Reminiscences Book One

By James L. Randolph

Reminiscences examines the growth and life of a young African American boy coming of age in the second half of the twentieth century. Jamarius Russell is the main protagonist, and he informs the reader of events and circumstances that affected him as his family as the years rolled by. As he reflects and looks back on his years and those of his family, his grandparents and his ancestors from a previous time and place. This is an American novel about America and about its history. It is a story about a group of people, over generations, facing critical moments in their lives and their history. Reminiscences has a cinematic quality to it as the years pass by as Jamarius Russell, Lee Somersom Russell and Eloise Sudey, the elderly senior citizen, tell a tale of woe and hope, of aspiration and disappointment and of life and death. Remiscences is a story readers would enjoy because the reader gets to experience and live what the characters live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798369405994

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Copyright © 2023 by James L. Randolph.

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 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/21/2023

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Contents

Synopsis of the epic novel Reminiscences

Prologue

Part I The Present 1988

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Part II The Beginnings 1929-1954

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Part III Growth 1956-1961

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Part IV Development 1962-1964

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

SYNOPSIS OF THE EPIC NOVEL

REMINISCENCES

R EMINISCENCES IS THE story of two families, the Somersoms and Russells, told by Jamarius Russell, a young African American boy growing up in the 1960s. The Somersoms and Russells are connected by blood and marriage.

In post–World War II America, a young African American boy comes of age in the Deep South and experiences the turbulent social and political times of the sixties and seventies. These forces ultimately shape and mold his life.

It begins when an early-morning phone call awakens a thirty-eight-year-old African American man, Jamarius Russell, the novel’s main protagonist. The call concerns the imminent death of his father. This misfortune recreates in Jamarius Russell’s mind a series of indelible images that set into motion a chain of interrelated events leading to that moment. Russell’s meditations take him back to a time of innocence when he was a four-year-old child, when his family abandoned its humble beginnings on a tobacco farm for the glitter of the city.

His recollections vividly recount the lives of three different people from three different generations and cover a span of over one hundred years! Some of what he recalls is based on family history and information that had been passed down from generation to generation. Although Reminiscences centers principally on the life of Jamarius Russell and his coming of age in the 1960s, it also examines the lives of Lee Somersom Russell, Eloise Sudey, Johnny and Katie Somersom, D. J. Russell, Lee Ann Mobley, and a host of minor characters, many of whom will steal the hearts of its readers.

The novel’s early tone is seen largely through the eyes of a child when the Russells embark on their long ride to the city. Like all four-year-olds, Jamarius Russell lives in a world of innocence, and this is especially noted when their car passes a group of Black road convicts. He mistakes their prison attire for pajamas. The ride to the city also gives him the chance to think about his family and what his family left behind on the farm, like the house they once lived in and the large chinaberry tree growing in the front yard, where his grandmother babysat him. The period in America is 1955, one year after Brown v. Topeka Kansas Board of Education. Gradually, elements of the social and political times filter into the young character’s mind. When his mother, Lee Somersom Russell, tries to explain to him that he is colored, he doesn’t understand what that means because he has nothing to relate it to. Being colored is outside his range of conscious experiences. Up to that moment, everyone he knows is colored.

In the city, he meets a close and mysterious family friend, fifty-four-year-old Eloise Sudey. Only then does he realize there exist significant color differences among people. Ms. Sudey is a spinster, a genetic product of rape and miscegenation, and it is because of her that his young mind becomes curious about skin tones.

Over the years, he slowly comes to know, understand, and observe how differences in skin tone affect a person’s success not only in American society but also in how it influences social standing in the African American community. The dissemination of White genes played and still plays a major role in the African American community. This is one of the issues the novel examines, the presence and controversy of race.

Jamarius Russell’s family moves into the city and lives across the railroad tracks, south of Central Avenue, the demarcation line that separates Whites and Blacks. Whites live north of Central Avenue. Ms. Sudey lives across the railroad tracks too but closer to them, closer to the dividing line.

Five-year-old Jamarius begins his education in a parochial institution where he meets Sister Mero, a nun whom he describes as a gestapo expert with a ruler. Jamarius’s first day at school is devastating because of Sister Mero. She makes it a living hell. He gets into his first fight and slowly discovers his world of innocence is giving way to one of experience. This sets the novel’s next theme: the pains and joys and the path to self-discovery. Eloise Sudey and Lee Somersom Russell, who had already experienced their pains and joys of self-discovery, parallel Jamarius’s as he embarks on his own road to self-awareness. Despite his unpleasant relationship with Sister Mero, times were peaceful and America was prosperous. But underneath the placid, calm nature of the times an undercurrent activity, much like that in a dormant volcano lies just beneath the surface. It starts with Jamarius’s immediate family, and to his horror, he learns that major domestic issues are alienating his parents, even leading to a nervous breakdown for Lee Somersom Russell. Ms. Sudey serves as counsel to his mother, but in the end, his parents capitulate to separation. While sitting in his room and waiting for him to fall asleep, Jamarius’s mother, Lee Somersom Russell, reflects on her own life and the events leading up to that moment. This begins the next phase of the novel, a look back at the Depression, the thirties and forties.

Jamarius Russell’s grandparents, his mother, uncles, and aunts live through the Depression, Jim Crow segregation, and second-class citizenship. Lee Somersom wants to become a teacher, but her father has other plans for her. The only reality for him is the tobacco farm and the land that nurtures it. Disappointed, Lee Somersom meets and marries D. J. Russell, Jamarius’s father. On the night of her wedding, Lee Somersom learns something about her new husband that foreshadows their future domestic problems, an issue that is never fully resolved.

