The Fantasticks

Try To Remember! It was a time not long ago … half a century at most. We had come a long way since then, it seemed. Much of the problems that had come to us from the distant past had been dealt with, it seemed.

When I was a callow fellow, in Dallas in 1949, we clove to certain standards … certain beliefs, … those of us who had come from Connecticut (from the North). In Texas, some of those beliefs were re-enforced by a kind of reality. The strong recollection that I had from my parents was of a group of Negroes that had come to a park not far from our home (in Connecticut). Schuetzen Park is the name in my memory. From our house was heard a considerable commotion coming from the direction of that park. My mother, who had been trained in the Lifesaving methods of the Red Cross, rose to the occasion, and hurried to the park and tried to save the child involved. She retrieved the lifeless body of that child from the pond in to which the family had not dared to venture to save him. The pond was, at its greatest dimension, two feet in depth … that fact having been common knowledge to those who had lived in the area during varying weather conditions. So fearful had the Negroe family been of the depth that was unknown to them, they had not made any attempt to retrieve (and perhaps to revive) the child now drowned. In life, we form many lasting impressions and rather quickly at times. One supposes that many of those judgments are flawed. The calculation as to the danger of two feet of muddy water certainly seemed to be fatally flawed, but to whom?

What was not taken into consideration was that the Negoe family had had little experience of muddy ponds. That which had been commonly encountered as a fact of life for others in the community had not been a shared experience for the subculture of the Negroe. As for the simple ability to swim, Caucasians typically would learn these abilities in some sort of public pool, to which Negroes were seldom admitted in the 1930s and 1940s. One cannot readily judge the depth in a muddy pool. Not knowing how to swim and having no knowledge of the depth of the pond, the young boy’s family were unable to save him or even to find his body. It is also likely that dark skin would have been more difficult to see in a muddy pool than the lighter shade common to Caucasians. Absent much reflection on the subject and having little social experience of Negro families, my mother’s conclusion was that the boy had drowned simply because the Negroe family had not had sufficient "common sense" to go in to the pond, find him, drag him out and resuscitate him. With minor variations, the event may have had the same result had the family involved been Irish, Italian or Polish. The re-enforcement of this view came during our two years in Texas.

To clarify some of the circumstances of our move to Dallas may be useful in explaining certain accommodations. During the Second World War, as we continue to think of it, certain manufacturers did very well. Chance Vought (named after Chance M. Vought) had produced the Vought F4-U, a propeller driven aircraft that was designed to be used on aircraft carriers. Its singular feature was that its wings could be folded up so as to allow for storage of a great many units in the limited storage areas afforded by aircraft carriers of that time.

With the institution of the Air Mail Act of 1934, the parent company of the F4-U known as United Aircraft and Transportation Corp. was required to spin off (in to separate businesses) the Boeing Aircraft company, United Airlines, and the parent company of Vought, United Aircraft Corp, moved Vought to Stratford, Connecticut in 1939 resulting in employment of my father, a journeyman machinist from Denmark. The entire division was then renamed Chance Vought-Sikorsky Aircraft, after its merger with Sikorsky Helicopter.

The F4-U had held its own in the battles in the Pacific Theater. As a cost-saving measure, Chance Vought-Sikorsky made the decision to move their base of operations to Fort Worth, Texas. They brought with them a number of skilled employees from the relatively more frigid environs of Connecticut. There was more than an acclimation to the weather in store for these "Northerners". There were new homes that had been built on the west side of Dallas, not too far away, and carved out of cracked, dry soil that required several days of watering just to seal up the fissures in the ground. (A quarter of a century later, these same streets seemed to be very similar to the streets in East Sacramento as to the lushness of the yards, and the height of the trees (pecan) in this case), The acclimation had less to do with the weather conditions, and more to do with the style of living.

