For example, take the neighborhood in which I lived as a
child, no socio-economic homogeneity there. That sort of sameness can make a person
fearful of those who may not look like them, talk like them, live like them, or love like them.
No, I grew up in what would now rank as a “mixed” neighborhood, thanks to “whatever
gods may be.”
Our little country grocery sat at the intersection of a state
highway and a little dirt and gravel appendage known locally as “King’s Road,”
after an old man who had lived there forever, maybe even having inherited his
place from his slave ancestors. We’ll never know. When the 911 folks came
around, they, over the strenuous objections of my Sainted Mother, named it after
our family. Go figure.
At the end of that road lived a lady named Sarah Eiseley,
known stereotypically as “Aunt Sarah.” My sister and I would load her bicycle’s
basket with old newspapers and pedal them down to the lady. In season, she
would send us back with a rose for “Miss George,” reflecting the manner by
which people often classified married women back then and back in that place. I
always thought she, Mrs. Eiseley, must have been 100 years old at least. To my
seven-year-old eyes, she looked it. I even fantasized, later in life, that she
might have been born a slave.
Image my surprise when Brenda found the results of the 1940
census and I learned that Mrs. Eiesely had only been 70 years old at that time, 1940 that is. That would have made her born five years or so after the war
ended. Though not born a slave, she certainly wasn’t “to the manor born.” Can
you imagine what stories she may have heard from her elders?
Oddly, I remember that she had a painted portrait of an
American Indian, in full chieftain’s regalia, on the wall of the living room of
her “shotgun-shack” home. I never had the nerve to ask her why. I suppose she lived
on what was then known as an “old-age pension check.” Sometimes at three or
four in the morning, I think of those folks, some of them dear friends or
relatives, who would have had her pass a drug test as a condition for that modest
wherewithal.
Up the road from her, and next to our property, lived Amos
Fletcher and his family. Amos made a unique study in Americana. He was one of
the strongest men and hardest workers I’ve ever known. I think maybe he was a
nephew, or some sort of kin, to Mrs. Eiseley. I say he was a hard worker and he
was, from Monday through Friday. Then he would likely fall victim to what he
called “one of my weak moment drunks.” His wife, known only as “Miss Essie,”
was a saint, if ever one lived on Earth.
Their son, Jim, was near my age, actually a little older. (More about that when we get to sex education.) For then, he and I, along with Benjamin
Shannon, who lived a city block’s distance down the highway, were almost
constant playmates. They also said of Benjie’s dad that “he drinks a little.” Sadly,
he didn’t limit his to weak moments during the weekend. Binges cost him his jobs,
the respect of the community, and, at Benjie’s young age, his life. Benjie’s mom
had been “to the manor born” and, although her family had disapproved of her
marriage, they helped support her and her family in their most destitute times.
So there you have the makings of our little band of
miscreants. Jim and Benjie and I were inseparable in the summer months except
for a ten-year sentence comprising two weeks of the pure hell of something called,
“Vacation Bible School, that was handed me one tragic summer. But that’s a
story for another day. Right now, the boys and I need to go play with some of
Daddy’s newly born piglets.
Don’t you, though, feel a little sorry for kids born in a
so-called “white-flight city?”
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| Pals and piglets. All a young boy needs. |
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