The Other Side of The Coin

This is one of my grandmother’s stories, in her own words. Considering the time and place, I think the story says a lot about her.

I first came to Charleston in the summer of 1967 to accept a position with the Social Security Administration. Because of a very limited budget, my children and I moved into a four-bedroom apartment in Orchard Manor, one of the city’s low income housing areas. Unless you’ve had prolonged contact with this type of situation, to say that life in the manor made Peyton Place seem like a Sunday school picnic should suffice. From a sociological standpoint, a study would probably show that the liquor consumption rose in proportion to the number of welfare recipients.

We lived in Bowman Court, which consisted of two twelve-family buildings facing a common court, or yard. This area was destined to be the site of many conflicts, both racial and family affairs, with almost nightly visits from the local police, attempting to restore peace.

Incidentally, there were 137 children occupying these twenty-four units, but only four fathers. One was a drug addict, one an alcoholic, and one unemployed.

When we moved there, all the apartments were occupied by Caucasians. Shortly after that the housing authority adopted a policy of admitting one minority family to each court in the Manor. Did they feel they were doing this one family a favor to “allow” them to be surrounded by twenty-three families who were different? Surely NOT! They should have had the foresight to see this.

Soon there was a vacancy in a first floor apartment, and the new tenants were a 35-year old Negro Vietnam widow and her eight children. Nancy had three strikes against her before she even came up to bat. 1. Her race…2. her marital status, and 3. she was a deaf-mute, which could have been a blessing in disguise, at least she couldn’t hear the racial remarks her neighbors were using. I visited Nancy the day after she moved in, and my sons invited her children to come play. Not another person in Bowman Court would have anything to do with them. For the first time in my life I was ashamed to be white.

Nancy and I became good friends, but I knew they were miserable because they were not accepted by the other families. I thought of an idea that would alleviate the problem. Knowing that children are curious about the unknown, I wrote to the head of the school for the deaf and blind. I explained the situation and asked for his help. He sent me a dozen 2 x 3 1/2 inch cards with the alphabet in sign language on them and I amde some duplicates so there would be enough to go around. Nancy’s children and my own joined me in the yard for all to see and started a training session. Most of her children, except the very young, were already proficient in signing. At first the other children ignored us, but soon their curiosity got the best of them, and as they gathered round to see what we were doing, our group expanded to include many of the 137 children.

In order to “graduate” and retain the card for their very own, they had to “talk” to Nancy, asking if one of the children could come out and play, if they could push Sherry, the baby, in her stroller, or if Kenny could play on their ball team.

They soon forgot their prejudices in an effort to “graduate” and attend a graduation party at our apartment each Friday evening, for all who fulfilled the requirement the prior week. We always had popcorn and kool-aid.

One young boy, knowing that I cut my own boys’ hair, asked if he could have a haircut for a graduation present. Thanks to word of mouth advertising, I soon became an unpaid, unofficial children’s barber.

Bowman Court was home to us for about eight months…and on our last night we spent time with Nancy and her children. We all shed a few tears, but I had a good feeling in my heart, knowing I was leaving them with friends.

A Grandmother’s Wisdom

My paternal grandmother was the sort of person who was an inspiration to anyone who knew her. She raised nine children, fostered over a dozen more once most of her own had gone out on their own, and as a single mother in her 40′s, entered the workforce and went on to have a successful career. She was the sort of person who could emerge from the most difficult situations with a positive attitude. She had a gift for the written word that she passed to her children and grandchildren. She was the sort of person who, after a power outage, would write the power company, not to complain, but to thank them for keeping the lights on the other 364 days that year.

As my father has been organizing and packing the house our family has lived in for the past two decades, he came across a file of my grandmother’s papers. Cards, letters, poems, stories, notes, and lists. In the last years of her life, Granny bought herself a computer and sat about writing a family history. She was gone before it was ever finished, but Dad recently put together her collection and emailed it to the family.

I may share some of her stories here in time, but for now I’d like to just share a few pearls of wisdom that she gathered over the years. They may, or may not, be her originals, but she thought enough to write these down.

From one of her “lists”:

Mentally Healthy People are Consistent in the Following:

1. They have a wide variety of sources of gratification.

2. They are flexible under stress.

3. They recognize and accept their limitations and their assets.

4. They treat other people as individuals.

5. They are active and productive.

A few other gems among her writings:

It’s a sign of true maturity when a person can enjoy their own company.

Give what you have, to some it may be more than you dare to hope.