To live in Texas, in 1949, had more to do with acceptance of "being Texan", than just about anything else. Any rejection of the lifestyle of Texans was perceived as an affront to their culture. As a matter of geography, Texas was the farthest thing from the seat of power in Washington, DC. It had been on the loosing side in the Civil War. It was large, as states went. It had oil and cattle and rattlesnakes and scorpions. The hides from the cattle could be fashioned into a boot suitable for walking on the Texas ground (which, when it rained, turned in to gooey clay) and which provided some protection against rattlesnakes and scorpions. If you wore other than cowboy boots, you were "not from around these parts".

The people of Texas were neighborly. The least required craftsman was the one whose trade was building fences. The best selling item, at Sears, Roebuck, was a c

ast iron inser (and clay bricks) around which one constructed, in the back yard, an outdoor brick barbeque. Buying a home in this new real estate development meant that you had the cash to buy, and that you needed a house, having migrated from elsewhere. By definition, you were Caucasian.

Negroes were largely hidden from view in the Dallas of my youth. My first recollection of ever knowing of the existence of someone with dark skin was on a streetcar ride somewhere in the downtown area. My father pointed out to me that they (people with dark-colored skin) were required to sit in the back of the streetcar on which we were riding. I remember him pointing them out to me, but do not remember actually seeing them sitting there. There were no Negroes in the school that I attended. Our reading textbook depicted two Negroe children. It referred to them a "pickaninnys". For my father, who had grown up in Denmark, Negroes were more of a curiosity. He did not express an opinion on the subject, but merely reported the fact that they were required to be apart from the rest of us. He did not speak out against the abuse any more than he protested wearing cowboy boots. Indeed, I believe he learned to speak English watching gangster and cowboy movies. His conversations would make occasional reference to "getting the drop on" someone. He learned early on how to get along with his fellow machinists. The ones that I met, even in California, seemed always to have shit on their boots.

If I had any prejudice, it was against people who were a part of that "cowboy culture". In Dallas, it was mostly the songs of Hank Williams that I had heard from the radio. I appreciate them now, but, in those days, I had had no basis for understanding them. They were omnipresent, and indecipherable. Thanks to Popeye’s and Zatarain’s, I have gained a greater appreciation for Jambalaya and Gumbo. My greatest appreciation for the music of Williams came, in the last 30 years, from an album by The Residents titled "Stars and Hank Forever". After the move to Sacramento in 1951, the radio seemed mostly to broadcast songs by Mr. Steel Tonsils himself, Francesco Paolo LoVecchio, rebranded as Frankie Laine. Of his ouvre I remember only Mule Train, (Ghost) Riders in the Sky, Cool Water, Rawhide, Jezebel, Moonlight Gambler, and, of course, Blazing Saddle from the movie of the same name. Then there were the songs by Johnny Ray … notably "The Little White Cloud That Cried". My father’s friends seemed to favor that music on the radio. At my mother’s home, the trend was toward Mantovani. Until I discovered The Platters, I remained in a cultural desert. The Platters, as well as The Ink Spots, were singing groups comprised of people of African heritage. There had been, among my mother’s record collection, an album by The Ink Spots. Yet, during the 1980’s, when they were appearing in a casino in Cal-Nev near where we were staying, she refused to go to see them perform. Granted, there was only one member of the group who was from the original Ink Spots, but there was tremendous resistance to the idea. She expressed a disdain for the group that included intimations of "oiliness". My father’s views came from trying to get along with the people with who he worked. My mother’s disdain was more visceral. If there was an influence from either parent that led to prejudice against people of African origins, it is not sharp in my memory. Though the people I met in Texas were a part of a social set that did not include anyone of African origin, the supposed hatred (even the supposed enmity) was not in evidence. We were quite simply separate.

In Sacramento, my exposure to other races was minimal until I entered the 7th grade in what was then called Junior High School. Sutter Junior High was located just west of the Western Pacific railroad tracks between 19th and 20th Streets. It drew kids from a thirty-one block stretch, west to east, that included the children of many adults in the eastern half of that expanse, who worked downtown in positions such as clerks and bank tellers.. West of 15th Street was the "downtown area up to 7th Street. Beyond 7th Street to the Sacramento River was the transient hotel area. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley was, in those days, very productive in fruits and vegetables used in canning, such as peaches, pears, tomatoes and asparagus. Del Monte and Libby-McNeill-Libby were major employers as were the vegetable growing farms in the surrounding area.

