|
|
In the picture above you see Earnest Lee Benson enjoying a slice of watermelon in front of our tool shed. Blanch Benson lived in a tenant house on the edge of a branch on the Shumadine farm. Her home was a pleasant five minute walk along the edge of a inviting pine woods. I visited Blanch's home often and was always welcome. She would give me a biscuit and tea. Her husband had abandoned her and she was left to fend for her six children. She was a thrifty and hard working woman and would work all summer to lay in a barrel of flour for the winter. Once in a while I would help chop wood for her cook stove. Long after Aunt Mary died, Blanch would help Mom with house work every now and then.
I knew well, and played with her children. She had two girls, Honay and Corinne. Honay was a little older, but Corinne was about my age. Her four boys were named: Roosevelt, (Ro), Buddy Boy, Gussie, and Earnest Lee.
Ro was about my age and we played together in the woods every chance we got. We dug a cave on a slope and took pleasure in our handiwork. That was after Boney (Hattie's boy) had grown to old to play with me. Ro and I would explore the woods, climb trees to gather Fox and Muscatine grapes, and we fished and played in the marsh. Gussie would tag along. Earnest Lee was too small and a nuisance. I can remember when Earnest Lee got to close to a hot wood stove in the winter and burnt his behind. I really liked Ro and was disappointed when we grew apart later in life. Gussie was afraid of the water, and that bore him ill, for after he was grown, he fell off a dock and was drowned. I kept in touch with the rest of Blanch's children who later lived in Queen City and would visit on occasion. Louise and I attended Corinne's funeral.
Take a look at the tool shed picture above and you will see a wheelbarrow, a double team drag, a single plow, and 50 gallon oil drums. That wheelbarrow brings back many memories. The tall iron front wheel was salvaged from an old fertilizer drill. The shaves were formed of oak staves used to make haystacks. I prevailed on dad to custom make the wheelbarrow for use in handling wood, bags of fertilizer, and for harvesting vegetables. It was sturdy and well built. Dad didn't do anything sloppy. I have hauled many a wheelbarrow load of carrots and beets from the field. The double drag was pulled by Liz and Clara, our faithful and hard working mules. I used the single plow for hours on end and walked barefoot behind in the freshly turned furrow. It took near a day to plow an acre of ground, and the moisture has to be just right or the earth turns up too slick, or if too dry, clods are turned up and the mule is overworked. The oil drums are shown with a ramp to allow us to lift the drum higher so we could place a five gallon can under the spigot. We kept kerosene in the drums for our household cook stove and for the Fordson tractor.
Most of my early playmates were black children that lived on our farm and on Mr. A.J. Shumadine's farm that adjoined ours. We played together until I was 10 years old. That was the summer I lived in the Briarwood Inn in Virginia Beach. We played together happily with all the innocence that children have. I did not know or care about color. The woods and marsh were our playgrounds. We explored the woods, tussled to test our muscles, and swam together. The black kids possessed much useful knowledge of woods and marsh passed down by older siblings. I learned from them. We climbed the trees together for the challenge and to gather grapes. In the winter we built little fires in the woods almost daily for warmth and for pleasure. We frequented the marsh both winter and summer.
My earliest playmate was "Boney." He was the youngest of Hattie's children and probably three years older than I. His older brothers were to old to play with him, and so we played together. We explored the woods and the marsh together, and on rainy days we played in the barn. I was not supposed to play in the marsh, but I did. In the winter the marsh would partially freeze and we would hunt for muskrat tracks in the fissures that separated clumps of marsh grass. With skill and balance one could step and jump from clump to clump without getting muddy. But, as often happened, I would miss a clump and sink ankle deep in the mud, ruining my shoes. Boney would then gather a handful of fine grass and attempt to clean my shoes. One day a severe thunderstorm came up and we went into the barn and played in the hay mow. When the thunder cam close by, we would burrow down into the hay, and Boney demanded that I "Hiish" or God would get us. We nestled there quietly till the storm was over.