When you give OF yourself, you add TO yourself.

Man’s mind, stretched by a new idea, can never return to it’s original dimension.

Character is what emerges from all the little things we didn’t have time for yesterday…but did anyway.

 

A Little Mid-Week Mish Mash

I wish I could say that the blog well has been dry because life has been dull lately, but that would be a lie. So, let me fill you in a little.

1. The normally unblogworthy side of my family turned up the crazy over the past couple of months. I won’t go into more detail now, because it all turned out fine, and, frankly kids, I just don’t have the strength. The most notable thing is that they sold our house. (I guess it’s technically THEIR house, but they’ve had it for 20-some years, so it’s home to me too.) And in these economic times, it is worth noting that they sold it in TWO DAYS. Which means that either they are lucky sons of bitches or they weren’t asking enough. It’s a great  house with a cool past. It was built in the late 70′s or early 80′s as a model home for a company that built log and timber houses. After they went out of business, the house was some sort of dress shop or something and then sat vacant for a while. The area was growing, and it was purchased by one of my father’s business associates for the land it sat on–the house had to go to make way for a Quick-Lube oil change place. So my folks bought the house, had it moved a mile or so into a subdivision down the street, and for months we spent every weekend working on it. Since it was a model, certain corners  had been cut in it’s construction (it had no gutters). Since it sat vacant, there was some deferred maintenance that needed to be done, and since it was a child of it’s time there were acres of  gold carpeting and rust colored floral wallpaper that had to be covered up.  So weekend after weekend, my brother and I (years before our third brother was even born) would ride down the stairs in sleeping bags while our parents painted, cleaned, and made the house ready to live in. It’s not a huge house, but the public rooms are large and flow together nicely–it will be tough finding a house as well suited to entertaining large groups.

2. And speaking of houses, you may recall that I’ve long thought my crazy mama has a hoarding disorder. In fact, I was even more convinced of this after watching a show on TLC on the subject. So,  I reached out to the producers, sending photos and filling out an application. I even had two long telephone conversations with one of the junior producers and felt pretty confident that all of you might soon have my crazy mama on your boob-tubes. (And, more importantly, that the show would actually HELP her situation, not just highlight it for our amusement).  But, after her meeting with the executive producers, they didn’t feel mom was “extreme enough”. WHAT? Clearly, they have not met the woman, otherwise they might have offered her a whole new series.

3.  On a personal note, I’ve been seeing someone new. As my stepmother pointed out “you all seem to  be getting pretty cozy” so I figured it was time to share that tidbit with both my loyal readers.  It is nothing new that I play such personal relationships close to the vest, but for now I am enjoying my time with someone who I think compliments we pretty well. Oh, and I need to learn how to play Bunko. So if anyone has some lessons to offer, I’d be pleased to know!

The Scent of the Past

Science tells us that smell is the biggest memory trigger. Something to do with the olfactory bulb being close to the brain’s memory center or something. Mr. Wizard I am not, so a more in-depth explanation of the mechanics will need to be found elsewhere.

But I had just such a memory trigger this morning on the way to work. I had swung through a drive through for breakfast (Dunkin’ Donut has a perfect breakfast dollar menu–I got an egg white, cheese, and sausage wrap and a cup of coffee–perfectly healthy and cheap for someone like me who’d rather have an extra ten minutes sleep versus actually getting up and preparing any sort of meal.)

It was a great morning, so I had the roof open. At the next stop light, I cracked open my coffee and instantly I had this memory of my late grandmother’s house. Now, if I’d been asked before that to describe how her house smelled, I couldn’t have even begun to. And it took most of the traffic light cycle to pick apart the smells that brought the memory to me.

There was the coffee, of course.  During my childhood summers, I often stayed at my grandmother’s during the day while Dad was at work. We would get to her house, and there was always a fresh pot of coffee brewed.

The faint odor of cigarette smoke was coming from a car a few spots ahead of me. I don’t recall what my grandmother smoked before she quit, but the smell of her brand was slightly different from “typical” cigarette smoke.

And to my left and a few cars back was a truck loaded with new lumber. My grandmother’s husband had taken up woodworking in his retirement and was always working on pieces of furniture in the woodshop below their garage.

So now I can say that her house smelled like fresh coffee, cut wood, with a faint trace of cigarette smoke. Doesn’t sound all that appealing, does it? But until the light turned green, I felt like I was ten years old again.

Picture It…Porn Studio 2010

Somewhere, Blanche, Sophia, and Dorothy are spinning in their graves…

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