Category Archives: Memoir

Kaddish Poem

21 Tuesday Jul 2015

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July 17, 2015

The old woman looks at the calendar. A frightened child, barely 14 years old, cries within the old woman.  Crying because both the old woman and the sad little girl remember that Friday, July 17th is the day and date her mother died so many years ago. Images, sounds and smells, faces and touch surround the old woman. She finds words, words melting into childhood remembrances, twisting and turning, becoming a poem. The old woman is me, sending the poem into the ether, releasing the child for all times.

THE SCREENED PORCH EVENING

The heat of the summer day
settles down on the evening with a crush.
The child chills her thighs
against the cool of the red clay tile floor.
She chews the end of her pigtail.
Waiting.

The Grandmother sluffs the porch swing
with her slippers
back and forth
back and forth
Waiting.

The Grandfather smokes
Between-the-Acts miniature cigars
hiding,
hiding behind the
Saturday Evening Post.
Waiting.

Cicadas cry from the oak trees.
Waiting.
Lightning bugs flash a signal
an alarm
Waiting.

The screen door slams open.
The Father, immobile in the doorway,
“The waiting is over”, he says.
“She’s gone.  7:15 tonight”.
He collapses into the arms of
the Grandmother, his mother.

“She’s gone”.
The Child’s Mother.
My Mother.

I stretch my legs, my arms
my chest, my cheek.
Finding the cool comfort of
the red clay tiles.
The cicadas cry.
Lightening bugs glitter.
Only me –
Alone.
Chewing my pigtail.

Friday, July 17, 1942

Breslaur’s Department Store

04 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by in Chicago, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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Breslauer’s Department Store

Stevie and Gus Breslauer , of Breslauar’s Dry Goods, were like Ted Anderson, a Hyde Park institution. Their dry goods store was a classic period piece with bare wooden floors, 1910-counters and glass cases. Merchandise stocked hither and yon but Stevie, like Ted Anderson, knew where to find exactly what a customer needed. She always remembered customers, and their children, by first names. She was the female spirit of the Hyde Park Business and Professional Association. Always cheerful at their weekly Tuesday meetings – ready to offer any and all comers a generous dry martini.

In the 1960’s, Breslaur’s joined other Hyde Park merchants moving to a locally owned and managed shopping center at 53rd and Woodlawn. Now called “Breslauer’s Department Store”, the shop was a good deal more orderly, with proper dressing rooms instead of a curtained off area, modern show cases, yet retaining the postal substation.

On a trip to Chicago in 1978 I stopped to visit former clients from the Kimbark Plaza. Harry Weinstein and the “G” brothers had retired, Gabe’s Men’s Wear was no more, Ted was out for lunch but his right hand man, George, remembered me.

I walked into Breslauers, asked a sales clerk if Stevie were around, giving my name. She walked to the back of the store, Stevie enthusiastically called , “I’ll be right out” She came “right out”, with some physical difficulty: She had a stroke and was struggling with a walker. Her warmth and generosity had not tarnished. . We talked, how did I like California, did I know Gus was gone? and so on. “Oh, excuse me,” she said, like old times when i was selling an ad. I watched when Stevie approached the customer, hobbling along as if the walker didn’t exist. “May I help you”? she greeted then turned briefly to me, waving her arm, “It’s good to see you, Marylou.” Come back later when I’m not busy.” — like the old days.

Hyde Park Federal Savings

28 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Chicago, Hyde Park Herald, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir, Uncategorized

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Hyde Park Federal Savings

In 1960 Hyde Park Federal was the first savings and loan in the United States to make loans on a non-discriminatory basis.

It was also among the few S & L’s which came into being from grass roots community action. In Hyde Park -Kenwood, the heart of innovative urban renewal planning, it was impossible to obtain a residential mortgage. If you were white, no Chicago bank would give you a mortgage because your home was on the same block with an African American family. If you were African American, you couldn’t get a mortgage on your home because of the color of your skin.

Tenacious Hyde Park and Kenwood families met together as they had so often done in the past – moderate income whites and African Americans raised sufficient money to open a viable savings and loan., They succeeded to the extent that other Chicago Area S & L’s saw Hyde Park Kenwood as a good place to invest. HPFS’ Board of directors was representative of the several racial, ethnic and religious groups in the community. The savings & loan opened 1961.

