Several
years ago I made a mistake. Not that I don’t make mistakes, I make
them every day. This one was different.
Let me
give a little back ground. I was reared in a small town in hot
Mississippi. My father would leave for work every morning at six am.
and return sometime from six to eight pm. With him
leaving so early bed time was nine pm. Mother would
wake my sister and myself when my father left. My bedroom and my sister’s
were on the north side of the house.
In the
summers I would be outside most of the day playing, paying no
attention to the heat. There were times I would lay down at night and
a cool breeze would be blowing through the windows. It felt so nice
after being in the hot sun all day. We didn’t have air
conditioning. Only doctors offices and some stores had air
conditioning. The school dealt with the heat by opening the windows.
The auditorium had ceiling fans.
Our
house was the third house down from the “quarters.” The
“quarters” was the area of town where black folks lived. About
100 to 125 yards from house was a “black” church. Because of the
high temperature the windows and doors would be open during services.
On Sunday nights in the summer
when I lay down, music from the church would waft through my window
with the cool breeze. It was delightful! To this day I like
gospel music.
On
Sunday mornings we went to church. In the summer, because of the
heat, I didn’t have to wear a jacket, but I did have to wear a tie
with the starched collar scratching and itching. When I was very
young I wore short pants to church, but men didn’t wear short
pants. By the time I was eight or nine, I no longer wore them. It
didn’t take but a few years after I quit wearing shorts to realize that in
the heat of summer it was nice to wear them whether I was six or
sixty. I started wearing them again. I wasn’t the only one. A
friend of mine also started wearing them. Boy… did we take a
ragging for it, but I’ve always been stubborn and rebellious. The
more I was teased the more determined I was to wear them; “I’ll
show them.”
After
church we would go home and have dinner. At that time where we lived
breakfast was the morning meal, dinner was in the middle of the day
and supper was in the late afternoon or early night. In 1953 we got
our first television set. I noticed that people said they were going
to dinner when it was night time in the TV programs. I asked my
father why they were talking about dinner at that time of day. He
told me he didn’t know, but it might be a meal after supper because
it was always later at night when they would be going to dinner.
Remember 9 pm was late night for us. Today in the South dinner is at
night.
So
much has changed in the South because of a feeling of being “not as
good as” and that is not a good reason. Some things that have
changed have been for the better, most do not matter, but we lost
some good things along the way.