The central issue in this part of the novel is the drowning of Freddie Thomas Somersom, which is later discovered to be a murder perpetrated by elements of the Ku Klux Klan. This is also where Mr. Walter Trumane—the Somersoms’ White boss and close family friend, the tobacco-farm foreman—is introduced. A young Eloise Sudey is introduced, where she studies to become a school teacher. The reader discovers here how she ultimately becomes the person she turns out to be. With Mr. Trumane’s persistence and the help of a devoted White Southern sheriff, Freddie Thomas Somersom’s murder is solved fourteen years later, an investigation that involved a team of federal and local law enforcement agencies orchestrated by the Justice Department’s and Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s headquarters.

Stifled and spiritually suffocated by the farm, Lee leaves with her husband to discover a better life for herself and her children. The novel returns to the present, where Jamarius continues his growth and development. His father’s irresponsible ways ultimately force Lee Somersom to leave her husband, to take her children, and to retrace her roots back to the tobacco farm and to the family she left six years earlier. It is here where Jamarius learns about family and what family means. From his grandparents, he learns about sacrifice; and from his mother, he learns the importance of preparing oneself for life. To her, that means for him to complete school and to go to college.

Jamarius Russell’s parents reconcile and eventually get back together. But the marriage doesn’t last. Forced to go on welfare, Lee finds a job as a maid working on the beach. Jamarius gets a job washing dishes. Lee, who was an excellent student, begins to tutor her children during this period, 1960–61, on a variety of issues and subjects, everything from African history to current events, including the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall. It is Jamarius more than her other children who takes the lessons to heart. Meanwhile, Jamarius, his brothers, friends, and cousins grow up doing things boys naturally do while growing up, playing marbles and basketball and taking a growing interest in girls. They are also growing up in an era where civil rights become a major issue for African Americans and other minorities.

In 1963, Jamarius’s heart is stolen by thirteen-year-old Lee Ann Mobley, a brilliant adolescent gifted with rare intelligence. They become friends, and she becomes the fourth person to significantly influence his life, following his father, mother, and Ms. Sudey. The fifth person to have an effect on Jamarius is his childhood best friend Peter John Jones, a.k.a. PJ Jamarius. He and PJ are inseparable.

In the fall of 1968, Jamarius begins his freshman year of college and enters a new realm of experiences and relationships. His academic success fulfills a lifelong ambition that his grandfather denied to his mother. During his freshman year, he meets Rachel Steinitz, a third-year chemistry major. Rachel, whose grandparents were gassed to death at the notorious Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, becomes the sixth person to have an impact on his life. Jamarius learns that he and she share similar histories based on the terrors of racial discrimination and the horrors of ethnic persecution.

The high point of this phase of Jamarius’s life comes when he’s faced with a crisis of conscience. The Black students at his college threaten to take over the Administration Building, and he has to decide where he stands. This is also where he meets Andrew Waley, his new Trinidadian friend.

Jamarius graduates and becomes, much to his mother’s delight, a high school English teacher in his hometown. The schools have changed greatly because the federal courts have mandated desegregation. Teachers can no longer paddle students. The students have changed too. He encounters a new breed of students—students whose personalities have been chemically altered by crack cocaine and other drugs, students who are more prone to violence, students who are learning less, students who are functionally illiterate, and students who display other forms of deviant behavior. There are good students too, but the scholastic environment is different from the time when Jamarius attended school. It is more volatile, more dangerous.

The climax of the novel erupts when PJ Jones, his boyhood pal, places a .45 automatic pistol on his boss’s head. He shoots his boss and then shoots himself. His death is the result of an ever-increasing tension created by corporate America: the promotion of Black and White women over qualified Black men. PJ labors under the strong belief that America sees Black men as potentially professional athletes, not as corporate leaders.

Jamarius’s deliberations return him full circle to the day of his father’s death. Within a sixth-month span, he loses his best childhood friend, his grandmother, and now his father. The novel ends after burying his father. Fittingly, Jamarius Russell; Lee Ann Mobley, his childhood sweetheart (and his future wife); his mother, Lee Somersom Russell; and eighty-eight-year-old Eloise Sudey all leave the cemetery together, their lives sealed by time and connected by their memories.

PROLOGUE

I T IS IMPORTANT that a man knows himself. Any man. I believe goodness in a man is predicated on this Socratic rule. Like the great Greek philosopher, I too believe that goodness in a man is based on wisdom and that wickedness is based on ignorance. No wise man would deliberately choose what is bad for him. But through ignorance, a man may choose an evil that appears to be good at the time. When a man lacks the knowledge, as opposed to an opinion, governing the principles of right conduct, that man’s future can be predicted to be neither just nor wise—for himself or those who rely on him. The search for wisdom, the search for a noble life, and the knowledge of how to lead a good life are not a matter of teaching a few good rules but rather a lifelong process. Consequently, a man must steadfastly strengthen his virtuous qualities and labor gently to correct those deficiencies in his character, which poison his moral essence. Without an accurate perception of oneself, this process, which encompasses knowledge of both good and evil, would be impossible. I would like to think my father was a good man.

PART I

The Present

1988

CHAPTER 1

I N THE DARKNESS, I turned over for the hundredth time and kicked the covers off my legs. The warm moist Florida air kept me awake most of the night, tossing and turning. I slept in spurts—an hour here, two hours there. At one point during the night, I got up and drank a beer, hoping it would help me sleep. A warm glass of milk? The lactose alone would do me in! At thirty-eight, my old body wasn’t what it used to be. Not that I was a potato couch or anything like that. I played basketball three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But I was no longer the eighteen-year-old youth who fell asleep in a wink either. It’s a sad fact of life. The older we get, the more difficult it becomes to simply plop into slumberland. Insomnia—what an aggravating anxiety! Perhaps it has something to do with our minds. More things occupy them, more things to deal with: more experience, less innocence; more clutter, less space; and more responsibility. Things like marriages, divorces, child support payments, jobs and careers (no jobs, no careers, no prospects), debt, bills, mortgages, car notes, hair loss, and the stress of advancing age. A whole slew of things to keep one pacing the floor in the middle of the night, things that not only go bump but things that keep us awake and steal small chunks of our lives—and our sanity .