The nature of employment in these industries was periodical. In the 7th, and 8th, 9th grades, my concerns were with learning the subjects at hand … Civics, English, History, Algebra, Science, etc. I paid scant attention to the fact that some kids would show up and be in class for a few months, then disappear forever. They were the children of transient worker families who worked canning peaches, then would go away only to re-appear during asparagus, which was canned further south, in Stockton. There were also some, more settled families, who worked in farm labor picking the fruits and vegetables.

These seemed, most often, to be Mexicans, who held such positions but preferred to remain rooted in a given geographic area.. The bracero program had begun in 1947 to allow families from Mexico to enter the United States for purposes of manual labor. This did not involve canning of fruits and vegetables, but rather picking them from the fields. Many of these workers stayed in Sacramento and worked in the fields when they could be irrigating, fertilizing, and sometimes applying herbicides. By some provisions in the law, they became permanent residents and, eventually, gained citizenship. Whether it is because they were not so welcome in the canning industry, or that they had a greater commitment to family, I cannot say. More children of Mexicans were a part of the steady population of Sutter Junior High School, than were the transient cannery workers.

Doug seemed to notice and absorb this culture. One of my closest friends, in Junior High, was a guy named Doug Braden. Doug seemed to be tuned in to some different wavelength. He was somewhat obsessed with clothing and with style. His hair was always cut in a very stylized way and kept in placed by something called Dixie Peach Pomade. His shoes were always black brogans with a "continental kit", for which he took considerable pains to mark in white chalk, the threads that held to the sole of the shoes.

It was Doug, who first pointed out the slogan on the can of shoeshine Black Lincoln Paste Wax. Clearly marked on the can were the words, "Black as a Nigger."

It may well be that, though having lived in Dallas for two years, this was my first exposure to that "racial epithet", as Liberals like to call it these days. In the days leading up to that day in the 1950s, "shines" were mostly Negroes. This brand of shoe polish would have been among their favorite, otherwise it would not have existed as a product. It was some time after that, that Liberalism began to identify the term "nigger" as having negative connotations. For hundreds of years, it had simply been a descriptive term for dark-skinned people … so different from the rest of society.

One hears that slave owners referred to their slaves as "niggers". That term may have been a substitute for "slave". Most slaves were from African. Their skin color was black, therefore the term "nigger", derived from the Latin term, was used. It did not carry with it any particular sense of enmity. The use of "nigger" as a term of enmity began, not with slavery, but with Reconstruction. Carpetbaggers came in to the South, took over the functions of government, and installed compliant former slaves in to positions of governance such as "mayor" of towns. That former slaves could be bought off and controlled with plenty of food. whores, and alcohol allowed the carpetbaggers to control the local politics by using proxies in the person of former slaves. It was at that time that the term "nigger" began to take on an extremely negative sense. People of the South did not view political figures (post Reconstruction) as "niggers", but they had learnt a bad lesson from Reconstruction about the political position of former slaves. "Niggers" they were, and damage they were allowed to cause, through no understanding of their own as ascribed to them by a compliant press.

Damage that they would be allowed to cause to the social structure of the South could not have been predicted by the former slaves of African descent. Indeed, such lasting damage was not of concern to the carpetbaggers, Realizing that Reconstruction would only lead to ruin of the South was not a part of the vision of the carpetbaggers. Nor was the enmity that would be caused toward former slaves. It was only about greed and government power. So it was that former slaves were put into positions in which they appeared to have power. Many of their actions caused considerable distress to Southerners, who had just suffered defeat by the North. The imposition of governance on the part of Carpetbaggers, through the proxy of former slaves, caused the more intelligent members of the population to flee towards the West along with many former slaves. It can be argued that the imposition of Reconstruction caused a flight of intelligence from the South. In any event,Reconstruction stands as an example of the destructive effects of massive government programs imposed upon any population for which it is unwelcome.

