It was great to be home with my mommy. Daddy too! ButI could only recall how mom would bring hot mashed potatoes and cold chocolate milk home from her job and feed them to me as I sat upright on her lap. I must have been less than two years old at the time. And now that I was with her again, and I had something to say about the matter, I would never leave again! In spite of the fact that my mom worked, she had a lot of time to spoil me. And she did just that. She was also a stickler for cleanliness. When she got home from work she would take off her shoes and walk across the linoleum floors. She did not want to feel any grit under her feet. And grit is second nature to Galveston. The whole town was covered with sand from the drenching floods that came from the beaches before the seawall was built. And even afterwards, because the wall did not shield the entire island, only about thirteen miles of the coastline..
Anyway when mom was upset about something that wasn’t done, I can still remember her saying, “ I’m gonna whip everybody! except Babydarling (That was me). And she would, too! It was great, being Babydarling. My sister and all of my brothers loved me and I loved all of them. The boys were kinda rough though. They would play “catch” with me often, and I was their ball. One of them would hold me over the front porch banister and throw me to another on the ground. Or they would hold me down while licking my face. I hated that! I could just hear them laughing, through my sobs and tears. They would never hurt me. I knew that! They were just boys being boys. But I cried a lot! So much so that my tonsils had to be removed before I was four years old. The doctor said that such an early removal might allow them to grow back.. And believe me, they tried. But they had to be removed, then.
Finally one day Mom came home and was fussing about something, when I heard that unforgettable tirade declaring, “I’m gonna whip everybody
from Babydarling on up!” Wow! That was a formidable revelation! I had seen enough whippings and I was scared to death. Cut’n Bea had already introduced me to a thrashing with a “quirt”, (a bunch of cowhide braids attached to a cut broomstick handle that yielded a ten-in-one lick with every thrust), when I told her a lie about what Betty and I did instead of going to Music Class like we were supposed to do. I thought I was more afraid of Betty ‘cause she had told me that “You better not tell either!” Well I had no way of knowing that Cut’n Bea would ask me first, where we had been, so I honored Betty’s threat. But the minute she was asked, Betty told the truth! And Cut’n Bea pushed her aside and grabbed me. “Cause you lied to me”, she said. And gave me what seemed to me to be a merciless beating. Well, that never happened again. The minute I thought I had done something wrong, I would run and find that quirt and take it to Cut’n Bea and tell her what I had done so that I wouldn’t get caught lying again. It worked.. Cut’n Bea never hit me again. And she didn’t need to! I was so afraid of whippings that I didn’t need anymore.
So when Mom suggested she was gonna get me, Too. I was petrified! I was so afraid of whippings that I hardly needed more than three or four in my lifetime. And that was more than enough! I remember the first time my momma got me. It was very near Christmas Day and my siblings were so busy doing Christmasee things around the house that they were paying no attention to the baby. (That’s me). They had been wrapping gifts and placing them under the live Christmas Tree. There was "Angel Hair" all over the tree and I wasn't allowed to get close to it. But one of them forgot to put the scissors out of my reach. When I found them, I sat in a corner and cut one of my braids off. I tied a ribbon around it and threw it under the tree. They never even noticed. That was, until Mom made them acutely aware of their neglect. She made me aware, too! It’s amazing that I ever picked up a pair of scissors again.
My dad would discipline us, too. But with me he was merciful. He only got me once or twice. I think he could see the fear in my eyes as I begged him not to whip me. So he didn’t. But he got my sister and my brothers, often. Both he and mom would be arrested for child abuse if today’s laws had been in effect then. But they were not, and we never felt abused. We knew our Mom and Dad loved us very much because they showed their love for us in so many ways. And in those days, everybody whipped their children “Because they loved them” was what they always said. Mom and Dad balanced the good and the bad in ways that the bad could never surpass the good.
That is why our house was always full. Three of my aunt’s sent their children to spend Summer’s with us every year. Aunt Cassie sent Lovey, Aunt Myrt sent Whistle and Zola, and Aunt Rebecca sent Benny Jr, Baby Brother, and Faye. Those last three were the youngest and the most spoiled. They cried a lot, but they came anyway. And years later, when the Café was opened, they still came so that they could help out there. We had a lot of company! All them folks that daddy had left behind in Blessing would come to our house in Galveston. Sometimes to visit, at other times, because they were working on something with my Dad. My Aunts would come too! Everybody knew that delicious meals would be prepared, so they came ready to eat.
