MY SISTER WAS AN ONLY CHILD 1946-1950

School Days, School Days Golden Broken Rule Days

Going to school at Menger Elementary School was better without a chauffer. I liked Otis, I was the only person at school with his own driver. For crying out loud, let me get out of the Third Grade before I learn ostentatious. So that’s the way life went, I was nine years old, had a horse, Molly, had flown in an airplane and this summer I was going to go on a train. I guess ostentatious did pretty well describe things.

Things were going well at the Gillespie manse. We had air conditioning. It was only in the dining room but it was air conditioning. Stella Mae, our cook and maid and my friend would come in bring a dish or two and linger by the wall unit every now and then. Stella Mae was big and black and loved me. She would sometimes let me walk with her to the bus stop about a block away and no streets for me to cross. There were always lots of maids in their uniforms from other houses waiting for the same bus. I sometimes wondered if they all lived in the same house.

One time, on a Saturday afternoon, she took me to see a movie down where she lived. The place was getting full when we got our popcorn and found some seats. I looked around and saw that I was the only white person there. It sure wouldn’t be the last time. It started with Johnnie Mack Brown riding thru the west saving young damsels from the evil villains. Then, I think another serial and then the main event. It starred Cab Calloway and the whole cast was black.

Third Grade was over. Off to the train station with the next stop being Memphis, Tennessee and Trafalgar Farm. Actually, there were lots of stops before we got to Memphis. But I didn’t care, I had my own little room and every now and then a man would come by ringing a bell and saying “Dinner is being served in the Dining Car”, or lunch or breakfast. What an adventure! I had my own money, my own room, everyone seemed to take care of me and Longview, Texas was the next stop. The man with the bell told me that Longview was where we switched engines for the final run across Louisiana, Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta up to the Mississippi River. We did that the next afternoon and I was glued to the window as we crossed UNDER the big bridge that crossed from Arkansas to Tennessee. Above us was where the cars drove. Never saw anything like that before. But man that river was big and brown.

Angel and Dad picked me up and in about an hour I was up on Molly. I rode all summer and most of it was spent with one of the hand’s sons, Calvin. Calvin and I grew close as brothers. He would ride a bay named Dinah. One day we were playing croquet and I hit the wooden ball real hard and it hit Calvin right between the eyes. Down he went and I thought I’d killed him. “Angel, Angel”, I screamed. She came out and saw Calvin on the grass. She got Will to take him home. I wondered why we just didn’t fix him here. Will told me later that Calvin wasn’t allowed in the Big House.

Summer ended and I was ready to go back to Texas. A new chauffer showed up. His name was Russell. We drove straight thru. Russell was the dude. He didn’t talk much during the trip. I liked it when we would stop to eat. It was always at a black café. I liked their food. I especially liked the black-eyed peas. Sometimes I would just order the peas and some corn bread. At one café the peas were so good I asked for a second helping. The waitress said something about I should have been born black. I wouldn’t have minded. Black folks always seem to have a pretty good time. The food was great and I was beginning to like their music.

It was kind of good to be back in Corpus Christi. I missed Stella Mae and the stories she would tell me. When I told her we drove straight thru from Memphis she went and give Russell the fussing of his life. Saying I should have stopped to let me sleep and what did I eat and where’s the money my Mom gave him for hotels? Old Russell wished he’d stayed up in Tennessee. Stella Mae always took care of me.

The Fourth Grade wasn’t much different than the Third. Same teachers and same rooms. In fact, it was almost the same students. I had a new boy named Eldon from Iowa or Ohio. He would always drawing pictures of tractors. A lot of the kids laughed at Eldon’s tractors. Not me. I lived on a farm with tractors and combines and all that stuff. I loved that farm.

That Christmas Mom and Daddy took me down to the Buick company one night. We went upstairs over the Parts Department where Daddy pulled back some cloth that covered a bicycle. It was all silver, in fact the name was, Silver King. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t a Schwin. Everybody had Schwins. I had a Silver King. I felt embarrassed when I rode it to school the first time. Later some friends helped me take of the lights and the fenders and then it looked like a boy’s bike.

Mom had a family dinner every Friday night. It was mandatory attendance. Stella Mae and Mom planned the dinner and Otis and Mom went shopping for the dishes we would have. We had a huge dining room table. It sat twelve people and a card table for the children held four more. Otis served and looked smart in his white coat and black slacks.
The meals were always good while Mom never cooked she sure was a meal planner.