As a family of Northerners, trying to get along with our new hosts of Texans, it was probably well to make the best of things in a different culture; to try to get along as well as they could in a culture that was complex, and quite different from our own. The pressures for northerners to "move on" were not apparent to me, but must have been apparent to my family. There may well have been a reason that we had little contact with people of African origin in Texas in mid-20th Century Texas. The move from Texas to California both reduced the number of people of African origin that were a proportion of the population (as compared to Texas), but also reduced our daily contact with them (which may have been minimal). The first visual contact that I had with people of African origin was at the Fox Senator Theater. During summer, a child could obtain admission to the theater for the price of three bottle caps from Pepsi Cola soda bottles. Many were drawn to the theater on K Street to watch ancient Laurel and Hardie movies along with segments of The Little Rascals. I went there with my two cousins by my mother’s sister Ruth, whom my mother had intimated was a bit of a whore in her youth … and perhaps in later years as well. On one occasion, there occurred a confrontation with a girl of "color". Her language was combative and rough. For whatever reason, I got in to the middle of this conflict. Her words to me were quite foreign, in my experience. As a threat, she said that she would "probably suck my dick, but it would probably come out hot". For whatever reason, this seemed to be the worst condemnation she could throw at me. Though my buddies said that "she probably would suck my dick", and thought that that somehow insulted her, I remained confused as to what had caused her to say such a thing.
The next contact with people of this origin was in the gym locker room of high school. Two such individuals became involved in a fist fight in the locker room while naked. It was strange and difficult to take in or even understand. Absent any real experience of members of this group of people, it is difficult to assign the term "prejudice" to one’s feelings. In a way, it was like trying to evaluate rocks from Mars. This had been in the late 1950s.

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DISCLAIMER: All notes shall initially be "private" until such time as they can be reviewed for content. Left-wing trolls, who are sent here to disrupt the free exchange and expression of ideas, need not bother leaving such notes as are dictated to them by the DNC or any other communist, NAZI, socialist, progressive, or fascist organization. I am not obligated to allow protests or disturbances on my diary, nor am I required to reprint links to biased websites such as slate.com or dailykos.com..

NOTES:

I look forward to seeing this go from staggeringly racist to hardcore 1800’s Disney style racist. [SHARPSkinkid] [p]

Ignoring my request for moderation in commentary, one individual chose to display his ignorance by labeling this entry as "racist", whereas it is a discussion of the origins of racist ideas.

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You used the term negro, you misspelled negro. But please, I look forward to hearing someone educated in segregated Texas try not to sound racist. [SHARPSkinkid] [p]

Negroe, potatoe and tomatoe are also correct spellings of those words, just as disme is a correct spelling for what is more commonly spelt "dime". More importantly, [SHARPSkinkid] displays his own brand of racism in suggesting that Texans are automatically racist. This is a Northerner’s point of view. It has been said that Southerners hate Negroes as a group and love them as individuals, but that Northerners hate Negroes as individuals and love them as a group. I do not know that to be true. There does, however, seem to be some anecdotal evidence in support of that thesis.

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I love the way you post these private notes, integrate them into your entry and comment on them. As you know, I take a different approach.

They should be grateful you even bother to guide them to a better understanding of which they misunderstand. [Graffiti Forensics] [p]

The control over notes eliminates a noisome problem. I write here for publication elsewhere. I do not do it to entertain [SHARPSkinkid], whose irrational spewing out of Left-wing talking points only serves to muddy pools. I have no obligation to bother my larger audience with such clutter.

There are times when my written line of reasoning is picked up by others … it might be a appropriate word or a well-constructed phrase … and it is used in the larger debate. If it has the correct influence, it matters little who came up with the "argument’. Unlike others, who greedily want credit for parroting the Party Line, for me, advancing Reason is enough praise. If the appropriate political agenda is advanced because voters have recognized the shallowness of Socialism, that is reward enough.