There was an inviting hill behind Hattie's house that demanded our attention. I had a Kiddie Car with nice wheels that in Boney's opinion could be used to make a wagon. Innocently, I gave the OK, and so Boney stripped the wheels from the Kiddie Car and with some old boards, fashioned a makeshift wagon. The front wheels of the wagon were mounted on the end of a short board that pivoted on a nail in the center. He riged short pieces of rope on the swivel board so we could steer it like a team of horses. We would coast down the hill and have great fun. That was until Mom and Dad found out about it, and then all bedlam broke loose. We had created the crime of demolishing the little Kiddie Car that was a Christmas present, and had given me so much pleasure. No excuse was acceptable.
After a while Boney got too mature to play with me, but then there was "Duck." Duck was the illegitimate girl of Hattie's daughter Eva. Duck was a year younger than I. She made a good playmate. She would follow my lead and we played in the barnlot together. Once in the cool weather, we built a burlap lean-to over a sand pile to shield us from the wind. I experiment with heat and found a flashlight battery which I hollowed out and partly filled with gasoline. I buried the cell in the sand, and lit it with a match. For a while it burned gently, but then something went wrong and the burlap caught fire. Duck instinctively slapped the fire out with her hands and we were OK. I marvel at this little girl. She had a hard life. Her mother was mentally retarded and treated her harshly. Later when we no longer played together, Mother noted that she was in great pain. Upon examination she found her should dislocated. Mother took her in for a few days and nursed her back to health.
Perhaps I shouldn't talk about this subject, but you may find my early environment interesting. I surmise all children learn about sex fairly soon, one way or another. Sexual chatter was not out of the ordinary with the colored children I played with. Nakedness in the summer time for the small children saved washing clothes. The woods was most often used for natures needs rather than a smelly backhouse. I heard sexual talk as soon as I learned speech. It was normal and sometimes humorous. I can remember playing with Duck and her little cousin Sarah when they about five years old. Sarah with no embarrassment showed me what she had. As I grew older, I found that sex was not limited to the colored children. The older white boys took pride in their anatomy and taught me what sex really was at a very early age when I didn't quite understand. Teenage sex was prevalent and Maryland (Hattie's boy) excitedly told me that he had made some young girl 'big.'
It was a bitter winter day when I visited Hattie's tenant house. It was located about a two minute walk from home. There was a wood fire in the kitchen stove - the only heat for the three room house. I was perhaps six years old, and why I had about 10 cents in my pocket, I cannot remember. But, Boney found out and suggested that we go down to Thompson's Store (later Barrett's Corner) to buy some fireworks. It was nearly a half-mile away. We hurriedly walked to the store. The wind chill must have been near zero. I became very cold during the walk. My little hands became numb. We bought a few "Spitting Devils" and made our way back home. It was a brutal trip. I can remember Boney scraping the Spitting Devils on the stove and watching the sparks fly.
One of the most thrilling exploits of my early youth was the time Ro and I stole a burlap sack full of black walnuts from the Williams farm. But, before I start this tale, let me tell you about the salt water mash that separated our farm from the Williams farm. The marsh formed quite an effective barrier between the two farms. It was a full city block wide and divided by a meandering channel that first grazed the wooded bank of one farm and then the other. The channel was clear water with a muddy bottom in most places. At high tide the channel overflowed into the bulrush and cattail marsh and at low tide the water receded to just the channel. The marsh was always alive with snakes. Hard shell crabs frequented the channel at low tide and gnashed the powerful claws together if you got too close to them.
