Cherie Lynn ~ Chapter 2 ~ Me Too 1950s

Cherie Lynn Chapter 2 1950s Me Too

Don’t remember much. What I do remember most clearly were traumatic incidents.

Like the speedometer in my dad’s car, and the two-lane country road we were speeding along, pushing 70 80 miles a hour to get me back home. I was small, I don’t know, I was close to him on the bench seat and I think I did not say a word. I only remember being scared. Just everything was a feeling of scared.

He had passed out drunk, or napped to sleep off some of the beer and whisky, at his friend’s house in the country. It was the 4^th of July and he took me for the outing and this was my first day of memory of #Me Too and the man smelled and he had Black Cat Firecrackers.

That Man. I could kill him now. He, of course, is long dead, and I think one cannot get in trouble for threatening a dead man. The drive was not that far, and I think this must have been something like the family’s river place so this was maybe on the Coosa or Warrior rivers, not too far but out in the countryside.

I remember once later going to the man’s house, another time, and there he sat in all his fat-f-ness and I remember my Daddy Sam asking, “do you remember…?” I was frozen in place and I would not have dared to not answer so I likely mumbled, “yes sir.” Gray headed and fat, one of the Union brothers. But I cannot hear the words any longer in my memory of what name he said.

I can see the den in their house in town, some place like Forestdale or West Birmingham and his family there, wife and at least two other people. I can also see the country house, the yard out back with the bar-b-que and I remember the toilet inside and then I remember that bedroom and the chifferobe with the bottom drawer with firecrackers and the door with the full length mirror and my and his reflection in the mirror. Him behind me wanting to feel and look and make me look at those black cat firecrackers – I still see them in nightmares.

Shake, rattle and roll, breathlessly – why write about the 1950s in Alabama, the lessons in dirty old men that love to molest little girls – and boys.

I could, I could kill him now. I could not kill him then, but in hindsight, I wish to kill the memory. Even my emotional innocence, and the awful feeling of dirty and yucky. And off every man jerk after that, who wanted to steal something – steal a feel, steal a kiss, steal more than that.

A thousand years later, in another life, there was learning to get the V (for victim) to disappear off my forehead. The new age psychology idea that when one gets scared, they get a “look” and from that look a perp knows a victim and then knows to prey on that person. There was the idea that later in life one might be attracting the wrong sort and “asking” for it.

Fuck that – did they mean like when encountering a mean growling dog and you shit yourself, and exude fear scent from the depths of your soul, and the dog tries to bite you? Is that the thing one needs to learn to control – to control one’s “look” in the face of a “bad man”. The new-age ideas are wonderful but they also have not been perfect and I think the wearing the victim is really just a ploy by defense attorneys to discount female testimony and credibility. But when I was little I had better sense than to ever try to even tell on anybody, much less have anyone charged.

My daddy was a classic southern bad boy, good looking, great dancer and had you rolling on the floor with every one of the latest jokes (many of which would not be told in mixed company [except by him] and many utterly politically incorrect). Devout White Supremacist from a family that was mixed, it was bigots v Quaker-like weird.

Daddy Sam’s Daddy, my Daddy Paw was from outside of Dayton, Tennessee and although the family moved when he was just a child, he followed the news of Dayton as if it was still his home, and through to my upbringing and education he took the side of the teacher in the Scopes Monkey trial. Daddy Paw believed even Catholics could go to heaven and that Black people were OK as neighbors and why on earth couldn’t I go to school with them anyway?

Mamma (my grandmother, Daddy Paw’s wife) on the other hand, bless her heart, was one of the collaborators, whose ever company she was in, she was 100% for exactly what they believed. And when it came to two opinions in the same room, Harry’s, Daddy Paw’s, always lost out to her sister’s, Mary Ethel’s, and her son’s, my Daddy Sam’s. Pearl’s, AKA Mamma’s, family, especially her sister, Mary Ethel, were lily white and blue-eyed bigots of the first order did not care much for Harry and his ideas.

