauled in dirt, and planted. This year we had collards, mustard greens, tomatoes, green peppers, hot peppers, okra and a row of sunflowers taller than Darryl Flowers, who is six foot two. Anybody on the block can pick what they need. Just leave some for your neighbor.

The garden is guarded by Mr. Arnold Connors, who retired after thirty-three years at the plant and keeps a lawn chair on his porch directly across the street, with a radio and a clear view. Nothing gets past Mr. Connors. Not kids, not stray dogs, not grown men who think they can take a whole sack of tomatoes. He has been to opening day at Tiger Stadium every year since 1959, and he has a ticket for the last game there on Monday. Nobody's guarding the garden that afternoon. Don't get ideas.

The May Clean-Up. The city dropped off a dumpster on a Friday in May and we filled it by Saturday noon, then filled the second one they sent. Forty-one tires, eleven mattresses, a couch, two refrigerators (not Mrs. Bates's), and enough trash out of the alley and the empty lots to fill a church. Fourteen grown-ups and twenty-two kids worked. Pizza after.

The Block Party. Saturday, August 21. The street was closed off with a city permit from noon till dark. Darryl was on the grill and the turntables both, Janet Castro ran the double-dutch contest, and we gave out 120 back-to-school bags with notebooks, folders, pencils, crayons, glue and rulers, to every child on our block and the two blocks around us. Kids from three blocks over found out and came too, and we found bags for them. That's the best day of the year.

The Empty Houses. Every open house on this block has been reported to the city, by phone and by letter, more times than I can count. This summer the city finally boarded up two of them, the yellow one at the end and the two-family across from the garden. Three are still open. We keep calling. If you see anyone going into an empty house, call the police, don't go over there yourself.

Yard of the Month. Our little sign moves from yard to yard all summer.