Another spurt passed. The beer didn’t help. All it did was make me race for the bathroom. I crawled from under the covers, responded to my bladder’s command, and retraced my steps to the bed. I sat on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, and buried my head in my hands. My eyes felt heavy, like someone had weighed them down with lead. They wouldn’t stay open. I had that tired, sluggish feeling, the kind of feeling that comes from a sleepless night. Sleeping in spurts did not result in a fresh, restful state. I looked at the clock, a red-numeraled little brown digital wonder. I watched the nine slip slowly down and stand proudly erect in the minutes column. Birds chirped outside. Then mourning doves joined the feathered chorus, pitching their sad, haunting refrains. The day had broken.

A minute later, the phone rang, catching me off guard. I tried to ignore it by putting my hands over my ears. But the ringing persisted. I grabbed my pillow and placed it over my head. A rooster crowed. That did it! I threw the pillow on the floor, leaned across the bed, and picked up the phone on the opposite side.

It was Juwon, my brother. At thirty-two, he was the youngest of five siblings—one sister and four brothers. The time was 6:30 a.m. There was something ominously silent about the pauses between his words. The call itself was not distressing because I had halfheartedly expected it. I hardly slept a wink because my subconscious mind had been racing through the entrails of my memories, trying so desperately to cling to a long-forgotten existence. Even in the greatest fortresses of our mind-spawned domains, there reside demon-infested apparitions, preying on our deepest fears and anxieties, subsisting on and off our most guarded insecurities. It was Saturday, July 23, 1988.

The silence, born and brought forth by an unholy union between my brother’s words and his pauses, momentarily disarmed me. It took hold of my strength and held it captive for what seemed hours, although only a few seconds had parted the waves of time. What a cruel and unjust thing, this harbinger of linear space and dimension. Time. See how it mocks us and feeds on our every conscious and unconscious breath! Observe how it tyrannizes all who come before it, as it apportions out each of our lots, some longer than others, some shorter.

My eyes slowly refocused, and I gained control of my subconscious state. I shook away the binding threads of sleep and responded to my brother’s words. I heard his faint but distant voice, lost across an endless gulf of cable and wire. All my strength seem held captive by some unknown assailant whom I could not see or discern. Nevertheless, my brother’s voice somehow sifted through this unnatural abyss.

Jamarius! Jamarius! Jamarius, you there? Wake up, man. We’re s’posed to go see Daddy t’day. Don’t tell me you forgot! Mama said he’s been askin’ for us. She said he was cryin’ and upset ’cause he don’t know why we ain’t come and seen him yet. She said he was askin’ why we treatin’ ’im like this. Jamarius, you promised Mama you wuz gonna go by today and see ’im.

I had heard every word. The weight of each one was a millstone about my neck. An albatross above my head. This day had come quickly and without warning, without even an invitation. And with its coming, it had descended upon my brother and me like the heat and fire from a monstrous fallout. What an unbearable and unwelcome hour had come, for now, it seemed all the firmament and the heavens too had cast their negative wrath toward us, my brother and me, victims of a father’s love in his last hours.

My father and my mother separated in October 1964. I was in the ninth grade, and I had just turned fourteen. I remembered the night very well. I walked into the room and found her frantically and energetically searching the closet. To herself, she mumbled something I didn’t understand. She never realized I stood there, in her and my father’s bedroom, silently watching her actions. She was mad about something. I maintained a respectful silence and backtracked out of the room. Seconds later, she found an old brown leather suitcase. She carelessly dumped some of my father’s clothes in it, slammed it shut, and dropped the suitcase on the front porch. In those days, my father had a habit of leaving the house on Friday evenings and not showing up again until late Sunday night, just in time to get a good night’s sleep in order to report to work Monday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But that night, my mother surprised him. She met him at the steps, handed him the suitcase, and told him she c’n do bad by herself. She didn’t need ’im.

Fourteen years later, when I would treat him to a lobster dinner on his fiftieth birthday, he would lean across the table and say to me, Of all the words ya mama ever said to me, Jimbo, them eight hurt the most: ‘I don’t need you. I c’n do bad by myself.’ I shrugged and didn’t say anything. I wanted to say, You hurt us too, Daddy, but it was his birthday, and I didn’t want to spoil it.

The problem with my father’s three-day escapades was that his weekly paycheck accompanied him. When he returned Sunday night, a substantial portion of it had disappeared somewhere between home and Staten Island, the neighborhood bar and social hangout. Two or three weeks of this led not only to shame but also to creditors. One Saturday morning, while watching cartoons, we watched our television walk right out the front door. My father got mad at my mother and refused to pay the bill. That was his way of getting back at her.

Three weeks later, our names occupied a place on the local welfare list, a distinction my brother Timmy and I found acutely embarrassing. Timmy was eleven years old at the time. Timmy and I never used the little red token-meal tickets the rest of the welfare kids used in school. Proud but hungry, we gave ours to Retta, our sister. It never seemed to bother Retta that everybody in school knew she was a welfare child. So she ate for Timmy and me. Sometimes after school, when we went to the James Weldon Johnson library to study and do our homework, Retta did hers on a full stomach. That might have explained why she made good grades. Meanwhile, Timmy and I argued over whose stomach growled the loudest, his or mine.