The following pages were designed to show a diversity of patrons of Hyde Park Federal. These ads- an idea of Bruce’s that I ran with- emphasized savings, illustrating this by what material item, as well as money, was saved. I dare think that Nancy Hays and I enjoyed researching and photographing these pages more than they brought in savings dollars. But fun it was and to this day, the pages are a bellwether of how Hyde Parkers think.

Hyde Park Federal ads, including one which won a coveted “”Hermes” award from the Chicago Federal Advertising Clubs, ran for two years. The series came to an abrupt end when Paul Berger-( the president of the board, ) learned his large lake front apartment was being converted to a condominium. He did not want the conversion, thus instituted a different series of ads protesting the “condominiumization” of Hyde Park.

I understand that today 80% of Hyde Park apartments have been
“condominiumized”.

 

Marylou says, ” the Feb 23-March 2 issue of NewYorker celebrates their 90th birthday of publication and is a great fun issue to read.”

(click on the images for a full size version)

Hyde Park bathtub lgs

WHEN SERVICE RANG A BELL: Sam Bell Shell

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Chicago, Hyde Park Herald, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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Gasoline cost 19 cents a gallon.

Chicago’s public broadcasting station WTTW has just begun. A former University of California-Berkeley professor of criminology was elected Sheriff of Cook County in a freak reform movement. The largest supermarket in the US was being built by the Hyde Park Co-op, a consumer-owned corporation. Laura Fermi, the widow of the man who invented the atom bomb, started the first clean air anti-pollution campaign and Early Wynn was pitcher for the White Sox World Series winning team.

The year was 1959.

All of these people, and more – some famous, some not – bought their gas, oil and car service from Sam Bell – a guy who changed his last name to rhyme with his Shell service station.  Sam’s and his gas station became a famous institution in the annals of Chicago urban renewal. He began his long association with Shell Oil as an accountant in their Loop offices. Unhappy with a desk job, he talked his way into a service station franchise. Sam located his Shell station at the northern end of Hyde Park- Kenwood at an intersection of two arterial streets with access and egress to the Outer Drive, Chicago’s lake front freeway. He had a fully equipped service station with three service bays, two gasoline islands, an inventory of tires, batteries, parts and accessories – with plenty of parking. Sam was compulsive about cleanliness. A grease spot was acceptable, but a rolling bottle cap was taboo.

Bell attracted drive-in customers with a bright red and yellow sign, “Buy Shell From Bell” showing the Shell logo superimposed on a bell. He joined and supported the local civic and business organizations: Lions Club, Kiwanis, Kenwood Chamber of Commerce, Hyde Park Business and Professional Association. His photograph appeared regularly in Hyde Park Herald news stories showing Sam as champion fund raiser for the YMCA, Boy Scouts, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cancer Prevention, etc. Sam was attentive to these ‘extra curricular’ activities from his desk, leaving the station for an occasional business luncheon or to attend all the White Sox home games. An ardent fan, he had box seats at Comisky Park. I, a mother as well as an ad rep for the Hyde Park Herald, was among numerous customers who presented Sam with a brand new baseball seeking signatures from the White Sox winning team Since nearly all the players were Sam’s regular customers. The autographed ball was delivered within a week to a delighted boy or girl.

Sam’s rules for service: never let a customer drive away without having his front and rear windshield cleaned, always check the oil, radiator and battery water; always check the tires. If a child were in the car, he or she was given a “Buy Shell from Bell” balloon. If one of Sam’s “boys” forgot any of these things, he got a thorough reprimand if not probation.
“This is not a filling station,” Sam yelled across the drive. “This is a service station. That’s service, S-E-R-V-I-C-E”. he spelled with a roar.
“Both windshields. Front and back. Got it?”
“Check the tires and water. Got it?”
“And every kid gets a balloon . Got it?”
If one of the “boys” didn’t get it, they weren’t at Bell- Shell very long. Sam had a record of the lowest turnover in personnel of any service station in the Midwest.

The Bell-Shell logo was ubiquitous on Sam’s give-aways: ice scrapers, matches, balloons, charge slips, service orders, shirts the “boys” wore. He managed a service station and that meant service: He kept a file to remind customers when they were due for an oil change, new tires before the tread wore thin or when battery warranties were almost up. He was a top-notch sales person but he was also a warm and caring mensch.

