Monthly Archives: March 2014

Hats Off to Rose Dunn

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Chicago, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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Hats Off to Rose Dunn

Rose Dunn had a different hat for each day of the week, with extras to
match the films she was showing. She was more than manager of the
Hyde Park Movie Theater, she was the best show the theater presented.
Rose was one of those women whose single features were unattractive, but whose demeanor was so vibrant, so dynamic that she was surprisingly
beautiful. She had a nose with a large crinkle in the middle and a broad
mouth that covered her face when she laughed. Her eyes were small, but like her entire self, illuminated. She sparkled with life, wit, joy and on several occasions, violent temper. When her temper took hold, Rose put on a better show than the movies being seen in her theater.

She prided herself on bringing the finest foreign and domestic films to
Hyde Park, the only film repertory house on the south side and one of three in all of Chicago. She imported Bergman, Fellini, Trouffeau,  and Korasawa long before any other theaters chose to do so. She wore hats as a commentary on films: a Stetson hat for Stage Coach, a wild flowered thing for La Dolce Vita, a small beret with feathers for Jules et Jim and so on. Saturday nights the crowd admired Rose more than the films.

HP theatre

Her temper flared when an audience laughed at what she felt was an inappropriate place. She stopped the projector, stormed down the aisle, and announced in a voice which never needed amplification that this was a serious film and if anyone thought it was funny, they could leave the theater. On the other hand, she once showed a perfectly dreadful Hollywood film, filled with a fake hurricane on an impossible south sea island. Rose strolled down the aisle, with humility – which was an unnatural pose for her, stopped the projectionist, and confessed that this was the first and last time she would show a flick which her boss recommended without viewing it herself in advance. She offered to refund anyone the cost of their ticket, gave the audience permission to laugh when the film was pretending to be serious. No one asked for their money back but the boss fired her. The entire neighborhood protested. She was rehired.

Rose’s temper became fiercer and more unpredictable. Sometimes she flared at patrons for accidentally spilling popcorn in the lobby. Often she screamed at the staff of the Herald, blaming them when she missed a deadline. She screamed at her boss for not obtaining the movies she wanted when she wanted them. The firings became more frequent and the rehiring less. Ultimately, Rose was terminated for good.  She was devastated. She tried to form a cooperative to open another movie house but that effort failed. She tried to get employment at one of the North Side theaters, her good and bad reputation followed her. Rose fell into a depression, Few people saw her around the neighborhood. With a literal and metaphorical broken heart, at age 47, Rose Dunn suffered a severe coronary attack and died within twenty-four hours.
Her funeral service was private.
No one knows what happened to her hats.

Hats Off to Rose Dunn - edited

 

Dr. Gleason

18 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Chicago, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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Dr. Gleason

I vividly remember Dr. Gleason the year of the big blizzard. The time the Outer Drive was closed, the buses and even the Illinois Central commuter trains weren’t running. Twenty-four inches of snow fell in less than twelve hours. Everything was covered with masses of white, wet snow blown by the winds from Lake Michigan into fifteen and twenty foot snow drifts.

That is, everything was covered with snow except the sidewalk belonging to our across the street neighbor, Maurice Gleason. His sidewalk and driveway were pristine: spotlessly clean and dry. The minute more than a half inch of snow fell, the melting machines installed under Maurice’s sidewalk first melted the snow, then dried the concrete. We gazed out our windows, across the expanse of white which had been our lawn, across the street to see Dr. Gleason pacing the full length of his hundred foot sidewalk. He was a handsome fiftyish African-American man with light adobe colored skin and elegantly gray tinged side burns. He wore a maroon silk smoking jacket over dark trousers, shaking his head in disbelief as he strolled on his dry sidewalk from one fifteen foot snow drift to the other. He gazed at his garage door, at his clear driveway ready for him to back out the car, only to stop at street’s edge. There was no place to go.

We laughed and wondered if Maurice was also laughing – though we had our doubts. Ours was a laughter of both amusement and a good deal of self satisfaction – that Maurice had maybe finally gotten his comeuppance. He was such a perfectionist, which would have been all right if it were just about his house and land, but in the spring time, he would stroll over to our house, and point out the dandelions pocking our lawn. And winter time, as soon as those two inches of snow fell which activated his snow melting machines, he would come pester my husband, Tom, or me to tell Tom or my son, Steve that the snow needed shoveling.

