Once, as a very young boy, I spent as much of my time as my
mother could make me spend outside in the yard.
I remember doing this in Orangeburg on Ellis Avenue Extension and,
later, in Aiken, at 1912 George Street ,
in Crosland Park
While in Orangeburg, Mama and Daddy (that’s what I called
‘em) had two houses (first one, then the other.) The first one, a small white house with a lot
of glass in the front, was on a busy city street (the main down town street, I
think) right next to a railroad track.
I’m not sure how long we were at that first house. I remember a couple of things about that
stay, though. Right across the tracks
was a small old wooden house with maybe two or three rooms. Two ladies lived there—the younger was named
Mary Sally and the elder was her mother.
They may or may not have had electricity. I definitely remember a
kerosene lantern on top of a table in the middle of the main room. I can’t
say if there were any other houses around or not. The two houses on either side of the tracks
was all there was in my world at that time. While I didn’t go to her house
often, Mary Sally came to our house a good bit, mainly to be my
babysitter. I’m sure we were there when
I was five years old since that was when my brother Jimmy was born and Mary
Sally spent a good bit of time with me while Daddy was at the hospital. I think she even taught me how to scramble
eggs.
I still make them the way she did, and when I do, I call them
“Eggs à la Mary Sally,” scrambled in the pan with bacon drippings, heavy on the
pepper, salted to taste.
Mary Sally was mid-range in the melanin department,
something that wasn’t something that made any difference to me or my
parents. New Albany ,
Indiana
We left that house before my kindergarten year and went to
an all-white neighborhood. I think it
was before I started kindergarten. I’m
really not sure. Also, there was the
time we were in an old home, or an attached cottage, near the downtown area, on
the same street, I think, as that first white house by the railroad tracks, where
we stayed for a short time when we first arrived in Orangeburg. I think the owners’ were named “Cable.” They had a yard man named “Lawrence ”
who liked to fish. One day shortly after
we arrived, Lawrence brought some
live fish (could be they were eels) to the house and put them in a large tin
coated wash tub under one of the trees in the yard. I remember him trying to teach me how to fish
using a cane pole. By “how to fish,” I
mean how to catch some small pine branchlets using the string on the end of my
pole to wrap around the branches, “catching” them. I
don’t remember if I was any good at it, but I did enjoy trying. At the time I was having a hard time
walking. Everyone was afraid it was
polio. Turns out, it was probably just
me sitting on my legs in our not so old Chevy as we drove from wherever, maybe
New Albany, Indiana to Orangeburg to start dad’s job. After a few days’ pampering, I was up and
running. Close call—luckily not a horse
shoe thing, though.
But enough early Orangeburg thoughts: Moving on to Ellis Avenue Extension (how I
remember that I really can’t say,) we were really moving up in the world. Our house was an old farm house, I think, two
storied, sitting in the middle of a one-time pecan grove. It was owned by the Metts. Mr. Metts, a jeweler, and his wife lived in a
new brick house behind the house we rented from them. They had two children, Hugo and his sister
Annis (both much older than I.) Annis
was old enough to babysit, which she did on occasion.
My best friend, Frankie, lived one fence climb away to the
side of our house. That fence got
climbed a lot. Frankie was a native born
Orangeburger, and he spoke the language well.
One day he taught me a new word—“nigger,” as in “my nigger maid said…”
something or other. I, of course, took
the word with me and used it in front of my parents as if it were nothing
special (which was exactly what it was—until I used it.) For some reason my parents took offense at
the word. Which was unfortunate for me
since Daddy’s taking offense meant Stevie got a spanking. I also got the explanation that I was not to
use that word, period. The spanking was
just for emphasis, a point well taken, at that.
Interestingly enough, I had one race-relations experience
while living in Orangeburg. There was a
big pecan orchard between our houses and the houses in the next subdivision,
which was, apparently, a black subdivision.
One day, while playing in that orchard, another kid came walking
up. We got to know each other and had a
good play time (I don’t remember what we were doing, but we both had fun and
agreed to meet the next day.)
A woman who lived in one of the houses next to the Metts’
house noticed us and called my mom.
Seems little black boys and little white boys did not play together in
Orangeburg in the early 1950’s. I was
counseled that night. Still, I went to
meet my new friend the next day. I told
him we couldn’t play together. He told
me his parents had told him the same thing.
Getting to know people of another color was something I did not have the
opportunity to do until I became an “Airman.”
What a shame. Sometimes heritage
sucks.
Frankie had his good points and his not so good points. His speech patterns (of yore) were
definitely, for me, one of his not so good points. One thing I liked about Frankie was the fact
that he had a BB gun. He showed me how
to use it, and I killed my first bird.
