Behind the Green Piano

By Dr. Walter Creighton

Behind the Green Piano by Dr. Walter Creighton

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638851219

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Beginning

According to my Mom, I entered the world about 12:30 a.m. of September 9, 1951. Even this significant event has more than one version because the nurse wrote September eighth on my birth certificate, which becomes important in a later story. I was a whopping nine-pound-twelve-ounce little boy, very cute by all reports. At the time, I had a seven-and-a-half-year-old brother, Hal (short for Harry), and two older sisters, Sherry being five and a half years old and Robin being three and a half years old. They of course will play significant roles in my development in the early years.

I was born in a clinic in Natchitoches, Louisiana. Good luck in pronouncing it if you are not familiar with the name. I was in the third grade before I could spell the city. When relating this town to others, especially women, I just mention that this is the town in the movie Steel Magnolias. In the last twenty-five years, I think that I have only met one woman who hadn’t seen the movie. Most men don’t have a clue! The town was called Chinquapin in the movie. Chinquapin is a dwarf chestnut and mostly disappeared by the same fungus that wiped out 99 percent of the American chestnut trees. The native Indians of the Caddo Tribe used the chinquapin for food, tanning hides, and other creative techniques.

Natchitoches is a great little town of about twenty thousand people in Natchitoches Parish. It is technically the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The French started a settlement in the lower Mississippi River in late 1712 called New Orleans. In 1714, a French man named Louis St. Denis (short name) paddled up the Mississippi, turned left up the Red River, and left on an oxbow. He encountered a tribe of Caddo Indians and founded the present-day city of Natchitoches.

Around 1718, a hurricane wiped out the New Orleans settlement, so they went further north until they found some high ground and restarted the city of New Orleans. (It was still below sea level.) Thus, Natchitoches became the oldest permanent settlement.

Okay, though I was born in Natchitoches, my home was actually about seven miles south in a small community, Natchez—sometimes known as Bayou Natchez in the early days. Yes, there is a Natchez, Mississippi, about one hundred miles to the east (as a crow flies) of the Mississippi River. One local legend researched by older brother Hal has the Natchez Indians, who were a very warlike tribe, showing up to do battle with the local Caddo tribe. It seems that the raid didn’t work out, but the name stuck for the area. It is much easier to spell!

Henri D. Williams, otherwise known as Bobo, in her wedding gown.

The location and geography of home are critical to the story of my early determinants, even more so than family, and that is saying a lot! Natchez in the 1950s was a farming community in the Red River Delta, cotton being king back then. There were about 400 people in the community, with 350 being colored people as they were called back then. Almost all of the 350 were poor hardworking people and direct descendants of slaves who worked in the nearby plantations. They were good people, and I have fond memories of playing with other kids my age in the cotton field.

Grandee in his Army uniform, 1917.

In the ’50s, Natchez still had a couple of mercantile stores, a café, at least one liquor store, and a train depot. Alcock Store was one of the mercantile stores. It sold just about everything: food, clothes, hardware, auto parts, paints, etc. It also had a busy third-class post office inside the store. The founder and owner of the store in 1920 was Walter E. Alcock, who was my grandfather and my mom’s dad. I got my first name from him and my middle name from his wife and my grandmother Henri D, except that my middle name was changed a little to be Henry. Who gets their name from their grandfather and grandmother?

Grandee, a name used for my grandfather and the name I will use for the rest of his part in my story, was born around Jennings, Louisiana, in 1891. Sometime between 1916 and 1920, six major things happened in his life: (1) Grandee met Bobo at a square dance in Jennings (her name was given by her grandchildren and is the name I will use for her in the following stories); (2) married Bobo; (3) joined the army and went to France, serving in World War I; (4) moved to Natchez; (5) started Alcock Store; and (6) had two daughters, Ruth Estelle and my mom, Lucia.

I would be remiss if I didn’t relate some details about Bobo! She was the fifth daughter of the original J. H. Williams. He showed up in Natchitoches Parish in the 1870s with lots of money and became the richest man in the parish. To make a looong story short, Bobo’s mother died; and JH, not having any male heirs left alive, remarried a much younger woman and proceeded to have four more children including two sons. Bobo got a nice inheritance when JH died, but daughters were not on the top of the list. Bobo and Grandee managed to survive the Depression, although they had to sell a good bit of the land she had inherited.

Next up is Lucia, my mom. In the family, she would be the number one determinant. She was born in March 1920 and lived in Natchez near the store for a few years before the family moved into Natchitoches. From her accounts, she had a happy childhood. One of my favorite stories from her school days is that, on her