As I look back, I recall that Tom and I were often derisive, poking fun at Maurice’s perfectionism. In retrospect, our attitude was racist. It was as though a rich African-American had no business telling white people how to mow their grass or shovel their snow. Back then, in the ’60’s, there was little or no understanding, much less an admission, of white awareness. Most white Hyde Parkers we knew were subtly sanctimonious about being neighbors to African Americans.

***
It was a pleasure to look across the street at the Gleason home.( See Hyde Park Federal page) It is now an official Chicago architectural landmark. Its melting machines were only part of its joy. The house was brick, half a hexagon which encircled three enormous weeping willow trees and was closed off from the street. All the rooms looked out on the willow trees. The interior had polished slate floors, heating pipes underneath. I recall being in the house once or twice in the twelve years we lived on 50th Street, and it was not for a meal. The neighborly exchange with our African-American neighbors was confined to the sidewalk. We lived next door to each other, but not really with one another. The three white neighbors borrowed a cup of sugar here, a muffin tin there. I have no idea what the African American neighbors did.

Dr. Gleason's Trees-edited

The Gleason family was the first African-American family to move into Kenwood.They purchased an older house, half a block away on Ellis Avenue before they built their present home with its the melting machines and willow trees. Tom, a great story teller, often related this version of the Gleason’s move into Kenwood:
The year was 1949. Maurice Gleason knew that he and his family were setting a precedent as the first African-Americans to move into the all white Kenwood neighborhood. The move was not without some apprehension, given the tenor of Chicago’s racial attitudes. The Gleasons experienced no problems on moving day- didn’t even see any neighbors, and with a sigh of relief, they went about unpacking their furniture and house-hold treasures. A couple of days after they moved in, Maurice, his wife Liz, and their daughter, Joy, were about to sit down to dinner when they heard the sound of many footsteps on their front porch. Fearing a white citizens council, Dr. Gleason sent his family upstairs for safe-keeping while he answered the door. Standing at the door were a half-dozen people- white men and white women. A woman stepped to the front of the group, holding an apple pie in her hands. She introduced herself, saying, “We’re neighbors. Welcome to Kenwood.”

 

Necie, A Love Story

08 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in Family, Memoir, Uncategorized

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NECIE, A LOVE STORY

By Marylou Hadditt

 

Necie told me she came into my life before I was born. She moved from rural Southern Georgia to Atlanta where found a job polishing silver at my father’s jewelry store. That’s when my mother met her.

“Missophie came up to me and said ‘Now, Necie, I like the way you work. And you smile friendly-like. You know, I’m in a family way and looking for somebody nice and pleasant to look after my home and my baby. ”

Mother told her what she expected in the way of cleaning and cooking, and when the baby was due. Since my mother had no experience with babies, she counted on Necie . Thus Necie joined our family, being at our home from before breakfast until after dinner. She was with us in one apartment, two duplexes, and ultimately our own house for twelve years. Twelve formative years for me.

I was never clear just how many children had been in Necie’s large family. There was a sister in Barnesville – a small town south of Atlanta full of pecan trees and cotton fields. She was called ‘Sister’ and had many children one of whom was named ‘Mary Louise’, after me. All during my growing up time my outgrown clothes went to that other Mary Louise (whom I never met). Often Necie would come into my room, and, in what I now call a blues voice, would shake her head, wave her hands across the clutter of my bedroom, and say, “Boo’sie, you got so much! Gimme some for that other Mary Louise. You don’t need all them toys.” And we would pick out things for that other child I only knew by distant reference – the Mary Louise with brown skin.

An educated woman, Necie finished high school which was rare in those Depression days. She never let anyone forget she was educated or that she came from ‘good’ stock. Her father had been a professor at Tuskegee.  Necie adored my mother, whom she called Missophie, as if Miss and Sophie were all one word. She had a hard time explaining to me, who never knew want, that my mother had grown up poor and understood what it was to be needy. Necie talked about ‘new slavery times’. the `1920’s and 1930’s and ‘old slavery times,’ prior to the civil war.