In the last eleven years, I had seen my father only once. He was a shell of his former self, and gangrene had infected his left leg. The tissue in it had decayed, and in order to keep the gangrene from spreading to other parts of his body, the doctors cut off his leg. One night, he stumbled home drunk and slammed his foot against the base of the bed, severely damaging his big toe. The injury obstructed the blood flow to his body because he was a diabetic, and we didn’t know it. That was when the infection set in.

Retta was a nurse, but she didn’t learn about the infection until it was too late. She was awakened late one night from a sound sleep by a phone call. It was Daddy. Retta couldn’t understand a word he said. He was crying and screaming into the phone, something about his toe hurting. Retta quickly dressed and drove by to see him.

Retta, now thirty-six years old, worked her way through nursing school. She always made good grades in school. Science and health were her favorite subjects, so nobody was surprised when she became a nurse. En route to becoming a nurse, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy when she was sixteen years old, causing her to miss her junior year of high school. But Retta was a fighter and a high achiever. The following year, she re-enrolled, completed her junior year, and graduated a year later. That was twenty years ago. Nothing kept her from doing anything once she set her mind to it.

But that night, Retta was angry at Daddy for two reasons. First, Daddy didn’t call her soon enough. And secondly, although Retta respected her, because that’s the way we were raised, Retta never liked the woman Daddy was staying with. Retta never understood (and neither could the rest of us) why Daddy traded our mother in for a Hattie McDaniel lookalike, the grotesque large caricature of a woman who played the character Mammy in Gone with the Wind. But at least, Mammy had some redeeming qualities—things like compassion, sensitivity, and personality.

Perhaps Retta was angry with him because he and my mother were still legally married, and we felt our mother had given him the best years of her life. Neither he nor my mother filed for divorce. But unlike my father, my mother remained single and alone after the separation. She simply poured her energies into other things, like raising us and getting very involved in the church and church-related activities.

My father and his second family lived in the Douglas Housing Project, twelve blocks from where our mother lived. We all felt he did more for his second family than his first. As soon as Retta entered the house, she quickly covered her nostrils and mouth with a handkerchief. That strong negative odor, the stench from the infection, was suffocating! That was two years ago, and my father was fifty-eight years old.

When my father lost his leg, he was never the same. He even gave up the will to live. In his younger days, my father was considered something of a sport—or spo’te, to use the African American euphemism—a dandy of sorts. He took great pride in his clothes, how he looked, and how his clothes looked. And he loved dancing! He spent hours in front of a jukebox, dancing until the wee hours of the morning. That was why losing his leg was so difficult for him to accept. After the loss of his leg, he grew thin and became emaciated. His health declined; and worst of all, he suffered from lung cancer, a debilitation brought on by chain-smoking more than three packs of cigarettes a day!

Juwon’s voice broke through once more. Jamarius, you still there, man? What chu gonna do, huh?

Okay, I said. Give me about an hour, and I’ll be by to pick you up. I gotta shave and shower.

Tingling hot water chased away every wink of sleep. While drying myself off, I thought about what had transpired between my brother and me just moments earlier. I felt refreshed and prepared for any eventuality. Deep down inside, though, nothing could have been further from the truth. This morning would be ingrained in my psyche for the remainder of my days. All of this meant precious little to me now as I pushed back the sliding glass door separating my bedroom from the patio. I dashed across the patio and slowly steadied my pace, anticipating the quiet cries of each blade of grass, subjugated by the sweep of my feet. The parking lot pavement was hard and damp. The apartment complex seemed filled to capacity. I didn’t see a single free space. The day was still young.

Two blue jays suddenly darted past me as I approached my car. I stopped momentarily and studied their behavior as they raced playfully between two tiny oaks and glided gracefully above the roof of the complex. They disappeared as suddenly as they arrived. I smiled. They seemed so happy, unfazed by the struggle of world events and completely oblivious to the follies and vagaries of Homo sapiens. For one split second, I felt they, the birds and the rest of the animals, got the better deal after the creation or the evolution or whatever else you choose to call it.

The sun slowly made its presence felt as it gradually subdued a dark-gray cloud scampering across its path. The rays felt warm and strong. All of nature bowed as the sun extended its personality to the width of the hemisphere. It was giving birth to a beautiful day. Without another thought, I drove to my brother’s house.

Twenty minutes later, I parked along the street parallel to my brother’s residence. I carefully observed the surroundings as I got out of my car, reflecting on this part of town. My brother and I grew up several blocks from where he lived. Juwon was braver than I was, for he chose to remain rooted in a part of the city that would always be a part of us but never with us. It was a part of the city where we witnessed the murder of a man thirty years earlier. We all saw it, my other two brothers, my cousins and the childhood friends we played marbles with during those sweltering hot summer days when school was out. We heard a loud crack in the back of the alley, not far from where we played marbles. A young Black man, not more than twenty-five years old, staggered from the pool hall, squeezing his chest as the blood oozed between his fingers. With difficulty, he walked a couple of steps and collapsed on the dirty gray pavement. My cousins, my brothers, and I all ran to see what had happened. When we got there, the wounded man was lying on the ground, still holding his chest and writhing in pain. He died a few minutes later. Someone had shot the murdered man with a snub-nosed .38 at close range. We saw the hole in his chest and the black powder burns in his shirt, near his heart where the bullet penetrated.

