A Most Unique Storyteller

By Calvin Lee Tolbert

Calvin Tolbert, Baltimore MD, Author body, td, th { font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px }

Calvin Lee Tolbert authored "A Most Unique Storyteller" to capture his past experiences, history and youth in Baltimore Maryland. The story is told through Calvins poems, anecdotes, thoughts, short stories and even an original play. His work was the result of influence by the group of senior citizens at the Waxter Center in Baltimore in 1994. Their project was to capture the past before it is ALL forgotten.

The July/August 2004 edition of the magazine, FORE WORD, which reviews good books, independently published, quoted Calvin Tolbert:

"An overview of my existence and survival behind Lady Baltimores soiled skirts and complicated community life until enforced civil rights."

"A Most Unique Storyteller"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 6, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469107585

Calvin Lee Tolbert

Calvin Tolbert is a native of Baltimore, MD.

Book preview

A MOST UNIQUE

STORYTELLER

Calvin Lee Tolbert

Copyright © 2004 by Calvin Lee Tolbert.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

22247

Contents

ANECDOTES

IT’S GETTING DARK IN HERE

KEEPING THE LAMPS LIT

AROMA RAPTURE

THE LADIES IN THE PARLOR

IRON TAG

OUR ALLEY STREET

ELBOWS, NECK, AND KNEES

THE ICE BOX

THE TRIAL,

THE TRIBULATION

TO MARKET-TO MARKET

IN THE STREET

NARRATIVES

NAVY DAZE-I THINK

MY LIFE’S SECOND GREAT TURNING POINT

ME-THE MODEST MODEL

I BABEL ON

SOCIAL CHANGES

POEMS

WHO AM I? YESTERDAY,

TODAY, AND TOMORROW!

TIMES AND TIDES WAIT—

SCRUB-A-DUB

SUMMER’S EVE

THE DINNER

THE SEASON: THE REASON

THE OLD AND THE NEW

IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM

SUNSET: SAILS

SHORT STORIES

SLOW, AUNT MOE

CHARLES THE GREAT

WHAT IF?

THE O.R. SNIP, CUT, AND SEW

A GUN IN JUNE

A

WORK

IN

PROGRESS

SHALL WE DANCE?

CHARACTER STUDIES

ACT 1 SCENE 1

PLACE: SKIPSTEP’S STUDIO

ACT 1 SCENE 2

BLACK OUT

ACT 1 SCENE 3

ANECDOTES

IT’S GETTING DARK IN HERE

IT’S GETTING DARK IN HERE.

I think I’ll go over and stand by the window until Miss Bessie comes upstairs.

Earl, come on! Earl is my brother. He is older. I’m five, and he is six.

We live all the way upstairs, and ant Carrie and our cousins live downstairs. All the way down, on the first floor, is a Chinese laundry, and ant Carrie and Miss Bessie work there all day.

Our cousins, Bertha Rose and Daisy, carry us around to ant Dell’s house every day, and we play in the yard until they bring us back home before dark. They fix our supper and stay until they hear ant Carrie and Miss Bessie slam the front door and start the slow shuffle up the steps. They would rush down to their apartment to meet their mother and leave me and Earl until Miss Bessie comes upstairs and put us to bed.

IT’S GETTING DARK IN HERE.

I wish she would hurry up and light the oil lamps. Those things in the corner are getting bigger and inching closer.

Earl, come on, and let’s look out the front-room window.

I grabbed his hand and pulled. I don’t want him to know how scared I am. Some light is still coming from the outside, and we can still hear people laughing and talking. It’s not so lonely when grownups are around.

Miss Bessie always stops at ant Carrie’s before coming up the steps to our floor.

I’ve got to catch my breath, she says every night, and rest my feet after standing all day ironing clothes before I can tackle another flight of stairs.

Earl and I sleep in the front room where there are windows.

The grownups sleep in the middle room. The back room is where the steps go up into the kitchen.

We would go out on the landing and peep over the railing, waiting to hear the chairs down there scraping the floor and sliding back. When we hear her slow footsteps dragging across the floor, we would always scoot back into the kitchen and wait for her to come in and light the big oil lamp sitting on the kitchen table. Gee, she’s standing down there in the doorway, talking to ant Carrie.

IT’S GETTING DARK IN HERE. Earl, you go to the steps and call her.

I try to pretend I don’t see those things in the corners waiting to grab us; they are getting closer all the time. Oh boy, here she comes now. I’m so glad she’s almost up here. I’m going to run over and grab her around the knees and just hug and hug her.

Earl, why can’t we call her mama like Bertha Rose and Daisy call ‘ant’ Carrie?

