The Hell of The Holocaust

Today in Charleston, survivors of the Holocaust were gathered for a memorial service downtown. It made me think of a story that my Mama told me when I was a young girl and had checked out The Diary Of Anne Frank from the library at school. I don't know why I chose that book but I couldn't put it down and felt terrible for the young girl who had to live in cellars and attics and to depend on the kindness of others to bring food and water because going out to get it herself would almost certainly mean capture and death for her and her family.
But I digress and this is not a book report. Mama and I talked about life in Germany for the Jews and I almost couldn't believe any human could be hunted down and killed just for being what you were, born to whomever, were your parents. I must have seemed doubtful so she told me that when she was younger, before I was born, not much before, there was a neighbor from Germany and she was a Jewish girl.  She told my Mom that her grandfather had been killed and that later her grandmother, mother, and herself were taken to one of the gas camps. Somehow, I am not sure of this part, she and her parents were freed and she came to the U.S after marrying a soldier. Her grandfather was the first to be killed she said. Apparently the Germans found him out in his fields, working. When they determined he was a Jew, they dragged him back to his barn and nailed him to the front of it. His screams brought her grandmother out and they stripped his flesh from him while she watched. Her grandmother was never the same after that, and I can believe that. I can't fathom what goes on in the mind of the fiends who devise tortures and terrors to inflict on the innocent...
That made it all real to me, however, and I found a new appreciation for the Diary of Anne Frank...

The Flying Jenny

What kid has not ever wished for a carnival ride right in their own backyard? I can remember going to the carnival when I was young and riding the ferris wheel and the Merry-Go-Round. At school there was a fantastic thing that seemed to spin wildly fast and you had to hang on for dear life but it was great fun and quite popular. I don't know what it was called, still don't as a matter of fact, but I wanted one. I wanted the Ferris Wheel too. And the Merry-Go-Round.

On our way to school, North Charleston Elementary, every day we passed a house on the corner that had a small train track all the way around the edge of the yard and the owners had the little engine, passenger car and the caboose train too! A couple of times on a weekend or something we would have to pass that house and the train would be going around and around the yard, an elderly fellow watching and walking alongside of it and there would be two little kids in the train having the time of their lives - You just knew that. I wanted to ride so badly but we never stopped and asked. I am sure he would have let us ride... Who could say no to big blue eyes and beguiling smiles flavored with a few "please, mister?" inquiries.

Well, anyway, we never got to ride and I am sure we (my sister and I) must have tormented Mama and Daddy with the ceaseless whining about wanting a train, a Ferris Wheel, a Merry-Go-Round, or anything that was more fun than our typical old everyday, everybody-has-one, boring old swing set.

Of course we didn't have that kind of money to buy anything like that but we had Daddy and Daddy was always pondering and piddling, he said. "Whatcha doin' Daddy?" " Oh, just piddlin'" .. I didn't know what piddlin' was but it had something to do with whatever he was building or doing in the wood shop behind the house, or in the garden down by the back fence. It didn't look fun all of the time, but it looked interesting for at least a few minutes.

One day Daddy was 'piddlin' with a deep hole he was digging out in the back yard. It was about 3 feet round, and seemed to be forever deep... In truth it was probably 2-3 feet deep. He started with post hole diggers and worked his way up to shoveling later on that afternoon. He had certainly piqued our interest and Jo Ann and I stood by attentively, watching, and waiting to see what happened with the hole. Fat earthworms wriggled in the clumps of dirt, and he was definitely a fisherman, but digging for earthworms this deep was - extreme- and even we knew that. But worms came and went and he paid them no mind. We did, and gathered several to take to the worm box for him and along the way became distracted with the caterpillars and Mimosa fronds and left Daddy to piddle with the hole. The next day our inspection of the hole was of immediate concern but there was no hole. Instead what was there was a large round pole, thick and sturdy, that was buried in a big round metal barrel. We'd spent many hours rolling that barrel, let me tell you! We knew it was hollow, but now it wasn't. Ingenious was Daddy's middle name. Somehow he had anchored the wheels and axle of some old automobile in concrete inside of that barrel. So that pole, innocuous laying flat, proved all kinds of interesting standing up. Now we asked him what it was because this was not an ordinary 'piddlin' he was doing, no Siree! He was bolting and soldering crossbars on the top axle while we watched. "It's a Flying Jenny." he said. I'm sure we must have seemed perplexed. "What does it do?" "You'll see" was the gist of the conversation. It seemed forever to find out what Jenny did. But one morning we were carted off to the store, or somewhere, and when we came home Flying Jenny was complete. What Daddy had built was essentially a smaller, 4 seated version of the flying swings that are so popular at the Fair. Instantly we attached our butts to the swings and my brother was the one to pull the rope that got us spinning. Rather like the magneto on a lawnmower pulley, he wrapped a rope around it and gave it a hard pull, and we spun 'round slowly and then faster. The rope pulling was a bit hard on anyone's hands after a bit and before the day was over we'd figured it was easier for someone to stand under the bars in the center and push them, and so Thomas, my brother, did. And we learned why Daddy called it the Flying Jenny. We flew. Our backyard became the neighborhood Fair and we never lacked for friends to push and take turn swinging. This marvelous toy was people powered and we learned fast that in order to make it work we needed friends and we needed to take turns, and somehow from that day forward, I no longer envied the children who trundled slowly around the edge of their Grandpa's yard in the tiny train. I knew that our Flying Jenny was the best ride in all of 'Kiddom'. Those were some of the best summers of my life - pushing, swinging, laughing, taking turns with our friends getting dizzy going 'round and