One year Angel had come down to Corpus Christi and she and Mom were going to drive me back to the Farm. We started of with me in a bed in the back seat with the picnic baskets. Lots of sandwiches and fruit and drinks. I could tell Stella Mae made the sandwiches because the edges had been cut of the bread. In those days there were no freeways only two lane blacktops. I was asleep when I woke up to Mom’s yelling “Pull over, pull over”. Then a loud crash and a big shake of the car. Angel was sideswiped by a truck. Angel had taken her half out of the middle.

When we pulled up to the long drive up to the Big House at Trafalgar Mom was driving. Angel had asked her to. Dad was standing at the driveway to the house when he saw the right hand side of the car. Right away he shouted at Mom for wrecking the car. Even an 11 year old could see that Mom had been set up ‘cause Angel was afraid of Dad..

That summer was the best of my life. I broke my leg and had a cast on it. Dad took me fishing at Kentucky Lake. I drug my leg with the cast on it in the lake. Casts in those days were made out of plaster and cloth. Mine was squishy from the lake. Dad pulled out a pocket knife and cut the spongy mess of my leg. When we got back to the farm Angel was anything but happy but Dad ruled.

Another memorable even was when Calvin and I were riding one day he and Dad rode up with Angel. We were on a back field that looked over most of the farm. Dad said “Someday this will all be yours”. That was the first time but there were many more to come. When they rode off Calvin said,” I’ll be your foreman when you take over”. Cal would make a good one, I thought.

I got to drive the hay truck as we baled hay, the hands would pick up these long bales with hooks and then take them back to barns and send them up to lofts with the some kind of conveyors. I felt pretty important. But not nearly so as when Dad said you’re old enough to drive and we got in his pickup truck. It was a green, 1953 GMC with the shift on the steering column.

We drove around the lot while he taught me how to shift gears and use the brakes. After a while, Dad told me we’re going out on the road. Now out the front gate and up Raleigh-LaGrange Road to the highway was a hill and when I got to the top Dad told me to keep the truck from going backwards by using a combination of gas and clutch. After stalling out a bunch of times I asked Dad when would I learn how to do this balancing act. He said “When you’re a man”. I asked when would I be a man? His reply with a broad grin was “When policemen look like boys”.

The summer ended and I was sad. It had been a great summer but back to Texas I and to a new school, Wynne Seale Jr. High I went..

Jr. High was a lot different that Menger School. For instance, everyone was bigger, especially the girls. Another thing was the classes were more interesting. Take shop, for instance. Our teacher was a man named Mr. Mc Nutt. .One day while he was teaching safety on the router he slipped and off went his finger. Ron Boyd picked it up and said it would make a neat key chain. They came and got it from him later on but Mr. Mc Nutt didn’t come back as our Shop Teacher.

Another difference was we had grades, A, B C etc. for the first time. Surprise, surprise at the end of the year I had all As. But as the year ended, I was truly anxious to get back to Tennessee.

Back to the farm, this time Mom and Daddy drove me. We had an air conditioned Buick and it was real neat. When we got to the farm, it seemed like the whole family was together. We ate at the big table in the dining room. Most of the time we ate the breakfast table but with the guests Angel did the same thing as my Mom. A planned dinner, with Will serving in a white jacket, and good fresh food. Almost everything came from the farm. The vegetables were from our garden and the meat either from our smoke house or fresh chickens. It was great to have everyone at the table being named Gillespie.

I was 13 now and for the first time got to go to town with the hands on Saturday. We would go in two dark blue flat bed trucks with Trafalgar Farms, Cordova, Tennessee painted in white on the doors. Going the 20 miles into Memphis, we would sing, and for the first time, I drank some whiskey. I liked what it did for me. This year was a momentous year for me. I lost my virginity, man did I ever, I got drunk and I smoked weed. A triple header for the Hankster!

When we pulled into a parking lot and everybody got off and out of the trucks, the women would go shopping and the men went to Beale Street to drink and mess around. I was a man now so off I went to Beale Street. I was the only white person on the Street but I felt real safe. Everybody knew I was from Trafalgar. I was as safe as in my crib.

It was this summer, my 13th summer that I discovered more than alcohol, sex and weed, I discovered the blues. I recall that even the radio in my room had a program all night called WHBQ, Red, Hot and Blues. I saw everybody from B/B/ Ling, Louis Armstrong, Memphis Slim, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins, and more. They all came to Beale Street. I would go with some of the Trafalgar men like Bud or Dallas from club to club seeing different acts and, of course, having Bourbon and Coke or Seven and Seven. It seemed the more I drank the better the music sounded...