Juwon once had a promising baseball career. The Cincinnati Reds Major League Baseball Club wanted him in their organization. They drafted him. He played in the Sarasota Rookie League. My brother was nineteen years old at the time. Juwon didn’t know it, but shortly afterward, he discovered he would also be a father. He did the only decent thing. He married the young woman who became the mother of his child. His new wife had nothing against baseball, but she hated his traveling. She didn’t like being home alone when my brother was on the road. So out of his love for her and his concerns for her loneliness, he quit baseball. Six kids and two wives later, he’s been working two jobs ever since.

The pool hall was behind the house where my aunt Polly and uncle Andrew lived. The murder occurred there. There were a number of other suspicious activities taking place behind the pool hall, but our parents strongly insisted we ignore them. We were obedient kids. We didn’t question our parents about the dangers of living and playing so close to such surroundings. We were young African American children growing up in the late fifties and early sixties. What did we know about such things? It all seemed natural to us. We didn’t know much of anything about anything. Except that we obeyed our parents and stayed out of trouble. This meant not being or becoming juvenile delinquents.

Aunt Polly and my mother were very close sisters. Our mother never hesitated to visit her. They loved each other dearly. They had always been close ever since they were children growing up on a tobacco farm in Northwest Florida. She and my mother spent many hot summer days sitting on Aunt Polly’s porch, dipping snuff, spitting a hundred yards away, and fanning the encroaching summer heat because we didn’t know anybody who had conditioning in those days.

There was something strangely ironic about the pool hall and the conditions associated with it. For example, we were told (quite strongly at times I might add) to stay away from that place. It was a bad place, and children had no business being anywhere near it. Yet my uncles spent many hours in it. My aunts, however, never went there. If a person lives long enough, all the great mysteries about anything ultimately come to light. Even for kids. Especially for kids.

As the summers passed and we grew, we encountered the cold naked reality of the situation. We had known for some time that this structure—which took up a whole city block, with the exception of the corner drugstore—was the favorite meeting place for a number of African American constituents, some of whom came from far as twenty miles away. It had been recounted how on many occasions some of the country’s finest African American entertainers had come to the Staten Island, a dance hall where the blues, rock and roll, and jazz were played. The Staten Island was right next to the pool hall. It was chronicled how all the greats and the near-greats had started in places like this and went on to bigger and better things. People such as the late Sam Cooke, Bobby Womack, B. B. King, and Cannonball Adderley, just to name a few. Their activities often explained why the place was so loud and boisterous on Friday and Saturday nights, and we kids couldn’t hear the television. But whatever went on in Staten Island, people must have been having a rollicking good time! They listened to music, drank liquor, danced, and generally let it all hang out by kicking up their heels. This place stole not only the lives of many of the people frequenting it but also their souls. I know that well. Because my father was one of its victims.

As children, we saw how well the women and men dressed and how the fragrance from their perfumes and colognes would book passage on the routes of the wind and breeze into the clinical domains of the corner drugstore, suffocating the delicate tastes of our much-treasured ice cream cones. Some of the men and women belonged in a fashion store with their bright flowing colors and their slicked-back black hair. The men called it a process. To us, at the time, it looked unnatural on men of color. But I guess it was okay because Nat King Cole wore his hair the same way. In those days, the pool hall and all the accompanying buildings adjacent to it were known as the hot spot in town. Even the sidewalk blended in well with the stretch of buildings along the block. The sidewalk was wide and extended for several blocks, winding far beyond the theater and into the foggy night, whenever a cloud deemed it necessary to pay the land a visit. The sidewalk often reminded us of hard bright-colored candy with its perfectly shaped diamond designs, a lengthy trail of multicolored cement bricks tantalizing the imaginations of a group of impressionable kids. At night along the block, everything was so bright. And there was activity everywhere. It all seemed so exciting.

With the maturation of each generation, some young group gradually replaced the previous generation; and the life of the pool hall continued to run its existence, its course, like a vampire feeding on the blood of the innocent. As we grew and grew, we later learned that the hub and activity along this stretch of the African American community was simply known as the streets. The streets meant many things to many people. But to the children growing up there and to the parents of those they victimized, the streets meant only one thing. Danger. We often wondered what possessed these men and women of the streets to harm one another in such brutal and frighteningly imaginative ways. For example, we had seen men strike women for no apparent reason or slap them around in front of strangers. We had seen men fight over women and stab and gouge the eyes out of one another. The police arrived frequently on the premises for one reason or another. Sometimes we saw women claw and scratch one another over the amorous attentions of men. Men who cared little or nothing for any of them. Some of them used such vile language—coarse, filthy words that rang in our ears. Some of them drank heavily, and their behavior was abominable and reprehensible. They had no respect for themselves or for others.

The greatest and the most heinous, cruelest crime ever perpetrated on the streets was the murder of my father’s middle brother, my uncle Albert Lee Russell. It was the most senseless evil we had ever experienced. It was a vile, lawless, and merciless act. A friend discovered him early one morning at four outside my uncle’s home. My uncle’s blood and brains had spilled onto the ground. His body was sprawled diagonally across the base of the steps, his back angled in a cruel and merciless manner. An oily dark redness dampened the ground near his head. Some monstrous godless creature, calling himself a man, usurped my uncle’s remaining years, ripping open his head with a meat cleaver! My father never really recovered from that savage act because he believed what happened to Uncle Albert Lee, his middle brother, was his fault. But that’s another story, and I’ll explain it in more detail later. I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

What in heaven’s name attracted my father to such a life-threatening place called the streets? It had not always been that way. What made him think there was something good and noble about such a place? How did he come to know such a violent and dangerous environment?

Actually, there was a time when my father’s greatest preoccupation was us, his first family and his wife, my mother. There was a time when he loved only her and us. But that was a long time ago—thirty-four years ago! I was only four years old, but I remembered something of those times and how it was between him and us, his first family.