“When I talk to you about your momma”, Necie told me, “you got to listen and know I’m talking away-back times. Times when President Roosevelt was just new and Mrs. Roosevelt hadn’t even begun to speak out for Negroes and Jews. Lots of men were outta work. No jobs, no money. No houses for families to live in. And us Negroes had it worse’n anyone else. Yes, Jesus. Those were hard, hard times.

“You were too young then to understand ’bout those new slavery times. Back then, they’re weren’t many white folks ever gonna treat any Negro with respect. But your momma did. Missophie’d talk to me like I had feelings, just like she did. That I could cry and laugh and love and be mad. She even could see when I felt so sad inside that I thought I was comin’ apart. She understood all that in me. She was a great lady.

“That don’t mean she acted to me like she did to her white friends, or acted to me like I had lots of money like some folks she knew. Noooh! She always acted like I was a black woman, but she always acted with respect and manners. Sayin’ please and thank you. She’d give me days off and paid vacations that none of my friends got. Payin’ me a whole dollar a week moren’ anyone was getting. And a dollar was a lot of money in those days. ”

***

 

JUJU

Misssophie and I had our differences, but we mostly could work ‘em out. She was a real particular about her housekeeping, expecting me to keep the outsides of her pots as clean as the insides. And lemme tell you, with a gas stove they ain’t easy. She’d embroider all these fancy flowers on the sheets and pillow cases then expect me to iron ‘em smooth. Which I did. I don’t particularly like ironing, but I’m good at it.

When it came to you, Boo’sie, she went her way and I went mine. She knew I took a switch to your little teheinie, And I knew she spoiled you big,, she couldn’t do nothing but cry you misbehaved.

She was happy about you doing colored folks things , eating colored folks food, taking you home on my day off. There was one time she walked in and you and me we were just a truckin’ down that forty foot hallway for all we wuz worth. Missoophie sorta shook her head, laughed and laughed, went on back to her room. and never said a word.

We wuz getting along fine, for twelve years, till she hired that Cliffie woman to do the washin’ and ironin’. We didn’t get along from the git-go. She messed up your pretty little dresses when she ironed them, then she blamed it on me. She tole Missophie I was stealing and to this day, I don’t know why Missophie didn’t fire her.

Well now, she knows I use your Momma ‘s Kotex. Missophie told me I could and this old witch, she keeps peeking at me outta the corner of her, eye making believe she’s not looking when I take care of my female needs. I notice one day that a soiled Kotex I’d wrapped up and put in the wastebasket was gone. I didn’t think much about it then but it was strange. That ole witch done it. She up and took that Kotex with my blood on it to Mammy Oooma and got her to put a juju on it. Then when I wasn’t around, she crawled up under the kitchen, my kitchen mind you, the kitchen Misssophie made for me. She crawled up under that kitchen and put a juju on me.

That’s why that happened. I aint never gonna hit anybody over the head. Ceptin’ I did. I got so mad at Cliffie when she’s trying to tell me how to make biscuits for Sunday dinner that I picked up that biscuit sheet and Pow! hit that old witch right on the top of her head. And she being a full head taller than me, I had to reach up high to do it.

I never would of done it if that juju hadn’t been put on me. I tried to explain to Missophie about Cliffie, that it was Cliffie she should fire and not me. But she was a proud lady, your Momma was. She said aint nobody gonna tell her how to run her house. And once’t she made up her mind, there weren’t no changing it.

I called you, Boo’sie lots of times,. Don’t you remember? We both cried on the phone. I wanted so bad to work for Missophie and come back and look after my baby. She wouldn’t take me back, that weren’t what the good Lord had in mind for me.

I wasn’t about to go look for day work. Nobody’d ever treat me as good as Missophie and I sure didn’t want to get all close and lovely with another child and then have to give her up. So I went to beauty culture school and set myself up in a nice little business doing hair in my house. People liked the way I did them up and kept coming back. “God in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.”

Every Christmas, I sent Missophie some of my homemade fruitcake and she’ sent me some pretty jewelry from the store. Once I’d gotten my things outta my room, I never went back to that house.