In the yard of an abandoned colonial home (Murray home) stood a large walnut tree heavy with nuts. In the fall of the year when the nuts were about to drop, Ro and I decided we would raid the tree. No thought was given to ask permission. Each of us got a burlap sack and entered the muddy channel as the tide had fallen. We made our way through the marsh until the channel neared the bank where the walnut tree stood. There, we had to ferret our way through the talk rushes and clamor up the bushy embankment where the tree stood waiting. We beat off the nuts from the hanging limbs with sticks and greedily filled our sacks. This took longer than we anticipated, and when we re-entered the marsh, we found the tide rising and water all through the rushes. We well knew that this was a dangerous situation and our hearts pounded as we waded through rushes and cattails until we reached the channel. Here, it was still frightening for we found us up to our waist in water with snakes slithering about. Our guilt from stealing the nuts added to our fear. At last we arrived safely to our bank, nor worse for the ordeal. But, it was a venture never to be repeated
In the summer we plodded barefooted through the calf-deep sticky mud searching for soft crabs, always mindful of slithering snakes, and hard crabs with their gnashing claws. The mud would make sucking sounds as we lifted our feet from the mud. The colored boys had larger feet than I, and would not sink as deep in the mud as I did. When the tide went out and exposed the mud flat, we would search the mottled surface of the mud to find soft crabs (crabs that had just emerged from their hard shell.)One day I got caught deep above my knees in the mud flat of the 'big river' as the tide came in. I was frightened and worked desperately to free myself just in time to escape the incoming tide. Sometimes I would find six or eight and bring them home for supper. Dad taught me how to dress the crabs. You must remove the 'dead men' by lifting the pointed sides of the shell, and scraping out the soft material. Also, you remove the apron (sexual area. Female crabs had large aprons, and male crabs have small pointed aprons. Boney taught me never to snatch away from a crab bite as it would rip open the skin. Rather, you deliberately break off the crab's claw.
The marsh of King's creek was productive, both summer and winter, and it was extensive. An open channel about as wide as a country road meandered from one bank to the other with sandy spots and muddy places along the way. As the channel passed the Shumadine farm it widened a little and the marsh grass gave way to mud flats. Grassy clumps made up the central portion of the marsh, and the edges where fringed with bull rushes with cattails. In the winter, I and young colored boys trapped the marsh all the way from Shell Road northward to the north edge of the Shumadine farm. Along the way, the marsh penetrated a number of coves on both sides of the main marsh. I tended about six steel traps. I was taught how to search for muskrat trails among the tufts of marsh grass and rivulets and to place the trap in just the spot. When the marsh was frozen, I could step from grassy clump to clump with some risk, but as it warmed, I would occasionally slip and plunge into the icy water. Strangely, the drenched foot would seem to be warm. I did catch a number of large muskrats with beautiful near black pelts, but the whole endeavor saddened me so. Steel traps are cruel devices, and the captured rats would frantically try to escape, sometimes chewing off their leg to gain freedom. Broken hearted, I gave ups trapping. The pelts were sold to a traveling furrier.
Elsewhere in these memoirs I told about how Dad, Ross, and I took down the giant oak in our side yard. This oak was large and very old. Hollow spots showed where limbs once grew. And, these hollows made a natural home for black snakes. I was always fearfully of snakes, even though I had been told that they ate rats. When I was perhaps thirteen, I was left alone on the farm while Mom and Dad went to town for groceries and errands. As I walked under the oak, I spied a large black snake out stretched on top of knurled limb. This situation seemed to demand my action. I hurriedly retrieved Dad's 12-gauge shotgun from the closet and returned with my heart pounding. I had never shot the gun in my life and I trembled as I lifted the gun to my shoulder and took bead. With one terrific jolt and bang the gun went off, and the snake dropped to the ground. It still writhed - my job was not yet down. Quickly I got a chopping hoe and with a few mighty blows, I had the snake in pieces. But with the adrenalin flowing, I had used so much force that I broke the hoe handle. When Dad came home, I proudly told him what I had done. He was not one bit happy. I had used the shotgun without his permission and I had broken the handle in one of his favorite hoes. But, being the gentle man that he was, he did not punish me, except for his disapproval, and that was enough.
| TOP | HOME |