Seems I had a bit of a bloodthirsty streak in me at that time of my
life. (I suspect this is normal for we “hunter/gatherers.”) I didn’t get to use his gun much after
that. Don’t know why. Maybe Mama and Daddy had a talk with Mr. and
Mrs. Farnum.
I had a couple of other friends who lived next to Frankie and
next to the Metts. Phillip was one of
these boys’ names. They had a bicycle
that they taught me how to use. After
riding that bicycle around their back yard for an hour or so, I got pretty good
at it. I did find out running a bicycle
headlong into a pecan tree was not a good idea, though.
There were two houses in front of ours, between our house
and the road, one on each side of our driveway (the extension?) Wicky Staib was an older boy who lived in one
of the houses. Wicky took a shine to me
and showed me his BB pistol. Actually,
it was not quite a BB pistol. It shot
small lead shot smaller than a BB. Wicky
had a trap with spinning things in it that he used for practice. It was fun.
**Warning to parents—the next paragraph should, perhaps, be
X-rated.
The Clarks lived in the house on the
other side of the driveway. Patty was a
year or two older than I was. Patty got
some cowboy boots one year and liked wearing them. One day I made her mad, apparently (I don’t
remember too much about the “why” here, just the “what.”) Patty kicked me with one of her cowboy boots. I wish I hadn’t had to learn just what is
meant by the term “kick him in the balls,” but I did. Guess I learned that lesson well, though,
since that was definitely the one and only time for me. Guess, since then, I’ve always been a bit
protective of that area of my physique, especially around gals wearing cowboy
boots.
On the other side of Wicky’s (away from the Clarks )
was a house with a couple of nice people (no children, though.) They knew my dad; I think the man, a
veterinarian, knew him from work. She
was a pretty lady who, I guess, had a day job.
Their name was Eberhard, I think.
But enough about the neighbors. I remember once playing in a sandbox we
had. I was “driving” a little plastic
jeep, kind of a precursor to today’s’ SUVs.
I had a sand road and a sand hill built.
So much for that memory—guess it says I was OK with playing alone.
Halloween was big in those days. I remember going around the
neighborhood. I don’t know if I had
adult escorts (suspect I should have had.)
I knew about soaping screens, and once saw a house with darkened windows
with soaped screens. Can’t say I ever
laid my hand on a piece of soap on Halloween, though.
There was a creek that ran down a property line a couple of
houses down on Ellis Avenue . We explored the creek and learned we could
find “mud puppies” by turning over a few rocks.
I took a couple home once. I
think they stayed a few days in a bowl and then were returned to the
creek.
We kids liked playing in empty lots. We played baseball in one lot (and we played
a lot!) One summer part of the lot had a
lot of broom straw. We got together and
built a mound of the stuff and the guy who had found some matches lit it. The fire spread quickly (something we had not
anticipated.) We all ran home. The local fire department came quickly and
took care of the problem. The kid who
had found some of his parents’ matches found out one reason to not take those
matches again. I think it was one of my
most memorable spankings. By the way—the
“sand lot baseball” we played served me well when we moved to Aiken. My first year in “little league” saw me hit
eight homers. I could slap the fool out
of that ball, and the field did not have a little-league fence. If the ball went between two outfielders, it
was a race—mine for home plate, theirs for the ball.
The next year we played in a newly constructed little league
ballpark. Try as I might, I just couldn’t
loft the ball out of it. Towards the end of the season, I’d just about given
up. The pitcher threw a fast ball, and I
took a gentle swing, meeting the ball perfectly. That was my one and only homer that
year. I still have the ball.
Oh, well—so much for Orangeburg, almost. Memories of the first three grades boil down
to painting--tempra painting, that is.
Lillith (or Lilly?) was the best artist in my class. She did a painting that filled up her sheet with
color. I liked it so much, my next
painting was a good copy of hers, style-wise, that is. She may not have appreciated my compliment,
if that was what it was, but I liked it.
One other thing I should mention was my experience with
electricity. My parents and I went to
the Metts’ house one night for dinner. I
guess I should describe the fare, and I would if it weren’t for the electricity
part (actually, I have no idea what they were serving.) That electricity part had to do with a lamp
cord and a razor blade. Seems if a lamp
cord is caressed by a razor blade in just the right way, a “pop” may be heard
and the room lights would go out. This
was my first overt experience involving electricity. I wonder if that may have been one reason I
decided to learn something more about it when I enlisted in the Air Force. Guess it was a valuable experience, having
served 26 years as an electronics technician in the Air Force and Air National
Guard—most of which was free of the “pop” I had heard that night at the Metts’
house.
That’s about it for this topic. Funny how things come back to you when you
take the time to try to remember.
SVG 05 August,
2015-08-05
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