I just read the book THE HELP by Kathryn Stocket. I never realized it was about me and the town I grew up in, not in Mississippi but on the Texas Gulf Coast. It was more about the era than about any individual town. As I started to read I realized it was my 50s and 60s way of life the book was about.
She would have us stand facing each other, with their heads inches a part and then she would bang our heads together. I was the only girl with 4 boys--I was probably the instigator. It hurt like fire and once I got a bruise on my forehead. When my mother noticed the bruise she made arrangements to have a nanny and a maid come to our house.
The maid, whose name I don’t remember rode the city bus to our house from another job. She didn’t last very last because my mother came home and found her ironing--sitting down. Mom said she was lazy. (I have never been able to sit down and iron--no matter how badly my back hurt. ) Then I started to think about that poor lady. She had worked from 7 AM until she came tour house at noon, with probably no lunch. Then she had to clean and iron until 5 at our house. Now, being in my 50s with a lower back problem, I can just imagine how miserable she much have been and she was in her late 60s. At that realization I got a stool, and started ironing sitting down.
Then their was the nanny. Her name was Lenora Wilson. She was the sweetest, kindest person of my childhood. She was large and soft and let me sit in her lap while she watched “Her story.” Her story was AS THE WORLD TURNS. It lasted only 15 minutes and being tired from rhythm band, or kindergarten I usually dozed while she rocked. Then the show, QUEEN FOR A DAY came on. Each contestant (all white ladies) told their long sad story. Then the audience would vote on whose story was the saddest. Then that contestant would win a new washer and dryer, frig or whatever appliance it was that would make her life easier. Lenora would pull out her white hanky and sob over each sad story--none as sad as hers for sure--and then she would wipe away the tears and talk about how they deserved those prizes. I would just sit and look at her wondering what the fuss was all about--then go back to my snoozing and rocking in her big soft lap.
Lenora was widowed and had 8 children. She and her kids had only the bare necessities. My mom passed down my clothes and gave her things we had, that we didn’t use. At Christmas we would buy some nice cologne at the drug store, wrap it and take it to her house. Mom said, “She never gets any of the nicer things in life” We had to drive down a dirt street right to the front door of a shotgun house with peeling paint--no yard. When she answered the door there were all these little kids hanging on her, the younger ones in just their underpants. She would open the gift, clasp it to her chest and thank us profusely for such a lovely gift, and give us each a big hug. The next time she came to our house she would be smelling sweet as a flower. I loved her dearly.
I was born in 1952 to a father who had courageously served in WWII and a mother who had struck out on her own and gotten a college degree. They were in their thirties when I was born. There were two distinct parts of our town, the white section, with nice men’s and ladies stores downtown, cafes, flower shops, dime stores, shoe stores and a movie theater--a typical small town. Then there was the part of town that most of white people were barely aware of--the black part of town, called by much worse name.
If black people came into the white part of town they were more than likely coming there to mow grass, do odd jobs or as maids of nannies. Likewise the white people only went to the black part of town to pick up those doing the above mentioned jobs. The black part of town was much different and the the city did not--until many years later provide the city services we all deem as necessities, mainly sewer services. We lived as close as a railroad track apart but our lives were worlds apart. I had seen the water fountains with “white and black” on them, and the other signs “No blacks Allowed” but it was such a part of my world that it seemed normal. My dad was an operating engineer in a chemical plant. A young black man who had graduated from Texas A&M University came to work there. None of the degreed engineers would agree to train him so dad did. He trained him in his job, and told him how to save and plan for retirement.
The black kids had their own schools and the whites theirs. I never questioned that theirs weren’t as nice as ours until junior high. Our Junior High band was asked to perform a concert at the black Lincoln High. Parents were all abuzz and a couple of kids in the band were not allowed to go. We pulled up in our bus to a school where the weeds were so grown up, it looked abandoned. There were no tidy shrubs and carefully manicured lawns like at our school. The inside had the same unkempt look as the outside. The high school students came in and jeered at us in our expensive uniforms which, at the time I thought was so rude. They were equally unruly during the concert. When it was over, we left, our contribution to providing culture to the black students over.
In retrospect I think of how insulting it was for us to come to their school must have been. They were in MY same community and their schools should have been similar to mine--after all they were “ Separate but equal” right? However, they were sorely lacking in every way. They got only the “leftovers”. The next year our schools were integrated. There were a few who transferred to the white schools but not many. Our parents were in an uproar as to what the black student would “Do” to us and I am sure their community was the same way. I remember L.C. Jones. He came that first day of school dressed in what must have been his finest--nicer than any of us. He was a great student and in fact was elected one of the class officers of the 8th grade. There was friction between the “Hoods” of course but trashy people come in all colors. For the kids who were interested in an education--there was no difference because of race. I should have taken note.
The Civil rights movement continued on, four little girls were killed when the church was bombed and Martin Luther King was killed. Things started to gradually change as I lived my life oblivious to the hardships blacks had. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that I realized how different a black person’s life had been from mine, when I met Sharon in my Bible Study class. She was my age but her life had been so much different. She had grown up in Virginia. She described her father as a “Tom Cat” who came and went. She lived with her mother and 3 siblings and her aunt and several more children. The children slept on the floor in the living room. She put herself though college working for an elderly lady cooking her meals and keeping her house--with no electricity and cooking on a wood stove. I was amazed, I didn’t know anyone my age who had lived like that. Her husband Calvin told me that he never spoken to a white woman he didn’t know because it always made them act afraid. I thought of the times I had walked a little faster because I saw a black man.
Cal has a college education and a management position for General Motors (GM) as an Area Manager. He was going from Dallas to Lubbock on business and one of the dealerships he called on asked him to drive a new Cadillac to a dealer in Lubbock. On the way, not speeding, in a business suit, he was stopped by a state trooper. He showed the trooper his driver’s license, then gave him his GM business card. But the trooper didn’t think things were normal. Cal called the dealership and they vouched for him. Then the trooper wanted to speak to Calvin’s Manager. He, however was on vacation and not able to be reached. After two hours, Calvin was able to reach someone high enough up that the trooper let him go. The whole story made me sick. I had been a part of this prejudice my whole life. Through Calvin and Sharon’s eyes I finally became color blind.
Note: Years later with my dad in a wheelchair we were going to see a movie. A black gentleman came up and said, “Excuse me, is that Mr. Greenlee?” I told him yes. He shook dad’s hand and said, “I am retired now. I really appreciated you training me. I have trained many young engineers. I always share with them how to plan for their retirement--just like you told me.” My dad just beamed.
Sharon and Calvin live in South Lyons, Michigan and upscale suburb of Detroit. She is still one of my dearest friends. She is still more comfortable sleeping on the floor, so I always make her up a bed of quilts and comforters on the floor.