Like I said before, my daddy was so smart. When he was home, He would always take Mom to work at 6:30 in the morning. She was working as a cook at the hospital until 3:30 in the evening. At 6:30 PM the day before, Dad would have every thing from under the hood of that car, stretched out on a bench on the side of the garage. He would be working under a very bright light that he had also attached to wires over the garage. I could look out of my bedroom window and watch him work late into the evening. There would be all kinds of screws and plugs and great big black rubber bands, I think they were called gaskets, and whatever else it took to keep that car going But always the next morning, he would drive Mom to work, on time. He was amazing! When he built the rooms downstairs for five of my brothers, he also built a single room for my oldest brother, who would be returning from the army in due time, and an office for himself. Daddy had a bunch of mail ordered books on electronics, and had made himself a radio shop to repair radios and small appliances for people. He liked working with his hands, and he had the brains to do that well. He was also an excellent cook. I think that contributed to the opening of the Café.
There was always a lot of cooking going on in our house. And if Mom was baking cakes, She almost had to supply the whole neighborhood. It was nothing for her to make a dozen cakes at a time. All of them light and fluffy and delicious. And she never used a recipe or measuring cup. Just had a knack for it. And I could lick the bowl while my brother licked the spoons! There was so much cooking and food that we looked forward to the rare Sundays when we ate sandwiches and drank Kool Aid. That was my favorite time. We could sit along side of the house, like a picnic and really have fun. Or we would pack up the truck and go to the beach where we would spread everything on blankets and eat while wading in the water. Mom, Dad, and Aunt Laura would be watching along with whoever else came along. And of course, there would be watermelon for Mom. She loved it! I remember how she would sit on the porch in the evening when all of us kids would be playing in the street. (That was our playground and there weren’t a lot of cars because most of the people were too poor to afford them) how she would watch us while she ate watermelon.
Galveston had unique posts on all the corners with the street names on them. There were also telephone poles, light poles, palm trees and occasionally a fire hydrant. We used all of them to play our games, or we might play Hide and Seek or softball. Whatever games we chose to play, it was always a lot of clean fun. And somebody's parents were always on a porch making sure we were safe. During the early afternoons I spent a lot of time walking. I would walk to Aunt Alma and Uncle Abe’s house or to Aunt Myrt’s. Aunt Alma ‘nem didn’t have any children. They always reminded me of Those people standing with that pitchfork between them, American Gothic I think the picture is called. And they didn't eat white bread. I hated Whole Wheat Bread. But Aunt Alma always had home made chocolate chip cookies. Uncle Abe took them to work everyday and there was always some in a cookie jar she kept on the table. Aunt Myrt, on the other hand, had five daughters. Two of them always lived with her. Two others with two other families, and one went back and forth between one of those families, Aunt Essie, and us. She was the youngest. I enjoyed those walks. Along the way to Aunt Alma’s, there were Oleander trees and Acorn trees and of course, Palm Trees. There were beautiful yards with lots of manicured grass. I would take off my shoes and let the cool grass blades wiggle through my toes as I trod thru the grass looking for Four Leaf Clovers. I had heard that to find one would bring good luck so I was always looking for them when I wasn’t clicking a stick along the white picketed fences along the way.
Going to Aunt Myrt’s house was quite a different adventure. There weren’t any picketed fences nor was there grass. And a very few trees. Not a Palm Tree in sight. And, I had better not take off my shoes! She lived in an alley. The frame house she lived in faced the back of houses that looked the other way. They were frame apartments painted with a yellowish color that made them look adobe like. From the alley you could enter them from an archway that led to the courtway in the front. Some of the kids we played with lived in those apartments but no one seemed to be any better off than anybody else. I never visited any of them because I could only go to Aunt Myrt's and no where else. The place where Aunt myrt lived was by any standard, the ghetto. There was a porch and stairs that led to an apartment upstairs. but she lived on the bottom floor. The house had not been painted in years, The toilet was on the outside and there were only two rooms. She lived there with two of her daughters. I visited them often because we were about the same age and my own sister was four years older than me. And in her mind, way out of my league. She and her friend Doris, didn’t want to be bothered with me, and they really did not want to be bothered with our cousin, who had come to live with us because her mother had been killed. She was eleven or twelve at the time, very tiny and very shy. It would take about an hour for her to eat a half of a sandwich.
Although my sister was sometimes indifferent when it came to sharing her friendships, she and I never had any serious disputes. We got along beautifully, much better than a lot of siblings. We would buy magazines like "Bronze Thrills", "Jive" and "True Confessions" and all kinds of comic books. She was into the romantic kinds while I preferred Superman, Plastic Man, Rubber Man and Batman, anything with action! We would read them before going to bed until my daddy made us say our prayers and turn out the lights. That would be no later than 9:00 P.M. Days When she finished her chores and homework, Sister would listen to the radio. I remember how she would write all of the words to songs she liked so she could memorize them. But she really could not sing! She just loved listening to them. And she loved listening to George Prader. That was our own Black Disc Jockey in Galveston who was also an invalid. he was propped up on a bed next to a large window in his house where the public could watch him while he was broadcasting on station KGBC. He could only talk because he was paraplegic. Everyone in Galveston loved George Prader. He was the first Black Disc Jockey in Galveston and in Texas.