I don’t know. I heard her tell somebody the other day it was because we came so late in her life.

He looked real puzzled, and so did I. It seems to me we are always waiting. I don’t ever remember being late for anything.

KEEPING THE LAMPS LIT

We saw the lamplighter come down the street every night at dusk to make sure the gas lights were lit. He carried a ladder over his shoulder and a bucket on his arm. If the clear glass globe that protected the flame was soiled or smokey, he would wash it.

My brother Earl, who was six, and I, a year younger, tried our best to equate him with the wise and foolish virgins. This may sound strange to you, but it puzzled us at that time, as I seem to remember.

In 1929, my aunt had a large rooming house on McMechen Street. We lived on Pennsylvania Avenue, about a block and a half away. Every day our mother would leave the two of us boys and my sister, who was just a year old, at my aunt’s for the day and return to get us in the evenings.

After breakfast, ant Dell would keep us occupied by cutting up the used brown paper sacks and giving each of us a pencil and instructing us to draw.

She would go to all the bedrooms in the house and collect their oil lamps, and then she would line them up on the kitchen table and proceed to clean them. She would trim the wicks and refill the bowls (bases) with kerosene, or coal oil, as we called it. The thin glass shades were washed and dried with old newspapers.

Every day, as she worked, she would recite the parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins to us children seated there at the table.

Having absolutely no idea what virgins were, we thought the lamplighter was one. After all, didn’t he clean the lamp, trim the wick, light the light every night, and go off to meet, as we thought, the bridegroom who cometh?

AROMA RAPTURE

When we were five and six years of age, my brother Earl and I did everything together. In fact, most people thought that we were twins.

We had to go to Sunday school at seven in the morning and then return home for breakfast. The church was at the end of our block, with a few buildings around the corner. As the larger children came up the street, they would gather up the smaller ones, and we would walk together. They would bring us back after the Sunday school classes and drop us off at our doors. I can’t remember the classes as well as I can recall that Sunday-morning stroll.

As we walked along, there was an overall feeling of comfort as I was slowly overtaken, overcome, and overwhelmed by the all-enveloping smells of breakfast being prepared in the various homes that we passed.

In every house, people were baking fresh rolls and loaves of light bread, and the aroma was heavenly as it floated through the open windows. Everyone used a black iron skillet, and when it was hot enough, they would put the country bacon on to fry. As it sizzled, the smell of frying pursued me down the street through the church door.

Lordy, lordy, I prayed, just let me make it back home in time for breakfast. The ultimate, the most seductive, and (to me) the most impressive fragrance was from the coffee-the one thing that was forbidden to us children. We were told that it would stunt our growth.

Most households had a blue, black, or grey granite coffee pot that sat on the back of the coal stove and kept that potent brew hot at all times. In our house, the pot was filled with cold water, and the coffee was spooned directly in, then set to boil. Whenever we had eggs, the shells were put in the pot to do something to the flavor. I understand now, coffee was considered too expensive to waste on children.

When we rushed back home from Sunday school, our breakfast would always be waiting. Somehow the corn flakes and milk never seemed to fill that longing we had for a grownup’s breakfast.

It certainly never stifled the pangs of desire and the daydreams that had me drooling in anticipation that never seemed to be fulfilled.

THE LADIES IN THE PARLOR

My brother Earl was six, I was five, and our sister, May Ruth, was one. This was the summer of 1929, and every day, our mother left us at ant Dell’s house on McMechen Street when she went off to do her day’s work at the rich lady’s house.

The baby slept in a box that rested on two kitchen chairs by the back door. There was constant traffic in and out as everyone used the back alleys in those days. So there was always someone to keep an eye on the baby and us, the two boys, playing in the backyard.

Every morning, ant Dell would clean the parlor. One day, she called the two of us boys in, gave us each a rag, and taught us how to dust the legs, rungs, and bottoms of the chairs, tables, and sofas. When she finished, the shades were drawn against the strong sunlight, and the summer drapes were pulled together. A soft glow filled the room as the door was closed. This room was covered with warm plush. It was a flower-scented, fragrant-smelling room, and that was the only time we ever entered there.

At some time during the afternoon, we would hear the soft voices of lovely, well-dressed ladies as they entered the house through the front door and went into the parlor. We peeped as they fluttered and twittered softly in the subdued light of the parlor whenever the door opened with someone coming or going to get ice tea from the kitchen.

Mr. Tout was a youngish-looking, snappy-dressing man, who customarily ambled in and out our back way into the house after the ladies came. We liked him because he brought black licorice candy for