They did not go to the same churches. And even though Harry was still preaching at the missions in Birmingham and Bessemer, on occasion, (they worked at their accounting business in Birmingham) they did not go as a family for his preaching visits. I remember going when he went to preach for the dinner services. The homeless men and the hobos and the travelers were treated to a service, with sometimes visiting preachers, like Harry, and then dinner. There are a few memories of him guest preaching at church also, but I more recall the times downtown in those years.

There was always a dinner to be shared and there was never a time when I ever had ill feelings from any of the people I met and we ate with. Harry’s sermons were more love and glorious G-d, and Pearl’s church was more like, ‘you even think a sin’, and you are going straight to a burning infinite hell.

The 1950s (and very early 1960s) of mine are so clouded and influenced by events of later years, I can hardly separate the feelings to say what I thought and saw at the time. Once I understood how the blacks were treated in Birmingham, Alabama then it is impossible for me to talk about being a little white kid who was free to roam around Birmingham, like I owned it. Harry’s and Pearl’s accounting firm was in the Brown Marx Building on the second floor. What fun it was to get pocket money and being allowed to go to Dewberry’s fountain for a cherry coke, I had no clue Black people were kept away.

I remember at church (Pearl’s church) there was an occasion where everyone was to invite and bring someone to church with them who was not a member. I invited John Henry Brown, the, African American neighborhood yard man and Graymont (and later Hoover Academy) school janitor, and I still remember the look of surprise on his face. And when he said he could not come, I got so upset and began to cry, ‘why wouldn’t he come?’ He had to walk me to the house to my grandmother, and explain. Another one of the countless times I remember, where not just Pearl, but also John Henry, thought me – just not right in the head.

I loved Great Aunt Ethel, Mary Ethel the most, and to this day, I can hardly describe her from the 1950s or 60s or 70s.  Many memories are there of her, from the first days of life’s memories, but I can’t hardly get them out without the later memories blotting over everything.

She wore April Violets eau de toilette, she gardened, not just gardened, she grew food and lots of it. She drove a boat but never a car and she caught and cleaned fish. She was one who rocked me, as my favorite thing to tell of my rearing, was that I was rocked until my feet drug the ground and she was one of the main rockers.

But oh my lord she was a terrible bigot and I had no clue until one evening in about 1977, maybe, but certainly between 1976 and 1979.

Between my time at my Step father’s restaurant (Riteway Drive-In, 7^th Avenue So), and then a few years, including some kitchen work, at the local delicatessen and catering service (Browdy’s in Mountain Brook), then working for hotels and in kitchens as a young adult, I had the history of producing nice food. By that time I was working in an office in sales and service (Elmwood Cemetery), and Ethel and Arthur were all but shut-in, but each week on Wednesday night the church people sent one crew or another by for fellowship bringing the Wednesday night service to shut-ins.

So I was set to cook and Annie (surname is utterly unknown to me now, please don’t scold me, I just can’t remember, but I bet I might get it) who had worked for Ethel and Arthur for years was to help set and clean, did a lot of the cooking with Aunt Ethel and then I came in with some specialties. I also do not remember what I made, it must have been some standard of mine, but I just can’t say.

Annie, the African American maid and semi nursemaid had worked for Ethel and Arthur for years and years. Especially once Arthur got his Cancers of the face as well as feet and then leg and later legs and then amputations, Annie worked more and more to help get him bathed and fed and moved around and Annie was no spring chicken herself. I remember her always as a lovely lady who wore spotless white nurse dresses and for cleaning changed into a house duster and then back. But certainly for service she was in her best whites.

Annie laid out the spread, under Ethel’s direction, as a buffet in the Dining Room, with the fine china and silver (maybe plate, I am not sure). We got them all fed and then the dinner dishes washed while the visitors took dessert. I can see the table in my mind’s eye but I just can’t see the dishes to name the menu.

I was starving and Annie had to be. So I made us both a plate and took them to the kitchen via the pantry. I set each across from each other on the kitchen table and told her lets eat something, I am starved.