Now my sister's relationship with my cousin, well that’s another story, and I don’t think it was very good. There was a lot of work that had to be done and my sister and cousin were the ones that had to do it. And whereas my sister was an efficient worker, my cousin was not. She had been an only child, probably spoiled, and knew nothing about taking care of any household. Especially not one as large as ours. So she only half-did things and my sister bore the blunt of the lashings because she had been taught how to do everything. Besides, She didn't appreciate having to share everything she had with a cousin that she didn't even know. Then there was the laundry. A major task at our house. There was so much laundry that some of it had to be done every day. That is except Sundays, of course. So when the washing was done we had to use not just our clotheslines, but three of our neighbors lines to hang all the clothes. Fortunately we had a washing machine now, and we had a pressing machine too. That was a machine that allowed one to sit down to operate it with the knees. You would place the clothing between two rollers which would turn with the touch of a knee lever. The pressure with a little steam, would yield items that were neatly pressed and ready to be folded. I was very young but I would do that sometimes. Things that had to be Starched and ironed was my mom and sister's and cousin's job. Sometimes my Aunts would help out with that too! But mostly it was on my sister. I can understand why as soon as she finished High School at the age of fifteen that she got a job working at the John Sealy Hospital, too! I don't think she ever really considered college at that time because at eighteen she got married and had eight children of her own before her twenty-fifth birthday. But that didn't deter her! She learned how to cook as good as my mom and dad so when they opened the cafe, she was the evening chef. And that's not all she did. Not only did she become a single mother with seven living babies after her devorce, she became the first black woman to intergrate the Postal Service in Texas; and after completing the necessary courses, she became a Registered Nurse at that hospital where she had begun her career many years before, all of this as a wonderful, loving, doting, mother. My sister was a "Phenominal Woman"!
Sometimes, my brothers had to help with the dishes and floors, and they had to clean their rooms downstairs. I can remember that my oldest brother would pull the shades down so no one could see him doing kitchen work. But mostly they worked outside of the home. They threw papers, worked in the bowling alley and corner store. They became golf caddies, raked leaves, mowed lawns and did all sorts of things to earn money to help mom and dad with houshold expenses such as buying there own clothing and shoes. My dad tried to interest them in radio repair or whatever else he was doing, including learning scriptures, but they were not interested. So as long as they were obedient and were in the house by eleven, he did not interfere. They all had bikes. There were so many bike wheels, innertubes snd rubber bands that they used to bound papers and throw them that underneath our house was like a biker's hangout. All of their friends spent a lot of time down there fixing bikes and making fun things like sling shots and wooden guns which when used with a clothes pin could shoot a rubber band several feet with a hard sting. We had several Chinaberry trees around our house which yeilded hard, green uneatable berries which became the pellets for their armory. All of my brothers eventually served in the armed forces of the United States of America. Five actually saw active duty while one, the youngest, was in the Reserves. My daddy passed in 1956 at the age of fifty-eight after twenty eight years of marriage. The oldest and the youngest of my six brothers preceded my mom in death by twenty-six and twenty-seven years
When I stayed the night at Aunt Myrt’s, the three of us, me and her two daughters had to share a cot. It’s funny how as children, that never bothered us. I had to sleep between the two of them because they both wanted me to be next to them. And it was a cot meant for one person! I guess it was alright because I have no memories of it being otherwise. Aunt Myrt would make us bathe and then she would straighten our hair. And we would spend the day playing with other kids in the alley. It was always much better when they came to spend the night with me. I had lots of toys and the house and bed were bigger. And there was a lot of food. I know I must have eaten something at Aunt Myrt's house but I don’t have a single memory of what it must have been.
The only problem was there was no one to help me look out for my things like cut'n Bea had, and since they didn't take care of their own things, my dear cousins would break or take mine. As early as 1945 I had an electric stove. It had an eletric lightbulb that heated it. I loved that stove but I didn't get to enjoy it long. My little cousin Zola, borrowed it for a school play. I never got it back. A rat bit the nose off of one of my dolls that had been put away in a closet, and within weeks of my return my dishes were gone. The only dishes that lasted was a tea set Cut'n Bea kept on her coffee table. She told me she would keep it for me until I returned. It was there until she died. No one informed me of Cut'n Bea's death for several months. That has always been a twinge in my heart. She really made a lasting impression on me, and I did love her, you know. And I never did get those dishes back.
To Be Continued....
I also became the owner of a cuddly Shih tzu puppy in April 2009. I call him Oreo because of his beautiful black and white coat. I “adopted” one of the daughters of the Lady who sold him to me and am presently mentoring her in my home. Her name is Lela and she is a beauty, too! There will be more about her later. 
