Rich White Folks/Growing Up Black in America --- Chapter 6 -- City Kid Goes Country

Chapter 6 -- To this day, it is a wonder that I can still eat breakfast. A daily grilling about either arithmetic or reading accompanied my early breakfast life. The daily grilling started with the multiplication tables. I had to recite them before I could eat or, if I were lucky, I would get to recite them after I ate.

CHAPTER 6 – The City Kid Goes Country

To this day, it is a wonder that I can still eat breakfast. A daily grilling about either arithmetic or reading accompanied my early breakfast life. The daily grilling started with the multiplication tables. I had to recite them before I could eat or, if I were lucky, I would get to recite them after I ate. Later, I had to recite my ABCs or read a passage from Dick and Jane. Then I was off to school.

Miss Briggans Superstar

On a typical day in this one-room school, Miss Briggans, our teacher, would work with each grade; give them an assignment and move on to the next grade. She worked her way from the first grade to the eighth grade every day. At recess, we would play softball. Everybody was encouraged to play no matter how small he or she was or how rotten he or she played. I was fortunate that I was almost a natural at softball. Ultimately, that is what got me accepted into the “in” group. Although I was a skinny kid, I was strong enough to hit long balls. I loved softball because it gave me a chance to show what I could do. It was usually the boys against the girls.

The girls had a big person -- Lula Mae -- that they could rally around and coincidentally, the boys had a big person -- Lebert -- that we could rally around. Sometimes, if Miss Briggans had a particularly trying day, she would let us out for the afternoon recess and we would stay out the rest of the afternoon, until school was out
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Miss Briggans had come to Lebanon from a small town in Kansas called Coffeyville. It must have been difficult for a young Black woman graduating with a BA in Education in the late thirties, to find a bona fide teaching job. I am sure that she had trouble in her state, Kansas since it had a very confused point-of-view about segregation. In some parts of Kansas, there were signs for “Colored” and “White” entrances to restaurants. While, in other parts of the state, there were fully integrated schools. Topeka, Kansas was the city in which the famous 1954 school desegregation case originated.

Miss Briggans must have had a distant relative who lived in Lebanon, who encouraged her to take the teaching job there. Miss Briggans was a handsome woman, just a little on the plump side, weight wise. She had a soft-featured face and beautiful, smooth, chocolate brown skin without any blemishes. Her large, round bottom was one of her most prominent features. Her large booty would jiggle as she wove her way among the rows of desks, especially when she didn’t wear a girdle. It is rather easy to see why the town’s most eligible bachelor, Adolph Meacham, married Miss Briggans a few years after I came to Lebanon.

Miss Briggans was an incredible woman who was totally committed to seeing that we had a well-rounded school experience. She created all kinds of extra-curricular activities. These activities included school plays, Halloween parties, and Christmas parties. To keep things interesting, she would sometimes do crafts. For example, one time she had us collect sawdust from our woodpiles and we made sawdust (and flour) bowls. Sometimes, if we each brought 25 cents, Miss Briggans would make a big pot of chili for lunch.

The fact that most of the students were related to each other was another Lebanon phenomenon. Most of them were first, second or third cousins. I was definitely an outsider. I was not related to anyone. My clothes were very different. My speech was quite weird and my father was the leading businessman in the Black community. In spite of all these ingredients for being a social outcast, I worked extra hard at belonging. My strategy was simple. I would be smarter and stronger than anyone. My major goal was to play softball better than anyone. Then I could belong. This strategy had worked with my little Mexican friends in Los Angeles and therefore it had to work with these country folks in Lebanon.

Aside from my burning desire to belong at school, I had the additional problem of having to live with my stepmother. Remember, she was the party girl turned instant mother. She was an unhappy “camper” and often took it out on me. At least from my point of view, it seemed that she did many little things to make my life miserable. For example, because my feet were growing so fast, she insisted that I go barefoot all summer. It wasn’t too bad until I had to go downtown to a movie while not wearing shoes. I felt as though all of those White people were staring at my bare feet. This was one of the most embarrassing periods of my life.

When it became apparent that I would do anything to avoid going to our outdoor toilet, she started giving me castor oil almost daily. The worst time was when she gave me castor oil on my birthday. I remember pleading with her to give it to me on any other day, but not my birthday. She gave me a big dose of castor oil anyway. Birthdays were never the same again.

Dealing With The Lack of Indoor Plumbing

The only indoor plumbing consisted of a water faucet that piped city water into our house. We had to wash clothes with a “scrub” board -- a rectangular device with a raised, corrugated tin surface on one side. Washing clothes consisted of dipping them into warm soapy water (usually in a large tin tub) and rubbing them hard against the rough surface of the scrub board until they seemed clean.

Taking a bath was not too different from washing clothes. The summers were not too bad, but bathing in the winter was a painful experience. First, a hot fire had to be made in the wood burning stove that served as central heating. Then a large pot of warm water was poured into the large tin tub used for washing clothes. The tub was then pulled up as close as possible to the warm stove.

I first learned about the “goose flesh” phenomenon during one of those bathing episodes. You had to wet and soap one side of your body that was closest to the warm stove. After rinsing that side, you turned around and quickly washed the other side. If you weren’t fast enough, the wet side away from the heat became a massive sea of goose flesh. All of this took a while to get used to. I hated it. The memory of a warm bathtub with hot and cold running water soon faded far into my distant past.

Welcome to Long Underwear

Long underwear in the winter was another unwelcome indignity that came with living in Lebanon. During my first winter there, my stepmother introduced me to long underwear. After getting accustomed to the itching all over my body, caused by the rough wool against my skin, I had to learn how to deal effectively with the “trap door” at the back of the union suit. Since I was taking laxatives most of the time, quick access (or not quick enough access) to the trap door was a terrifying challenge. Sometimes, I just didn’t make it in time. When that happened, I was in for a very long day. High cost was the other problem with long underwear. This meant I could only have one extra pair. Therefore, if the spare pair didn’t get washed, then I had to wear the ones I had on for days or maybe weeks. There was some kind of rule that once you started wearing long underwear in November, you would catch pneumonia if you switched back to short underwear before late spring. Long underwear was like Daylight Savings time that only came at certain times of the year.

Life went on this way until one day; my Dad’s entrepreneurial empire suddenly fell apart.

Stay Tuned For Chapter 7

This is the story of the impact of Dad’s unwise decision to expand his business. This decision not only caused a loss of our lifestyle, but led to us being temporarily homeless, before going into the grocery business.

SHAMLESS PLUG
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