One blustery snowy January day I was in Sam’s office, just off the service drive, waiting for enough time to talk about his ads when we both looked out the window to see a new Cadillac trying to manipulate its way along the icy streets toward the station. Barely missing a telephone pole, skidding past a parking meter, an impatient driver pulled into the station, demanding gas in a hurry. Sam reached for his jacket, left the office with a hurried “excuse me”, and headed toward the sedan. He chatted with the driver through a slight opening in the window. Pretty soon, Sam motioned one of the boys over, whispered something, then invited the customer into the office to warm up with a cup of coffee while snow tires were installed.

The first time I met Sam had been on a similar freezing day. I’d recently joined the staff of the Herald and was getting to know new accounts – who they were, what they required. I was beginning to get a feeling for different kinds of merchants – the kind who was undecided and who took a great deal of time trying to figure out if they wanted an ad, and if so, what merchandise would they put in it. There was the passive- aggressive kind who would welcome me warmly, then immediately become busy with anything that wasn’t an ad, full well knowing that my job was just to be patient – forever, if necessary. There were the efficient ones who knew exactly what he/she wanted, what an ad should say, how it should look; Sam, who was always busy, knew precisely what he wanted in his Firestone ads: always his picture and the Buy Shell from Bell logo. It took time to get it all together. He would start a sentence, run out on the drive, come back, almost finish the sentence before he ran out on the drive again, only to return and complete his thought – as easily as if there were never an interruption. Sam was like an eight-armed Shiva.

There were times when Sam, or his boys, appeared to be literally, angels. If one were a Bell-Shell customer, they didn’t fool with AAA emergency service. AAA took five to six hours to come out and recharge a battery on a cold morning. Sam took at most an hour and a half. On just such a cold morning, my 1951 Plymouth wouldn’t start and I had the pre-school carpool that day. I called Sam – all four phone lines were busy. When I finally reached him, he told me he couldn’t possibly get to me for over an hour. He was really backed up. “But listen,” he said, ” if you can’t find anyone to pick up the kids, call me back”. Which I did. “Okay, okay,” he said, probably holding the phone with one hand and ringing up the register with the other. “Don’t worry,” his voice rushed. “Just tell the school to pin addresses on the children and I’ll send one of the boys over in my car.” Like Sam said, “we give service – S-E-R-V-I-C-E”

I get a lump in my throat whenever I remember that beastly cold day and the wiry little man (Sam wasn’t tall by the tape measure, but miles high by the heart) seeing that my kids and all the other kids got safely home. He was like that, not just for me, but all his regular customers. We were his family. Oh, he could get angry and he had a temper, but the edges were soft and tender, I either didn’t notice or forgot. Once he grew angry with me, not over advertising – he was always pleased with the Herald – but because I had brought a bottle of Scotch for the boys for Christmas. Sam rightfully blew up and made the boys return the whiskey to a sorely embarrassed me.

Sam Bell - windbagsSam’s photograph appeared in all his ads next to his “Buy Shell from Bell” logo. This self same photograph, in connection with one civic group or another appeared at least bi-weekly in the Hyde Park Herald. If there were ever to be a prize for the most photographed person in Hyde Park surely Sam Bell would win. Late one evening, after putting the paper to bed, my boss, Bruce Sagan, looked at the previous week’s sixteen page Herald and guffawed. Sam’s picture appeared four times: once in his ad, once with the YMCA, once for the Lions Club, and once for the Chamber of Commerce. “I think we ought to do a series of full page ads with just Sam’s picture on it”, I suggested in jest. Bruce could take the silliest of ideas and make them sail. “Hey”, Bruce said, “that’s a great idea. We can start off the series with some big-shot -like the Southeast Chicago Commission’s Julian Levi. We could picture him blowing up a Buy Shell from Bell balloon, with a headline that read: “Hyde Park Windbags gas up at Sam Bell’s.” After we finished laughing, we simultaneously said, “well, why not?” We knew it was not politic to ask Levi, who probably wouldn’t have admitted to being a wind bag anyway, so Bruce himself volunteered to be the windbag.

Bell Shell Tunes UpOur second ad showed Sheppard Lehnhoff, first violist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, getting a tune-up while Sam held battery leads to the fiddle. This particular ad also publicized a local chamber music concert.