‘Oh no’, Annie protested but I insisted, like one girl friend joking to another, ‘now you sit right down and eat’, and she sat. I said we should not finish washing up, we should stop and eat, but I didn’t really see, or understand her reluctance. I poured us both iced tea and sat down to eat, and whispering to not be overheard to disturb the church fellowship folks and Ethel, and Arthur, I proceeded to talk about the success of the dinner. They were on their dessert and coffee and we had earned ours, then Aunt Ethel walked back to the kitchen.

It was like one of those sci-fi movies where some creature from the 7^th level of hell turns from a golden haired, blue-eyed, lily white lady, into a snarling, beet-faced monster spewing venom. Quietly though, as to not be heard by the folks in the Living Room, and I could not believe my ears.

This woman who had rocked me until my feet drug the floor, who dabbed April Violets perfume on me, who taught me to plant food and even propagate violets was grabbing Annie’s plate, saying she blamed her, because she knew better. Aunt Ethel took her fine china dinner plate, and slammed it on the sink’s edge to break it, and ordered Annie to clean it up. She pitched out the silver (maybe plate), slung the tea out of the glass, and threw it in the garbage can under the sink.

Then I felt sick. From the floor of the under-sink cabinet, beside the garbage can, Aunt Ethel pulled out a plastic bag, like one of those clear bags a man’s shirt might come from the dry cleaners in, and inside was an aluminum pie plate, like a throw away pie plate might come from the grocery, and an old knife, folk and spoon. Ethel said, ‘she eats off this, and she eats on the back porch, not in my kitchen.’ I wanted to throw up.

Ethel left the kitchen and I began begging, sorry, over and over, to apologize to Annie, there were no words at this display of terror. And, it dawned on me also, that Annie had been unable to say no to me, and I realized how horrible that was for her.

Years later, when Fairfield (I think it might have been 44^th street) had integrated, Arthur had died and Ethel moved to be nearer her daughter. Annie bought the house, I believe with Ethel holding the mortgage, I just don’t know. By then I had run away from home for the last time (last time thus far).

The 1950s were my formative years but they only made me into a split person like the two-faced G-d Janus, each face looking a different way, following a different path.

This duality was in my life and I was no angel of Quaker Puritanism, I had my bad period(s), bad jokes, bad language and bad company, I tried to fit and collaborate. But who I call ‘bad’ now were best catches for 1970s Alabama, but what I caught was bad habits and rude behavior and even for a while the way people said my name changed, like I was changing. I will never forget when I said the N word one day, although with no malice, and although out of character for my language, I said it in front of an African American, who I called a friend. To this day I wish my tongue be cut out over the hurt I saw on his face. I had learned the jokes were terrible, all of them, the ethnic, the race, the poor folk. I had learned about the pain of so many and still I had more to learn, more bad to wrench out of myself.

I quit telling jokes of any kind, and soon after this time of speech I began to run away in my mind again, and soon after made it happen in reality, I was not only not telling jokes but I lost my sense of humor.

That day in Fairfield, I felt a deep hate, for myself, for anything in me that came from that hate. Everything had come crashing down around me. I was just as bad as they were and worse because I knew, I knew better.

Life was ruled by Janus. On the one hand, several family members called me an N-lover, and on the other I got drunk and divorced, again and again. I was not allowed in my mother’s home, my stepfather more than once pulled a gun out and pointed it directly at me screaming I would not come in the house, not that N-lover, not in my house. My father felt the same and only within days of their deaths did my stepfather and father cry for forgiveness and of course I gave it.

The 1950s little girl remained in the way of my living in my childhood home or anywhere else. But I moved anyway. I began running, as fast, and as far as I could, to get away from myself.

My Me Too did not end in the 1950s. I had a bad one about every decade. I hated myself and all my frailties and failures and through the 90s I did not stop being that scared victim that wore the V on their forehead, I did not leave behind the baggage of my inner child, I had left my inner child behind, too scared to move forward.

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-1950s-car-speedometer-310499339.html

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