round staring up at the blue sky and knowing all the while that my Daddy was the most incredible 'piddler' in the whole wide world.

Easter by the penny and Duke's Mayonnaise Jars

I grew up in a time of -NOT- plenty. We had enough, I guess, but we never had more than what we needed to pay bills, eat, and keep gas in the car. Not that I knew about all of that but you know how it is. We had the necessities...usually.  We lived in the housing that belonged to the Mill, Garco- or Raybestos-Manhattan. Asbestos, regardless of what you call it. Anyway, the "village" we lived in was called the "Little Village", Dewey Hill. Closer to North Charleston, and the Mill, was "the "Big Village" where most of the higher paid workers lived. I guess some of the supervisors and plant managers, etc, lived there. We always went Trick or Treating there... They had the BEST candy. Anyway, the houses in our village were little wooden clapboard houses. There were three bedrooms, one bath, one living room and one kitchen. The front porch was a tiny little thing and the backporch ran the length of the house, save for a storage closet at one end of it and the other end gave way to the back door, which exited through the bathroom. Rent for the house was $7.00 a month. $1.00 per room and a $1.00 for something else. That doesn't seem like much; we lose $7.00 a month in the sofa cushions sometimes. But in 1963, it was almost a fortune. Daddy was making $1.60 an hour. The company took the rent out of his check. I remember going grocery shopping with Mama on Thursdays after she went to get his check. We went to Piggly Wiggly to get some things because they had better prices. And we went to Doscher's Red And White for other things because they had sales on other things. Mama would usually go to Doscher's first because she wanted to get the meats last, at Piggly Wiggly. So we'd go through the store, and she would buy dry beans, bread, detergent, canned goods like pork and beans, and fresh vegetables like collards, cabbage, onions and potatoes.  She'd cash Daddy's check, and from the $65.00, she would get around $40.00 back. Then we'd go to Piggly Wiggly and she would get fatback, hamburger, round steak (and this was not tenderized meat) maybe a roast, and chicken. She bought 1/2 gallon of milk and a box of powdered milk. She always bought several cans of condensed milk as well and we ate that, thinned with water, in our cornflakes. We didn't get the frosted flakes and the sugar coated cereals. There were 4 of us kids(two teenagers and my baby sister and I) living at home and the money was better spent putting real, decent, filling food on the table. Once in a while, if she had budgeted well and didn't have to buy something she had from the week before, she would buy ice milk, NOT to be confused with ICE CREAM. I don't even know if you can buy Ice Milk anymore... But it tasted like heaven to us and silly kids that we were, we thought it was better than that old homeade ice cream that we spent hours churning on the back porch sometimes. Even then we knew the sweetness of convenience...how special it was to buy something that we could make ourselves... What I would not give today for one bite of that heavenly homemade peach icecream. Nothing compares. Blue Bell comes close.
Anyway, when holidays rolled around, I know Mama had to worry. Out of 40.00 left from groceries, she had to pay electric bills, phone bills, water bills, car insurance, lunch money for 3 kids, and put aside a couple of dollars if she could for vacation. Daddy always worked extra hours for that, though.However, sometime after Christmas, on the mantle, two Duke's mayonnaise jars would appear. The labels were soaked off but the yellow band was unmistakeable. A hole was cut in the lids and after shopping, the coin change was divided equally, and dropped in the jars. One was mine and the other was Jo Ann's, my little sister. We wanted so badly to count that money! But we couldn't. All we could do was watch as little by little, day by day, it seemed, the jars began to fill up. Now and then we'd see a whole dollar in there! And we would get so excited because we knew that soon we'd take the jars, Mama would count the money, put it in rolls and in her purse, and we would go shopping. The week before Easter was the magic date. We had $5.00 in bills and another $3 or 4 in coins. We never had more than $12.00 or so in them, but it was enough to go out and buy the beatiful white or black patent leather Easter shoes we'd been dreaming of. Mama usually made our dresses but now and then, somehow, we'd get a store bought one if the shoe sale was good enough. I can only guess  how much money she had to put aside to afford the Easter baskets, and all of the candy that went in them. We never had a pre-packed basket. Mama put it all together. We'd dye eggs the night before and on Easter morning we'd pack them up, take our baskets and head over to Hanahan to the Waterworks, where they had a park, and we would hide the eggs in the thick clumps of grass. It was a magical place because it seemed that someone had decorated the trees for Easter. We didn't know that they kept the coat of white paint around the lower portion of the tree trunks to discourange insects... They looked dressed up and "Eastery" to me. We'd have a picnic, eat boiled eggs, gather with family and generally make a day of it. By the end of the day the chocolate was eaten, the candy eggs were safe for another day and the jelly beans were sticking to the green grass in the baskets. It wasn't the plastic grass of today. It was more like a papery straw grass...It dyed the candy eggs green if it was even a little damp... and sweaty hands delving into the basket to find that last grape jelly bean or that squashed chocolate egg made sure that happened.
Those were wonderful days. I'm sure kids today will have their own memories of Easter, but I'm sitting here thinking about how easy it is for parents to spend on just the basket alone what it took us months to save to buy just a pair of shoes.  But it's more fun to think about how that jar filled up and how I could lay in bed at night sometimes and hear coins clinking into the mayonnaise jar... tink, tink... tinkle.  Wonderful memories,absolutely priceless, dropped into a glass jar in the form of pennies, nickels, quarters and dimes.