Rus Arnold, a Hyde Parker and professional photographer, knew the ins and outs of photographing service stations and, an added asset, previously had worked for Shell. In a short while, Sam Bell’s ad pages became a community project. Organizations who wanted publicity for an event would call Sam or me, pleading for an ad. “Sam, we’re having an exhibit at the Art Center, can you give us a plug?” We placed a local artist with her easel and her palette filled with motor oil in the middle of Bell’s drive. The caption: “Painting with oils at Sam Bells”, For the Kenwood Annual Open House, we posed Sam at the station as a welcoming committee to two little girls with their a doll house. We had strict guidelines: each person (identified in ads with a Shell Credit Card) and had to be a bona fide credit card holder and the organization had to be not-for-profit.

Bell Shell - cookingWe – sometimes my family, sometimes the Herald staff, or sometimes Rus – had a great time inventing relevant and amusing ads. My favorite page regrettably, had an extraordinarily poor press run. One cold, snowy December day, my colleague, Ellen Shira, and I dressed up in choir robes, placed aluminum halos on our heads to pose with Sam in his Buy Shell from Bell uniform and cap. Sam held an oversized book, the cover of which read:, “Hyde Park Herald Angels Sing Season’s Greetings at Sam Bells.”We kept the series going three years, every other week, thinking up clever headlines. It wasn’t easy. Often quick-minded Rus saved the day, with Johnny-on-the-spot creativity, like the time it rained on an American Cancer Society shoot. Rus handed me the proof sheet, with his suggested caption: “Sam Bell Rains Support for cancer”. The photograph showed everyone under umbrellas.

 

The series ran until Shell refused to share costs anymore – Sam could not afford full pages without the help of the parent company. I made a special appeal to Shell national office for continued cost sharing which they refused. Even though a third of Sam’s customers had left the area, his total charge customers had increased by 40% – in part with new people moving into Hyde Park and in part with expanding his base within the community. In 1961, three years after the termination of the series, the first thing our new across the street neighbors wanted to know was, “where is that gas stations everyone says is so great?”.

The city planner maps and the claws of urban renewal bulldozers attacked Sam’s station. The street was to be re-routed, making it more efficient. A group of Hyde Parkers testified before the Planning Council urging that Sam remain at his present location and that the street be re-routed otherwise. Sam was, they felt, an important community institution. An uncomfortable compromise was reached. Sam was allowed to remain at his old location only until a new site could be found. Neither Sam nor the community knew at that time that Mr. Buy Shell from Bell was obligated to accept, without question, whatever location the city offered. Soon demolition began on the two main arteries which intersected at Sam’s corner, 47th Street and Lake Park Avenue. Streets were blocked first by demolition, then by construction. Furthermore, motorists never knew which streets would be open when. Sam lost customers when people changed their driving habits. Within a year, Sam was offered a temporary location: a contractor’s-type trailer adjacent to where his new station would be. It was heated by a kerosene heater, Sam had one gasoline island, only one service bay and parking space for a few cars. Worst of all, the site was in the middle of the block, making left turns in or out almost impossible. Only the vision of his new station under construction on a lot next to the trailer kept Sam going. He lost some of his “boys” because he didn’t have the service business to keep them. Faithful customers often had to wait in line. Sam’s former “Buy Shell from Bell” station was a pile of rubble.

That winter was as bitter as Chicago winters can get – especially as near to Lake Michigan winds as is Hyde Park. Snow, freeze, melt, snow, ice melt and thus the cycle went. Sam had difficulty getting snow plows on and off his drive. With his reduced crew of boys, he couldn’t keep up battery charges as he had once done. Bad times fed one another. Sam had a heart attack. A year and a half after Sam vacated his 47th Street and Lake Park location, he moved to his new permanent quarters. Despite the mid-block location and only two service bays, Sam opened the new station with fanfare. Members of civic organizations, elected officials, important people and neighbors all came. Sam’s small office was filled with flowers. Champagne flowed. Many people who had changed their gas buying habits, returned. Some did not. Sam tried to keep his old verve, but friends and loyal customers sensed a slowing down of energies.

Six months later, while greeting a customer Sam had a second heart attack. He never recovered. For a while, Sam’s son, Dennis, took over the station, but Dennis preferred indoor work. The station was sold.
I am sure that Sam is up there somewhere, at the Pearly Gates, watching as the angels come down to earth.
“Hey, you can’t let that angel out without polishing her halo.”
and
“Hey, be sure you preen those wings before you leave the Pearly gates.
“Remember, this isn’t just any old gate. This is the Pearly Gate to Heaven, where things are always done right.
“ Got that, Heaven. H-E-A-V-E-N !”