My mind drifted back to a time and a place when life was simpler and less complex, a time when a man’s family brought him his greatest joy.

CHAPTER 2

M Y FATHER’S NAME was Daniel James Russell. The people close to him called him DJ. In July 1928, he was born on a farm. He grew up on a farm. He married on a farm. His children were born on a farm. For most of his life, it was the best thing he knew how to do; it was the only thing he knew how to do. Barely able to read and write, he was forced to quit school in the fourth grade so he could help support his younger brothers and sisters. My father was a strong young man who was no stranger to hard work. In fact, my father and hard work were companions. He was introduced to hard work when he was nine years old. Two years later, at the age of eleven, he declared himself a man.

Eight years later, after he married and I was perhaps three or four, I remembered how he grew rows and rows of cucumbers; squash as yellow as the sun; and rich, healthy long green okra that grew right beside the house and extended upward as straight as a rod. Watermelons grew in bright-green patches that encircled the house. Tomatoes grew in bunches, big as grapefruits, and as red and tasty as they could be. Corn and sweet potatoes grew behind the house. Corn on the cob was one of our favorites. Collard and mustard greens along with turnips added a pleasing aroma to the house. My father was blessed with a green thumb.

But the winter was one of my favorite times because it gave us the opportunity to bake sweet potatoes in the ashes of a dying fire. It grew very cold on the farm. We had a fireplace. Sometimes my father hitched up a team of mules to a wagon and took me with him. He and I would go deep into the woods and get firewood. Sometimes he would let me hold the reins as we rode along the trail into the woods. And when we had gone far enough, he would stop the wagon and get out. He always looked for the biggest oak or pine tree he could find. And away he went, chopping and flailing away until a giant of the land and sky came crashing down. When the trees hit the ground, they made a delightfully sweeping noise, falling gracefully at descending angles.

Occasionally, I got down from the wagon, and I would find a small stick lying on the ground. I would pick it up, pretending it was my very own little axe; and then away I went, hacking at the smallest green thing I could find. After my father worked up a sweat, he would pause momentarily to wipe his brow, glance my way, and smile approvingly. I would hack harder.

One day, however, something happened. We had made our usual trip deep into the woods, and things were going okay. My father was besting another large oak, and I was conquering its baby, a small switch-like stem with barely a leaf.

Suddenly, there he was! Near the pile of rotting, wet twigs and leaves. I saw him playing hide-and-seek with some unknown playmate and perfectly camouflaged, blending in with his environment. He was black and sleek. He moved smoothly and with great control. Never in a hurry, this one was. Yet I saw him. Perhaps he did not suspect I had seen him. Otherwise, how could he remain so unperturbed? Wisdom comes early when one grows up on a farm. No one had to tell me what I saw. I needed no explanation. It was like a sixth sense. What I had seen was a snake! And it chilled my bones. Backing quickly away, I looked in the direction of my father. He did not notice me. He did not notice my fear or my apprehension. Not a single utterance came from my lips. After making certain I was out of harm’s way, I climbed slowly and quietly back into the wagon. It was about this time that my father paused again to wipe his brow. Only then did he notice me.

What’s the matter, Jimbo? he asked. My father called me that as far back as I could remember. It was a term of affection. But I couldn’t answer him. I was still petrified with fear. I thought you were gonna give Daddy a hand. All tuckered out, huh? he continued. I nodded. That’s okay, son. Daddy’ll take care of it, he said. He resumed his chopping.

I didn’t say much on the trip back home. Neither did my father although he must have suspected something was wrong. But for whatever reason, he respected my private thoughts and my silence. I never told my father what I saw that day. And he never asked. Perhaps he knew already. Maybe it was the fear he had seen in my eyes or recognized in my face. I don’t know why I never told him. Maybe it was because of the fear I had that I feared telling him. Sometimes I think it had something to do with things much deeper than I could explain. I think it had something to do with our manhood in its earliest stages. At one time, he was my age, so he must have understood. Or at least I thought he did. But I never knew because we never talked about it. Boys are indoctrinated, brought up, and conditioned to behave and act a certain way. Intuitively and instinctively, I knew early that showing fear was not proper masculine behavior.

Being a man was something very important to my father. He gave me many lectures on the subject. And part of being a man meant being ruler over the animals. Wild and domesticated. Using your wits to control or conquer them. I remembered a certain incident. What you must understand is that we lived in a house far down a road and separated from our closest neighbor by at least a half mile. We could barely see our neighbor’s house, which rested on a hill up the road from where we lived. Next to our house was a thick wooded area. We were surrounded by woods as far as the eye could see, except for the land my father planted crops on. At night, it was very dark because there were no electricity and no streetlights. Occasionally, during those dark nights, we heard loud frightening noises. These noises were the unmistakable howls of wildcats—lynxes, bobcats my mother and father called them. The bobcat’s screams were loud enough to scare the black off you. That night the screams seem closer to the house than usual. My mother was pregnant at the time, but I didn’t know this. Colored folks have all kinds of peculiar and unusual superstitions that stretch back to our African past. The one that popped out of the African American file this time was one concerning my mother’s pregnancy. The pregnancy had excited the bobcat to no end, and according to my father, it wanted my unborn brother in my mother’s womb! How the bobcat knew my mother was pregnant is anybody’s guess.

