Portrait of a Family

Everyone hurried into the two room schoolhouse. Mr. Phillips was the only teacher at that time. He was very knowledgeable about many subjects and he taught the children everything he knew. Mr. Phillips believed in being as punctual as possible and so did the principal of the school, Mrs. Woodberry. Of course times were very difficult for everyone since money was always very low and ways to travel were very limited. Most of these students should have graduated around 1945 through 1955, but very often this did not happen. A beautiful fall day was spent inside the little schoolhouse and now it was time to go home and do whatever chores were assigned to each child. Mary had to go home and scrub their only clothes while the boys went out and picked fresh vegetables from the small garden to be used for dinner. Mama Josephine took care of the smaller children in the area as she sat in her one room shack house with the tin roof and wooden porch which was about to fall in and the red dirt roads. Mama Josephine loved to see people coming down that dirt road because she loved company. There was always someone walking around from the field to come just to say hello. “Mama!” yelled Thomas, “come and get Adam and Paul please, they are bugging me while I am doing my homework and I can’t concentrate. I can’t stand this place, can’t we move to the city?” Saturday rolled around and Mama Josephine was invited to a party for grownups only. She dressed up in a beautiful evening dress with shoes and a purse to match. Papa George hitched up the horse and buggy and then drove themselves to the party. Their children stayed home and tried to keep themselves entertained. Once they were out of ideas, they came up with a good one and that was to go to the grown up party. So they all got up and put their shoes on. They didn’t comb their hair or put on nice clothes. They went just as they were with a goat walking right beside them. When they arrived at the party Mama Josephine yelled furiously. “What in the world are you kids doing here?” All of them looked up with dusty hair and clothes and said, “Mary told us to come to the party.” Mama Josephine said, “ya’ll get yo little butts back home right now cause when I get home all of ya’ll gon get a whoopin and get that goat home too!” The children couldn’t wait for Sunday to come around so that they could forget about what happened on Saturday. “Come on chuluns let’s get ready to go to church. Hurry, Hurry, get cleaned up and put on the clothes that I have washed and starched for you. Shine your shoes and put on your Sunday socks. Get your money for church, it is wrapped in the handkerchief so you won’t lose it,” said Mama Josephine. “Mama, do we have to walk down that red dirt road or do we get to hitch up the horse and buggy today?” asked Mary. “No, the horse needs a little time to eat because ya’ll really didn’t have any stopping sense yesterday when you went to town. Later today ya’ll can take the horses down to the pond for water. You should have walked yourself to town and then caught the train the rest of the way,” said Mama Josephine. That was usually how the Strong boys always went shopping. “But, Ma our shoes will get all dusty again,” the boys replied. “Well dust them off again before you go into the church.” Everyone walked to the church brightly dressed with colorful hats and white gloves. Everyone looked so neat, clean and beautiful. The men had on their suits and they looked so gentlemanly and what a sight for sore eyes. Mama Julia Strong loved her brightly colored dresses and straw hats with flowers on top. Mama Josephine was very fashionable and loved her shoes. These two women prayed all of the time, even when they went to the outer house or when they were churning butter or picking cotton and potatoes. The Pastor of the church began his message with Genesis. “The Lord told Noah to build an ark and to put two of each animal in the ark cause there was goin to be storm a commin, so Noah did just what the Lord told him to do, the peoples didn’t believe it though. The storm did come to pass just as the Lord said it would happen.” “But, now Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers. The two brothers laid a garment over their father’s nakedness. They walked in backwards so they wouldn’t see him naked,” said the Pastor. Mary and Ellen noticed something that the Pastor said and they began to question it. They went to their Mother and asked what the Pastor meant by one of the sons laughing at his father Noah and that for some reason this represents the black race. They wanted to know if that was why they were cursed. Of course, this was misconstrued by someone in the church and when it got down to the children they understood that the reason they were black was because Noah’s son laughed at him when he drank too much wine and got drunk. Of course, they finally realized after talking to other preachers that that was not the reason why black people were black. “Noah’s son was already dark skinned; his father just punished him,” said Mama Josephine. The preacher preached on and on that day. The church ladies left the church saying, “Gul, he show did preach today, didn’t he?” Everybody went home and had a wonderful dinner, and later they went to Mama Fannie’s house for dessert because she made delicious cakes from scratch. Monday morning rolled around again and it was quite chilly outside, but there was no way the children were going to get around going to school. “Wrap up children! It is a little cool outside,” said Mama Josephine. “Mama, do we really have to walk all the way across the field to school today?” said one of the children. Mama answered, “how else you gone get there, if you don’t walk?” “I can ride the cow over there,” said Thomas jokingly. “Don’t be silly it is almost time for ya’ll to graduate from that school and then go on and get some more education. “Who is that coming up the field with a horse and buggy?” said Mama. “Oh! That’s daddy out there with the horse and buggy,” shouted the children as they hopped up and down with excitement. “Why ya’ll so happy to see him with that old raggedy buggy and he has not done anything else for ya’ll. Now all of a sudden he wants to do something like this. Ya’ll need to walk to school,” said Mama Josephine. “Oh Mama, please don’t be upset, he is a very intelligent man, he just had some difficult times with getting jobs and getting around. “Well children, all he had to do was work with Mr. Brandberry. He would have paid him very well if your daddy wasn’t so stubborn and had so much pride about the color of his skin. He should have more pride about the color of money that we need so badly for our food and clothes and shelter.” “Aw Ma! We don’t think it was about the color of his skin because you know they say that that man Mr. Brandberry may be his own daddy and you know what color his skin is,” said the children. “Hush, don’t you repeat any of that, you know how he gets highly upset when you mention about his mother and father. You know his mother worked for Mr. Brandberry and you know what happened. Well his mother, Mama Tena gave all of her children except for maybe one, Mr. Grahamwood’s last name so that is how Daddy got his last name. Are you and Daddy ever going to be able to get along? You all are still married to each other. This is so confusing and I wonder about ya’ll sometime,” said Mary.