Rich White Folks/ Growing Up Black in America -- Chapter 5

Chapter 5 -- About half way through the second grade, at the age of seven, my world, and life went through a drastic Polar shift. Thanks to the American Red Cross, I had to give up my wonderful life in bright, sunny Venice, California

CHAPTER 5 – The L A Flash Takes On Lebanon Missouri

About half way through the second grade, at the age of seven, my world, and life went through a drastic Polar shift. Thanks to the American Red Cross, I had to give up my wonderful life in bright, sunny Venice, California to live with my Dad in dreary Lebanon, Missouri.

Kidnap Victim Found

During the war, the American Red Cross performed a service of finding relatives for soldiers. Although I don’t know for sure, that must have been the method my Dad used to find out where my Mom had taken me. I don’t know what happened and I can only guess that some strong words or letters were exchanged. All of a sudden, my Mom got the idea to send me to live with my Dad.

One day, when Mom came home from work, she asked my thoughts about going to live with my Dad. I don’t remember being thrilled with the idea; however, getting on a big choo-choo train, sounded like a great vacation. For several years, the notion of seeing my real Dad again fascinated me. For a long time, I had kept his image alive by telling everyone that the Black man on the Cream of Wheat box was my Dad. I guess I had once seen my Dad in a large white chef’s hat and I just knew that guy on the Cream of Wheat box was my Dad.

My seven-year-old mind could not conceive of the possibility that this trip would somehow be permanent. By now, I had gotten used to being shuffled around, so to me this was just another one of those trips with which I was so familiar. My Mom and I had lived in five different places since she divorced Dad. I reasoned that when I was ready, I would call and have someone come pick me up and return me to Los Angeles. To me it was a thirty-day trial period. At least that was the way I heard the deal and thought it would work. Besides, it meant I was going to ride on a big “choo-choo” train. I was wildly excited about how much of an adventure a ride on a big train would be. Little did I know what was really happening. It never dawned on me that I wouldn’t see Southern California again until I was sixteen years-old.

The actual exchange was like a high-level spy exchange operation. Miss Eva -- "Mother Dear" – my step grandmother arranged to take me to Dallas. The trip from Los Angeles was great. We had a sleeper that allowed us to sleep at night on the big "choo-choo" train. It was neat to crawl into the upper bunk. That was when I fell in love with trains. I don’t know who paid for this trip, but it must have cost a small fortune, especially during wartime. In addition to the big exchange, the trip provided the opportunity for Mother Dear to impress her relatives with her newly acquired California prosperity. Once we were in Dallas, my new stepmother, Vida, was to take me back to Lebanon, Missouri to live with her and my Dad.

One of Vida's aunts arranged for the exchange to take place at her house in South Dallas. That aunt and the other relatives thought I was cute. They especially liked my crisp, strange California accent. It must have been quite a shock for Vida, the twenty-two-year-old party girl, to discover that she was now the parent of a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed seven-year-old. She carried it off as best she could. After a few days, Vida and I boarded the train for our triumphant journey to Lebanon, Missouri.

You Belong Behind the Signs Boy

During this brief stay in Dallas, I saw overt discrimination for the first time. My stepmother and I went somewhere on the streetcar. In my typical fashion, I jumped on the streetcar and plopped down in the first seat I saw. I noticed the funny, little signs but, since I couldn’t read, I ignored them. Suddenly, I noticed that people around me were squirming and becoming uncomfortable. I thought that was strange because I hadn’t broken wind or done anything bad. While I sat there, totally confused, my stepmother grabbed me and quietly dragged me to the back of the streetcar. I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong but sensed that it had something to do with the funny, little signs. By my next trip to Dallas a few years later, I learned the stupid, senseless local customs. Black folks were somehow different from White folks. Black folks had to sit behind the signs that said, “Colored Only.” If the streetcar was too crowded, the White person could simply move the signs back so that Blacks would have to give up their seats. This strange scenario thoroughly confused me. Where I had grown up, my Mexican buddies and my little White buddies were all the same. It was just a question of who had enough money to go to the movie or who the best wrestler was. This new reality was very different from any of my experiences growing up in Los Angeles. Still, I was forced to play this silly new game. That was a kind of foreshadowing of my future life in Missouri.

Landing in Lebanon

My stepmother and I finally arrived in Lebanon, a small town in southern Missouri near the Arkansas border. This was Dad’s new home. After receiving a medical discharge from the Army because of his asthma, he needed a place to live. Why Lebanon? Dad had made a lot of money in the Army with his various "entrepreneurial" ventures (gambling, bootlegging whiskey, etc.). He needed somewhere to invest the money fast before it got away. He decided to buy land in Lebanon and settle there. The fact that this town was only forty miles from Fort Leonard Wood meant that there was a great source of possible future business from the soldiers that moved through the Fort.