Black Dogs and Black Widows

I think of this every time I see a black dog... Like most everyone, there are keys that turn on memories sometimes... A cologne, a certain feel to the time of day, a moment in time when you can smell or taste something from the past... Weird, yes. I guess so. However, it happens.
I don't remember being afraid of the dogs. I was too young.  But my Mama told me the story so often that I almost think I do remember being afraid of them. There was no reason to fear them. And I only screamed, terrified, when I saw a black dog. It didn't have to be a big dog, it didn't have to be near me... and I had night terrors about them, too. But scared of them I was.
When we moved over to Amboy street, as I mentioned earlier, I was very young. But I was old enough to be scared to DEATH of black dogs.  My mom said that one day she went out of the front door and was out in the front yard doing something. She might have been talking to the neighbor. I, Miss Adventure, or misadventure, came right out behind her and was playing on the front porch.  I guess I didn't want to go down the steps, and playing on the porch was good enough for me. She knew I was there because she heard the screen door shut. She glanced back now and then to make sure I was alright, which I was.  Then a few minutes later, she said, I was screaming my lungs out.  Now our porch was small and consisted of railings and pickets so that you couldn't readily see the porch without being close enough to peer between the pickets, or balusters if you will. But between my screams, and her running to see what was wrong, she said she heard a strange, low growling. She got to the bottom step and over in the corner where the porch joined to the house, there stood a huge black dog. She had never seen the dog before, and had not seen it come onto the porch. When the dog saw her he ( she determined later that it was a boy) whined in his throat and wagged his tail, so she knew he wasn't a threat to me or to her.  I was standing just a few feet from him, obviously petrified, and when I saw my mom, I apparently moved just enough to make the dog step to the side just a bit but keeping me away from his corner. And he growled. Mama came onto the porch and picked me up and the dog stood still, wagging and whining. He didn't want to come away from the corner but she finally coaxed him to come to her and made me pet the dog on his head. When I realized he wasn't going to eat me, she said, I calmed down. And when the dog moved over closer, behind him, sitting in a neat, tight little web with her pretty red hourglass showing in the most tempting fashion to lure tiny fingers to it, was a huge black widow spider. Mama said that dog was barring me from getting near that corner of the porch and I surely would have touched that shiny black bug with the pretty red spot and would certainly have been bitten and been in a lot of trouble. From that day on I never feared black dogs again. I don't remember if she ever found out where that dog came from or where it went after it saved my life that day. I hope it lived a fine, happy life.