 

Build a Better America!

19 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by in Activism, Chicago, Civil Rights, Hyde Park Herald, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir, Uncategorized

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Build a Better America!

I believed that Hyde Park, the people who lived here and the organizations they supported would create the nation’s first interracial community of high standards. Moreover, I believed that only with a courageous newspaper, like the Herald, which serves as a means of communication and a catalyst for action, can Hyde Park succeed.

HPK - Build a Better America

School Friends Photo Courtesy of WoodleyWonderWorks @ Flickr

School Friends Photo Courtesy of WoodleyWonderWorks @ Flickr (this is not the original photo in the Herald piece, but I thought it was appropriate. ~Penny)

 

Just pause a few minutes to look at these children. Who are they? What are they? What are they doing? They are the very life blood of America … a heart which knows no color line, no religious differences, no social barriers. They are living and learning TOGETHER. These children know great things are not built alone. In their play they have discovered that two heads, regardless of faith or color, are better than one. So let the grownups pause long enough to think abut their own personal lives and those around them.

These words were written in 1953. At the time, they were considered by most of Chicago and much of the country as radical: “commie”- “red words”. For Hyde Parkers, they were words of belief in a community, words of promise and commitment. They are applicable today.

I believed that Hyde Park, the people who lived here and the organizations they supported would create the nation’s first interracial community of high standards. Moreover, I believed that only with a courageous newspaper, like the Herald, which serves as a means of communication and a catalyst for action, can Hyde Park succeed.

I was young when I wrote this- twenty-four. I believed in the power of the written word. I believed in the power of self determination. I still do.

ML 1956 1

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.

Goodbye Old Friend: RIP Pete Seeger

28 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Activism, Chicago, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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Lucia drove all the way out here from Oakland because she wanted to be with me at her home and with the grandchildren on Tuesday morning for Obama’s first Inauguration.  We watched the Lincoln Memorial on her lap top – a wonderful show and cried tears of happiness, especially for me when I heard Pete Seeger sing. Did you know that man has played an important role in my life since I first heard him in 1948 at the Progressive Party convention in Philadelphia when Henry Wallace was running on a Progressive Party ticket for president against Harry Truman? I once heard Seeger introduced as the only human being who would sing and talk at the same time.

Attached is a bit I wrote on Pete Seeger.  Please note:  It was written after watching Obama’s first inauguration.

JANUARY 21, 2009 10:30 PM

Three generations of Pete Seeger memories came rushing to eighty year old me as I watched three generations of singers: Pete, Bruce Springsteen and Tao Seeger sing at the Lincoln Memorial the Monday before Obama’s Inauguration.

I first saw Pete Seeger hold his banjo high, belt out “Ain’t Gonna study war no more…”. That was1948 on a movie (or was it early tv?) screen from at the Progressive Party convention in Philadelphia when Henry Wallace was a third party candidate for president against Harry Truman. Wallace lost, but a young Pete Seeger joined up with the Weavers: Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman . They topped the charts with “Good Night Irene” and “Tzenat, tzenat”

Then In the early 50’s, Sen. Joe McCarthy started a vendetta against anyone even the slightest liberal labeling them “Communists”, “Reds”, traitors. Pete was among the many entertainers who were black listed because he refused to testify before McCarthy’s committee. Consequently, Pete’s venues were cancelled, records were taken off the air and finding new venues was pretty near impossible.

Except for Hyde Park – Kewood, Chicago, that “hot bed of communist University of Chicago faculty “and the home of parlor pinks like me. There Pete found a concert home at our modest Kenwood Ellis preschool where he gave us many benefit concerts. I have multiple memories of multiple children sitting on my lap – a bright spot in those dark McCarthy years- listening to Pete, their small voices singing along with “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

One time Pete gave us parents an adult only concert with Blues singer, Big Bill Broonzy . Broonzy’s signature song was: ‘If you’s white, you’s alright,/ if you’s brown, stick around/ but if you’s black, get back, get back get back’). Broonzy, six and half feet tall, very black, played a 12 string steel guitar. After the concert we went our leftist friend’s home and stayed up all night listening to Seeger and Broonzy swap songs.

