Rough Around the Edges

I don’t know as much about my parents’ background as I should. We never communicated a great deal, and my father spent most of his time on the Gulf Coast. When he was home, we never talked much. I spent very little time around any of my relatives. So, I never heard much talk about the family’s background. Even my siblings had little to say about it. My parents and siblings never had much to say to me. Since we were isolated, there was not much opportunity to communicate with anyone. I had a speech impediment which limited my communication. They say it is important to know your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparent’s background as far back as possible, to know where you’re headed, and where you came from. Your background is a clock that tells you what time of day it is. I always say it is the n-product that matters. If your parents and grandparents didn’t make much progress, it is not necessary to look back much further, because you know not much progress has taken place in your family. My youngest sister told me that my great-grandmother on both sides of the family were Indian princesses, not that this would have much relevance for me. I can’t see what contribution it made to my present family situation. They still haven’t made much progress. My mother’s grandmother and mother were raised at the end of a three-mile trail in a rural area in Hallsville, Texas. I sometimes refer to it as the jungle. I lived on the same trail until I was six years of age. My parents built a shotgun shack on the property in the late 1920s. The county never thought of constructing a road. Blacks weren’t allowed to vote, so they couldn’t expect much. That’s enough to say about the situation. They were disfranchised. My mother was born in 1901. She came along just at the beginning of the industrial revolution. The automobile had not been invented. She was born and raised in a nearby small town of Harleton, Texas, in another rural area. During her youth there were nothing but muddy trails, and the only transportation was horse and wagon. My grandparents and great-grandparents on both sides of the family lived under similar conditions. The school in my mother’s community only went as far as the eighth grade. She spent most of her time plowing in the fields. My maternal grandmother died when my mother was twelve years of age. My grandfather and my mother’s brothers worked at the local sawmill, leaving my mother to handle the farm. This included handling a team of mules to do the plowing. My mother’s father was a task master. He was hard on my mother. He would use the lash if he thought she wasn’t doing the chores to his satisfaction. Sometimes he would beat her and leave welts on her body. My mother was conditioned at an early age to a semi-slavery way of life. Later, she would pass her conditioning to her children. My father was born in 1900. His parents moved from plantation to plantation. They never owned their own land. I know nothing of my father’s grandparents. I never heard him talk about them. He was away for most of the time I was at home. My mother gave a little information in bits and pieces about her and my father’s background. I was able to figure out that he spent his younger years working on one plantation or another. He dropped out of school in second grade because his labor was needed on the plantation. His family lived a hard life as well. His parents had been severely conditioned also. My mother and father met at a small church gathering in Harleton, Texas. My father had to drive a wagon for seven miles to get there. They then began several months of courtship. My grandfather warned my mother against my father, but soon gave his consent for them to get married. When they first started courting, my mother acted as if she was afraid of my father, but they soon connected. They got married and sharecropped on various plantations. A few of their sharecropping situations were on Black owned farms. They worked on various plantations for approximately ten years. Shortly before the Depression they decided to move to a parcel of land that my maternal grandmother owned. The Depression brought on even harder times. They set up homestead at the end of a three-mile trail in a rural area of Hallsville. I believe they tore down an old house or barn nearby and got sufficient lumber to build a shotgun shack. New lumber was a rarity. This is how Blacks did it in those days. Here is where they raised ten children. They experienced World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Afghanistan war. My mother was frugal, and no money ever exchanged hands between us. She learned this from the hard times she had experienced. My father would do pick up jobs in the community to supplement his work on the farm. Mostly he took care of the farm. Most of what we needed we had right there on the farm. They grew most of what they needed and raised their own animals. They would kill a hog or calf at least once a year and had plenty of fowls. They never needed to buy anything but household furnishing, salt, flour, cornmeal, sugar, black pepper, and a few other items. It was a hard life, but they were able to survive. My father stuck around and raised nine of the children. He then moved to the Gulf Coast and took a job in an oil refinery. He felt he could better support his family, at this point, by taking a public job. There was still a trail to our house for three miles. It’s my estimation that he got tired of negotiating that trail trying to get to a job in one of the smaller cities. They still didn’t have a phone, gas, electricity, or plumbing. My father couldn’t drive, and besides there was no road. Check out this and other of his books @ www.willisjay.com, by Jay Thomas Willis. Jay Thomas Willis Richton Park, Illinois