And, of course, the memory of the summer came from when Calvin and I were riding. He said let’s go get some belly. I didn’t know what belly was but it sounded good to me. Turned out to be sex. We’d go to one of the hand’s cabins and there would be no one there but some girls. I surely didn’t know what to do but Calvin did and as he mounted one of the girls he laughed and said follow me. I did and to my amazement, with a little help from a young lady who goes nameless at this time. It felt good at first, then real good, then extremely good then it was all over.

As we were riding back home Calvin said how did you like it? I said more. That was my stock answer all through life. How much is enough? More. We did more that summer. In fact we did a lot more during the next three years.

My last Saturday in Memphis before going home I got real drunk. Dad was out of town but Angel wasn’t and she was burning up the phone lines. She was telling my mother this and that. The phone rang and more this and that and I went to sleep. The next morning Will woke me up and told me I was in deep trouble. He had brought a plate of breakfast but when I smelled it I ran to the bathroom to throw up. He laughed and said something about wild women and cheap whiskey as he left the room. Actually Dad told Angel to let me be. “He’s just growing up”. I didn’t realize it would take a lifetime to do it.

Calvin brought the horses and Will fed me a big breakfast and gave some to Calvin out the back door. It was that kind of time. There were three restrooms in most places Men, Ladies and Colored. Also in the court house there were two drinking fountains, White and Colored. Strange, but true.

The most powerful man in Memphis at that time was Ed “Boss” Crump. I went with Dad to his office down by the River one day. Dad said he wanted to get me a driver’s license. Mr. Crump picked up the phone and told somebody we’d be by later to get a license. He asked if there was anything else he could do. Dad said it’s those damn drinking fountains. When we are in the field we all drink out of the same dipper and I haven’t caught anything from those colored folks yet. How about removing the third fountain, or send it to the museum? Mr Crump grumbled a bit but the next time we were in the court house there were only two drinking fountains. There were still three bathrooms though. Dad was pretty powerful too. He was Secretary of State of Tennessee at one time. I didn’t know it then but I had just witness the first act of desegregation in the South that day.

Back to business, Calvin said there were some new girls and all of them wand to do it with a white man. I obliged and then I obliged some more.

It was quite a summer. Dad and I went over to the Shelby County Penal Farm for the Dove Shoot. I had my favorite shotgun, a Browning Sweet 16 with the plug out allowing me to have five shells in the gun instead of three. Now Dad had taught me how to shoot and the result was I was damn good shot.

The inmates would keep the birds flying and Dad saw three birds flying our way. He said “Fifty dollars he’ll get the triple”. I did, I always did. I was good and proud of it. After all, I was a prince, Henry III.

Summer ended way too soon and the next thing I knew I was in the back seat of a Buick heading for home. I looked back over the summer. Lots of sex, lots of riding, some drinking but, all in all, a very good time. I rode up to the highest spot on the farm and knew that someday I would build my house up here. Life was good, but summer was over.

Back in Texas I was given a marijuana cigarette at the Country Club by a guy who worked in the Men’s Locker Room. It was better than whiskey by a mile. I asked can I get some more? He said bring $20 to my house tonight and I’ll get you some. He said tell Otis you owe me the money so he won’t be suspicious. I stole the money from Mother’s purse and asked Otis to take me to Crecy’s place so I could give him the money I owed him. When we got to the “Cut”, our answer to Harlem, I got out and walked up the outside stairs to a long hall with doors on both sides. The first door I knocked on was answered by a huge black man. All I could really see was teeth and eyes. He said Crecy was three doors down. When he answered and I gave him the money, he gave me a bundle the size of a football wrapped in newspaper. He said don’t tell Otis what you’ve got; say some golf shirts or something. I left with my prize and got in the car. As we drove down Alameda I heard a siren coming. As it got nearer I threw the bundle up front. I said, “Here Otis, take this dope” about that time an ambulance passed us. After Otis had whipped me like a red headed step child, he said that you can go to prison for life for this as he was spreading all my marijuana on the side of the road. As I look back on that incident I remember that some of my dope buys were better than that one.

That was my routine in those days, Texas for the school year, back to Tennessee for the summer. Life was sweet for a Prince in those days.