Dad Builds an Empire

Dad bought a large triangular piece of land that was one block long on one side. He built a barbecue restaurant at the upper end of the triangle. This land and the restaurant were located on the upper end of the White community and the lower end of the Black community. Dad had set the restaurant up so that two nights a week the customers were predominantly White folks. Two other nights during the week were set aside for Black folks. One or two nights the crowd was mixed. The jukebox was set up along those same lines. There was a set of Black rhythm and blues records and another set of “hillbilly” records. The most popular R&B song was “Caldonia” and the most popular hillbilly song was “Smoke on the Water and The Land and the Sea.”

My life was totally different from what I had known in Southern California. It was very cold, there was no indoor plumbing and I stood out from the other black kids like a sore thumb. School was very different too. I had gotten rid of the two little White kids that called me nigger every morning. They were replaced with a bunch of Black kids that called me nigger. I was confused. I had not gotten any training about what to do when Black kids called me nigger, especially when they were much bigger than I was. Since I was only in the second grade, it seemed that everybody was bigger than I was.

My One-Room School

My new school was a one-room school, with grades from one to eight, for "colored" only. Miss Briggans taught all eight grades every day. She would start with the first graders. There might be three or four of them in any given year. Then she would work her way up to the eighth graders by late afternoon. Some years we didn’t have eighth graders and some years we didn’t have first graders. There was a second large room set aside for high school, when there were enough kids for high school. The second year in high school seemed to be the time when most of the kids dropped out anyway.

An old semi-retired man, Professor Williams, taught high school. He could be easily activated or deactivated depending on the need for a high school teacher. Later, when Lebanon's Black population expanded, the White school board hired a full time teacher for the “colored” high school.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this one room school was the best thing that ever happened to me. When I arrived in Lebanon, I was a perfect victim of California’s experimental school system. I did not know my ABC’s. I could not read and I had never heard of such strange things as multiplication tables. On the other hand, I was a whiz with clay, crayons, and watercolors. I often filled up a Big Chief tablet (they were a nickel then) with page after page of tight little drawings. They were always various kinds of airplanes locked in aerial dogfights. They were either German fighter planes or Japanese planes attacking or being attacked by American fighter planes. During my stay in the modern California school system, learning my ABC’s seemed too complex for human comprehension and things like arithmetic and multiplication tables were only for the gifted. I remember a little girl in my kindergarten class that could read a newspaper. My friends and I would worship at her feet. To us she was a goddess. We fell dumb with awe whenever she stood up and read something in class. Reading was a far off dream for us. On the other hand, if it never happened for us, we could fall back on our artistic skills.

It wasn’t long before my Dad and Miss Briggans realized that I had a lot of catching up to do. I think they made a deal not to put me back in the first grade but to hold me in the second grade if there wasn’t some drastic improvement. This was probably the point in my life when I escaped the label of “slow” or a special needs kid.

Academic Catch Up

Dad took on the task of bringing me up to speed. The result was that my new life acquired another level of misery. Every morning, during breakfast, I had to learn and recite the multiplication tables up to 12 x.12 from memory. I started at one-times-one equals-one and eventually got up to twelve-times-twelve equals one-hundred-forty-four. I learned my ABC's from the first graders as they learned them. I remember being so proud when I was finally able to recite my ABC’s. Armed with this advanced knowledge of my ABC’s, I was ready for a daily grilling about reading. Dad was determined to bring my far-off dream into present reality as soon as possible. Although he had only finished the third grade, he didn’t want an academically-challenged son.

Dick, Jane and Spot became my new breakfast companions. I got very tired and frustrated "seeing Dick run" and of "seeing Dick and Jane run." While Dick and Jane were running all over the place, Spot (their dog) would jump. However, my Dad hung in there and made sure that I took Dick, Jane and Spot through their paces every morning. He threatened that if I didn’t get smarter, I would end up like “Little Black Sambo” another racial straw man of the forties.

To his credit, Dad never seemed to tire of the monotony of our breakfast ritual. Given my anger about the breakfast ritual, I might have regressed to my former habit of going to school and beating up the first little kid I saw, but that was impossible. All the kids seemed to be much bigger than I was. Besides, they were all cousins and if you messed with one of them, you had to beat up a whole family. In addition, there were no weak little White kids to take vengeance on as I had done when I lived in Venice. Therefore, I had to live with my pent up emotions.

Stay Tuned For Chapter 6

The story of how this seven-year-old outsider tries to fit into his new, strange environment. And how Miss Briggans, the one-room school teacher not only corals a group of wild animals, but manages to impart some knowledge to them. How the LA kid learns to live with no indoor plumbing.

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