So why the unexplained fear of the black dogs? Who knows? But I think things happen for a reason and I think that the fear of the dogs was the key to my being safe from that spider that day. Mama said she was born with a 'caul' over her face - which was rumored to give the person an extra sight, or sense...( It did, too) And though I didn't have that, there was something - something that told of a future instance where my unreasonable fear of man's best friend would save my life... Do I love dogs? You bet! 

The Earliest Years (That I can remember)

I guess I was born in George Legare Homes on Eden Avenue. I don't remember anything about it. Not too surprising that, yet I am sure I must have liked it there.

I do remember being a baby however. Its only one memory but it stuck with me and, as insignificant as it is, I count myself among very few who can recall anything prior to being a toddler.  I remember being in my crib and having to hold on to the sides to stand. I was alone in the room and had my bottle (back in the day they were glass, and heavy). I must have wanted some company. I don't think I cried at first but I managed to heave my bottle a good way across the room. I don't know why that seemed like a good idea but I did it. And I think I must have regretted it soon after because I remember reaching for it and wanting it back in my hand. Of course it did not come to me. I stared at it, laying against the baseboard on the rose flowered linoleum, half full, and I cried. And I cried... until my brother came in the room and figured out why I was crying and fetched the bottle back to me.

I don't remember anything else of my early, early years.

And then we moved. We moved over to Amboy Street off of Remount Road in North Charleston. Remount was off of Rivers avenue at 10 Mile Hill. We didn't call it Rivers Avenue. We didn't call it Highway 52. We called it Dual Lane. Why? Because it was the only dual laned highway in Charleston. It was huge ( by the standards of the day). Two lanes going West and two lanes going East.  Just past 10 Mile Hill ( I can't tell you why that is called that), the road narrowed to one lane.

On the Remount Road side there was a Piggly Wiggly and across from that, on the East bound side, there was a Eagles 5 & 10. And toys. Now, being only 3 or so, I hadn't had the opportunity, nor the wherewithall to avail myself of a proper ladie's purse. However I had a pair of cotton panties and a nickel that I had found and the front of my panties served quite well as pocketbook, for I was going shopping! I do remember this.  We lived on a dead end sandy street. At the end, the land sloped down and past a rather formidable jungle of pine and oak, it gave way to The Sand Pit. The other end of the street opened on to Remount Road. And there was one little side street that went from Amboy to Dual Lane (Rivers Avenue) through the side yard of the Binghams house. I must have paid close attention to shopping trips to Piggly Wiggly and indeed even over to Eagle's 5 & 10 store because I made up my mind  and went off on my own. I suppose everyone thought the other one was watching me. I was supposed to be playing with my friend, Cheryl, who lived across the street. But my good fortune had it that no one was watching me, and I had no reason to tell them that I was off to do some marketing. A nickel seemed like a large sum of money but it didn't weigh the purse down like I thought it should, so a couple of good handfuls of sand went in for good measure and off I went. My memory is sketchy about the trip through the yard and out to Rivers Avenue, but I made it. I wonder what people must have thought to see a toddler, 3 or 4 years old, barefooted, a load of sand in her drawers, purposefully making her way through the parking lot and to the edge of a busy highway. I remember standing on the side of the road, knowing not to cross it while traffic was coming. That did not stop me from yelling at the 18 wheel trucks to "Stop!" because I needed to get over to the dime store. I offered them my nickel several times, to no avail.  It seemed like forever but apparently somehow I made it to Eagles.  By then my family was frantic to find me...I am not clear on what happened but I seem to remember something about one of the truck drivers actually stopping, picking me up and taking me over to Eagles.  I am sure I could tell my name but not much more. The lady at Eagles called the police. My mother called the police.  The police then asked my mother if she was missing a blonde curly haired, blue eyed little girl. When she told them yes, they told her that they and I were over at Eagles, I was having candy or something and they came and took me home.  In writing this I am forced to think of how things have changed since then. A child, hardly more than a toddler, makes her way out of the yard, across a major highway and into a dime store to spend a nickel she found. The police are called, the parents come and get the child, and that was the end of it. No Department of Social Services, no charges of neglect or child endangerment...  and I am sure that I must have been spanked or scolded after the hugs and kisses for being found safe...Whatever happened, it cured me from wandering out of the yard from then on. I think they might have confiscated my nickel too... 