Pete’s first public concert, in the late 1950’s after McCarthy days, was right there in Hyde Park, that “hot bed of red communism”, the University of Chicago. Seeger kept giving encore after encore to an SRO house. When it came time to close Mandel Concert Hall, he led the entire audience out into a cold April day, all of us laying down our swords and shield, “Down by the Riverside”. We continued singing, bundled up on the steps of Mandel Hall until we froze up and decided to go home.

There followed concerts at orchestra hall, the phenomenal Weavers Reunion at Carnegie Hall. Both Seeger and the Weavers were back in the limelight.

In the late 1970’s, I saw Pete perform at the gym at Sonoma State University where I was re-entry student. A small child started crying, Pete stopped singing, walked down the aisle to the mother and child, sang a lullaby and the child went to sleep. He then returned to his presentation.

He sang at Berkeley High at Malvina Reynold’s memorial services singing Reynold’s songs and many of his own. Later, I took Lucia, my youngest daughter, who’d somehow never managed to see him (She had the flu or measles or something) to hear him sing with his grandson at Berkeley High. Then there was the time our whole family went to hear the Weaver’s Reunion at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley.

On Monday night in 2009. I learned for the first time, lyrics had been censored lyrics to “This Land is Your Land” – a song much used by Harry Truman in his 1948 campaign. There on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Pete sang these uncensored words in a hundred thousand voice sing-a-long:

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
“That side was made for you and me.

“In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
“By the relief office I seen my people;
“As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
“Is this land made for you and me?

“Nobody living can ever stop me,
“As I go walking that freedom highway;
“Nobody living can ever make me turn back
“This land was made for you and me.”*

When I look back over sixty-five years of hearing Pete Seeger’s voice of hope, of love, of compassion, I wonder if Pete isn’t an incarnation of Elijah, reappearing to bring peace to the world.

 

Gensie

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by in Activism, Chicago, Civil Rights, Hyde Park Kenwood, Memoir

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This was written in 1950, in the early days of Hyde Park’s experiment in creating a viable interracial urban community. The Hyde Park Kenwood Conference was a strong grass roots organization which joined together diverse ethnic and racial groups by means of block group meetings and social activities. This was a beginning of a time for the white population to listen to the peoples of color.

Gensie

We sat around Herb and Lenore T.‘s living room, ten or twelve of us, at a meeting of the Maryland Drexel block group of the Conference. Everyone was busy counting white faces. black faces and Asian faces. Nobody admitted, especially to themselves, that they were counting. People talked about rats in the alleys and street lighting; how Hyde Park must not become a slum and that we need to press for city services. All valid complaints, but an easy way to avoid talking about the real issues: race. Everyone was afraid to ask what if felt like to be black (a term not yet invented in 1950) or white. No one dared ask the University professor if he liked living next door to a Pullman porter. Or how the Pullman porter liked living next to the professor. The issues were there, but never placed on the table.

Until Gensie F. appeared at a meeting.

She was a small woman, stylishly dressed is a tailored suit with a shy feathered hat perched on her head. Her soft voice was commanding, so filled with quiet rage that the room stopped breathing.

“You folks think because I moved here and because my house was torn down by Slum Clearance ? That I lived in a slum? Do you honestly believe that Negroes bring slums with them? “Well, let me tell you something. I had a home that looked out on the Lake. Every morning I woke up early to watch the sun rise over that lake and into my house. In all the years I lived there, the Lake was never the same color twice; sometimes it was purple, sometimes it was green, and sometimes, in a fog, it was silver. “That’s the house they told me was a slum, I had three fireplaces with tile scenes on them: one had cupids, another knights and ladies, and another pyracantha leaves. My oak floors were beautifully refinished and every Saturday I polished my brass door knobs.

“One day this man I never saw before knocks and my door and tells me the Slum Clearance is going to tear down my beautiful home. He offered to buy my house for a third of what it was worth. I refused. He told me I had no choice. Slum Clearance would take my house with eminent domain.

So what could I do? I took the little money they gave me and went partners with my sister. We purchased a small house in Hyde Park. I come to meetings now and hear everyone talking about rats in the alley and not wanting to make a slum. Let me tell you: I never made a slum, I didn’t take a slum with me when I moved. And like a lot of Negroes, all we want is a decent place to live, to raise our families. Sometime, I drive past my where my old home was. Everything is gone. Instead, there are white only apartment buildings for the rich folks to watch the sun rise over the Lake. Evidently, that’s not for colored school teachers like me.