My father kept a single-barrel shotgun for hunting. When he heard the bobcat, he grabbed it from the top of the fireplace and placed a large red round with a brass metal base in it. My mother grabbed my sister and me and pulled us to a safe corner, away from the front porch where the bobcat’s sounds were very loud and distinct. The reason I remember the night so well is because it was very cold, and a big crackling fire blazed in the fireplace, and my father commented that at least the bobcat couldn’t come down the chimney. Suddenly, along with the howls and screams, we heard scratching at the door. The animal’s behavior was very bizarre. It tried to claw its way in. My father crept closer to the door, readied his shotgun, and kicked the door open in one swift move, catching the bobcat by surprise. The light from the fireplace revealed the wildcat’s powerfully built large body and tufted ears, its silky long grayish-brown fur. It was spotted and striped. The bobcat lowered its body into a quick crouch, its ears pinned back, its fangs visible and its screams deafening. But my father was quicker. Suddenly, a flash of light and the deafening, booming blast from the shotgun hit the wildcat directly between the eyes. The bobcat spun around on the porch, its body gyrating violently and rhythmically, fighting the encroaching death. Its movements lessened, and we only saw its body breathing slowly, in and out. Moments later, it remained still. A pool of blood settled underneath its head and slowly streamed its way toward the front room. My father walked to the fireplace and got his flashlight. He walked back to the porch and shined the flashlight on the bobcat.

C’mere, son, I want you to see this, he said. I walked slowly but cautiously over to where my father stood. My mother didn’t move. Come over here, son. Don’t be scared. He cain’t hurt you. He’s deader than a doorknob. I crept a little closer.

My father shined the flashlight from the top of the bobcat’s head to its stumpy tail. This is how a man protects his family, son. This is part of what being a man is all about and living up to your responsibility, feeding and clothing your family. I looked at the bobcat and then looked back at my father. He read my mind. Don’t worry, Jimbo, he said, if there wuz any more bobcats around, that shotgun blast scared ’em off.

The next morning my father sold the wildcat to the tobacco-farm boss, Mr. Trumane. Mr. Trumane sold it to another White man. A bobcat’s fur is very valuable for scarves and ladies’ jackets. Bobcats or lynxes live in the woods and prowl at night. It made no sense for it to be so close to the house unless my father was right about what he said regarding my mother’s pregnancy. Wildcats kill foxes, small deer, and occasionally sheep and chickens. They also kill great numbers of rabbits and mice and other rodents that are pests to my father’s crops. So in a way, it was sad to have to kill the wildcat.

Three hours later, we returned safely from the woods with a wagonload of sweet-smelling freshly cut oaks and turpentine-scented pines. By the time we arrived home, a dark-blue, purple haze covered the night skies; and high above our heads, stars twinkled. My father pulled the team of mules near the rear entrance. He dumped the cut trees one by one. Each tree made a loud crashing sound.

My mother stood patiently, waiting in the doorway, with a lighted lantern in her hand, looking like Diogenes, the Greek cynic. My mother’s name was Lee Russell, but whenever she signed her name, she always signed it Lee Somersom Russell because Somersom was her maiden name. Rumor had it that my mother was my grandfather’s favorite child, but she always denied it, adding that my grandfather had equal love for all his children. In some circles of family, though, my mother was considered the smart one in my grandfather’s family and that she wanted to be a teacher, but that never quite worked out. I don’t know all the details associated with this subject, but it’s one that gets my mother steamed whenever it’s brought up. That’s one reason why she doesn’t like talking about it. It had something to do with my grandfather, but I’ll tell you more about that later.

The worry disappeared from my mother’s face when she saw us return safely. My father dropped me off and rode up the hill back to the barn to return the team and wagon. He did not own the animals or the wagon. My father was a sharecropper.

We lived on a large tobacco farm. Tobacco was the major industry in the area, which covered roughly two hundred square miles. During the spring, the small green plants were carefully put into the ground. In the months ahead, they would be sustained by sufficient fertilization and irrigation. In those days, we often saw the ubiquitous appearance of airplanes, darting across the evening skies and unloading tons of pure white DDT along the frontiers of the northwest horizon. It was thick, strong, and suffocating too, inundating the night air with a powerful and deadly carcinogen. It was no big deal at the time. My father and mother knew nothing of the deadly and harmful effects of this poisonous pollutant. And neither did any of the other African Americans living in the farming community controlled and dominated by White men whose guiding motivation was the enormous profitability of the tobacco industry.

The DDT looked like pale smoke as it fell to the earth, touching and affecting everything it came into contact with. The sharecroppers went along, undisturbed by the planes, and routinely accepting what had become a common sight. But the white substance rained from the skies like fog from a low cloud, tingling our noses with its dangerous odor and saturating the ground with a powdery camouflage. The children were amused by the sightings, the planes, and the swooping release of the DDT. When the DDT wasn’t in the air, the irrigation pumps spewed and blasted water across the land like open-mouthed canisters. The water smelled fresh, and it was refreshing. Unlike the stifling ill effects of DDT, it helped us and the terrain to breathe the night air with greater intensity.

There was something idyllic about all this. It was a time when things were simple and uncomplicated. It was a time when the descendants of African slaves had staked a small claim to the American dream, distorted and disillusioned though it was. Where men could have and raise families without the threat of being sold to some plantation owner up the road. Where free men of African descent could live in the houses they did not own or pay rent on and live out their lives in quiet desperation.

As the months passed, we often saw the tobacco stalks growing completely up through the thin roofs of the transparent protection called cheesecloth, a coarse-threaded material that allowed the all-important sunrays to help nourish the precious commodity. When the summer months came, the tobacco was ripe for cropping or priming as it was called in those days. Over a period of weeks, the sharecroppers manually removed the tobacco leaves from the stalks. The men hauled it to one of many unpainted huge dull-gray barns decorating the community. There, the tobacco was sewn by the women and attached to thin slabs of wood about an inch in width and about forty inches in length. The freshly cropped green tobacco—with its sickening, nauseous odor—was then placed on racks, transported by children, and delivered to a labyrinth of tiered men strategically located near the ceiling of the barn. Colored men hung the tobacco neatly along the support beams, where it dried and where it remained for a period of weeks until it become brittle. Following that, it was sent to a place called a packing house and then shipped out to interested commercial parties. Long after the tobacco had dried and turned brittle, the lingering effects of the DDT could still be smelled.