I have to thank my cousin Carlene for my re-awakened awareness of my blog page! Her blog, Horseshoe Bend, reminded me that I also have stories to share. Thank you, Carlene.
I am sure that most of these posts will bore some or all of you to tears. Some will evoke nostalgia. Some will evoke the "Holy crap! I can't believe that she told that!" response... and some, occasionally, will just bring on the head-shaking tsk-tsking "what is she thinking?" mindset. I'm 53. I don't care. I own that right, bought and paid for by years of meek, sweet, mouth-shut niceness.
So read at your own risk. This is coleslaw and hushpuppies. Plenty of fiber, mixed and shredded, a bit innocuous at first glance, but flavored with salt, pepper, vinegar, and creamy goodness.You didn't have coleslaw without hushpuppies in our house ... so it comes in small, neat littel round packages -  deep fried, loaded with cornmeal, onions, buttermilk, and served up hot and fresh - all told,  a grainy goodness, full of good, wholesome, if grainy, truth. Settle back with the sweet tea or your glass of buttermilk and a spoon and spend a few minutes here, going back there, for the most part.

Go Cindy!

I've got to say that the woman has guts. She's got moxie. She's also got my vote. You can only admire this woman's drive and devotion to righting a serious wrong; namely, the death of her son, Casey. And the question she begged George Bush to answer, " Why?", is one that seems to be a very popular one now, amongst millions of Americans, and I'd wager that even some of you Bush supporters who said she was crazy and an attention seeker, are echoing her sentiments. Maybe your son or daughter was killed in Bush's war to gain control of the oil, amongst other things, and you finally woke up to the fact that this war should -never- have been entered into in the first place. It's too sad and too bad and I'm sorry your loved one is among the thousands of dead soldiers who died 'fighting terrorism' on foreign soil. My thought is that if you'd backed Cindy then, your child might have been brought home alive, along with the other thousands of boys and girls, men and women, sitting out there waiting for the next sniper to take a bead on them.
If you aren't a suppoter or sympathizer of Cindy, then I hope you remember this when you get that knock on your door... because it will surely come.
Cindy has decided to take on the biggest beast threatening our servicemen and women. It isn't terrorists. It is our own greedy government. It's George W. Bush, and Nancy Pelosi. It's Dick Cheny. It's Condoleeza Rice. It's any member of Congress, any member of our governing body who has not moved to Impeach George Bush for lying his way into taking America to war to fight a terrorist whose father was in business with his father...
Aren't you wondering why we could find Saddam Hussien in a spider hole and we can't find a man who still leads his armies of terrorists... Come on. Please give us credit for having some intelligence... We can see a license plate from space, we can tell if it's screwed on with a phillips or a slotted screw... We have night vision this and that and we can't find Osama?! We don't -want- to find Osama because he isn't really the object of this war. The object is setting up permanent bases in the oil rich country, initializing our form of government there, perhaps making ourselves comfortable enough that we manage to get control of the oil... How did our oild get under their sand, anyway? Right?
If Cindy's son died for a good reason, I want to know what it is. If terrorism is the real reason we are fighting over there, then why in God's name aren't we securing our border with Mexico? Why are we pardoning Scooter Libbey and locking up men who did their jobs attempting to stop a -known- drug dealer who was trying to enter America from Mexico, illegally!?
Why aren't we putting more stringent enforcement on our imports from China, who obviously, is not at all concerned with the quality of food and other merchandise that they send to America. If Bush and his cronies, and Pelosi is one of them, now, are so enamoured of keeping America safe, hadn't they ought to bring these men and women home and give them jobs protecting our borders, and inspecting the billions of dollars worth of food and goods that we receive from China? Shouldn't protection start at home? Bush's brand of fighting terrorism is akin to protecting against STD's by washing hands -after- sex with the infected individual.
It's insane, and this isn't my last blog.
Go Cindy! I'm voting for you!