There was work for everyone. Even the children if they were old enough. The children were employed mostly as carriers of the tobacco and transporters of the sticks and slabs, working in the fields and the barns. The children handed the sticks and slabs to the men high up in the barns. There was something about these days and how they somehow gave all of us a sense of purpose and utilitarian sensibility. Perhaps it was the innocence of the times, the peculiar climate of a bygone era, the legacy of slavery. But whatever it was, it provided a small measure of contentment to the small group of African American residents residing on the plantation-like premises called a tobacco farm.

The traditional Southern spirit of agrarianism was alive as ever and equally active. Instead of magnolias gracing the surrounding lands, there was a wide assortment of turpentine-scented pines and large but beautiful green oaks embroidered with the celestial appearance of pale white green moss hanging overhead. My parents were very young. They married when my father was only nineteen and my mother was eighteen. That was the way people married in those days. People committed themselves to one another very early in their relationships. And they generally stayed married until death did them apart. At least, that’s how it seemed to me then. Somehow the farm tended to stabilize and perhaps harmonize the health of a marriage. I didn’t hear of people getting divorces or separations in those days. My maternal grandparents were married for over fifty years when my grandfather passed away.

Indeed, things were quite different in those days. When my father was away during the day, working in the fields, my mother found plenty to keep her busy. She cooked and washed clothes and swept not only the house, which was kept in immaculate order, but the yard as well. Yes, she had reduced the idea of cleaning to an art form! She had no washer, so she resorted to something innovative, something that apparently had been passed down from generation to generation.

Out behind the house, where we lived, was a large black pot. It too looked as though it had been passed down as well. My mother placed our soiled clothes in it. The pot was filled to capacity with water brought from a spring. Underneath the pot would be a medium-sized fire, blazing moderately and heating the water that would remove the dirt from our soiled clothes. She used a powerful but very effective cleaner called lye soap or Octagon. It left the clothes smelling clean and fresh. The clean freshness came in quite handy when on a breezy day the stench from the outhouse escaped the rigid confines of its domain and settled uninvitingly among those of us who had gathered around the black pot.

Usually, the group consisted of my mother, my sister Retta, my baby brother Timmy, and me. There were only three children at the time. My other two brothers awaited arrival somewhere in the near future. Retta’s full name was Loretta, but my father called her Retta because she reminded him of a doll. Retta was almost three years old and curious about everything.

Everywhere I went, Retta went. She had an active imagination and watched with interest anything that moved or seemed peculiar. She wore dresses that my mother made from one-hundred-pound flour sacks and had at least one ribbon in her hair accompanied by two large plats. The flour sacks usually had their own designs on them, so that saved my mother some time in the style department. Timmy was fifteen months old. His sartorial splendor usually consisted of a bare torso and a white diaper with two large safety pins bulging from the sides of his waist, holding up the diaper. When Timmy walked, he reminded me of a duck because his diaper was fashioned in such a way that his rear end looked like a duck’s tail. He was precocious and began walking long before he was six months old. Before he learned how to walk, he crawled everywhere Retta and I went. Occasionally, he tried to stand up and walk, but he couldn’t because he always fell down. Once back on the ground, he crawled again until he got the urge to try to walk again. Sometimes when the wind blew, it provided pure entertainment watching Timmy trying to keep his balance. Timmy often bent, but he rarely broke for such a light frame. My father said Timmy had style and that one day he was going to be a sport, whatever that meant.

It didn’t seem to matter how cold the weather was. If a breeze developed, the stench from the outhouse hitched a ride on it and terrorized everyone within breathing distance! We would run to the saving protection of the clothesline, where my mother hung our clothes, and take solace and asylum from the air-robbing stench.

Sometimes the outhouse filled up. When that happened, my father and a group of other men would cover it up and dig another one. The holes they dug were so deep the men needed ladders to get in and out of them. The men used the dirt from the hole of the new outhouse to cover the old one.

Another apparatus—or contraption, depending on your point of view—my mother used was something she called a rub-board. It was made of wood and corrugated tin. After removing the clothes from the pot, she would scrub them with the Octagon soap. Once they were hung on the line, the rays of the sun did the rest, adding their own patented ingredient for freshness. Behind the house and several yards away grew a long thin reed-like material that emblazoned parts of the land with a bright-yellowish orange. It was coarse and strengthened by sturdiness. We called it straw. Sometimes my mother would tie strings around a bunch of it to make a broom. She used it to sweep the house and the yard. The yard, directly across from a large chinaberry tree, was always clean and spacious.

My uncle Freddie Lewis, my father’s youngest brother, once shot a red bird in that tree using a BB gun as he sat on our front porch. My uncle plucked its feathers and cleaned it, while my mother fricasseed it and served it to me in gravy.

One clear summer day, Retta very excitedly rushed into the house, claiming she had seen something we all found incredulous. A hundred yards from our house, a large green pasture, protected by a barbed-wire fence, surrounded a section of the land we lived on. The pasture was a beautiful sight and extended as far as the eye could see. Far on the other side was a swamp and a family of trees forming a wooded area. Black Angus and Guernsey cows grazed inside the pasture. Apparently, one of the guernseys had captured my little sister’s undivided attention. My mother exercised great self-control,