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I have trouble separating the memories of my first eight
years of childhood. Nearly all memories from that time combine into an idyllic
era filled with family, love, contentment, carefreeness, safety. I wish that I
had the power to bestow upon every child the near-perfection of my first eight
years. My later childhood was good, my life so far has been good, just not the idyllic
perfection of my first eight years.
I was born in Dayton, Ohio to young, first-time parents. They
had little in the way of financial security but they were rich in the amount of
love they both received and gave. They were part of something special that was
much bigger than themselves. Several family members of both of my parents lived
in an area of Dayton within a ten-minute walk from each other.
My parents were part of an extended family in which members shared a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. The members supported each other and had each other’s backs. In later years after learning a bit about history, I would liken this to my family’s own “Kennedy” Compound, just without the fame or fortune.
When I was born, my parents lived in a little rented brown
shingle-sided house at 336 Knox Avenue. Later, before my brother was born, my
parents bought a little white-sided house just down the road at 320 Knox
Avenue. That home at 320 was not much more than a shell of a home when they
purchased it. Snow actually blew through cracks between the window and the sill
into my brother’s crib the first winter we were there. Dad worked on it in his
spare time until it was a beautiful and cozy little home.
Life at 336 Knox Avenue
If you stepped out of my family’s home at either 336 or 320 and walked in a right direction up the road, a
few houses down on the right would be where Aunt Alta, Uncle Bug, their three
children, my Uncle Johnnie and Granny lived.
Now Aunt Alta was really my great-aunt but she and Uncle Bug
were more like grandparents to me. When Alta’s sister Rachel died, Aunt Alta
and Uncle Bug had taken in my mother and her baby brother Johnnie to raise.
Mom’s other five siblings ended up in children’s homes. Over the years, Aunt
Alta lamented more than once that she wished that she could have taken in all
seven of the siblings but she just couldn’t do it. Mom was ten and Johnnie was
one or two when they moved in with Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug. Granny was Alta and
Rachel’s mother so she was my great-grandmother. Everyone called her Granny,
even the neighborhood kids.
Now, if you came out the door of our Knox home and went left
down the road and then left around the corner, you could walk to the end of
that road and then walk across a path worn
into a grassy piece of land, and come to Maeder Avenue. The house nearly in
front of you would be the home of Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s family. John
was Aunt Alta’s brother and my great-uncle by blood. He was married to Hortense
who was my dad’s sister and my aunt by blood. Just to the left of Uncle John
and Aunt Hortense’s home was the home of Davilee and Sherlock’s family. Davilee
was Dad and Hortense’s sister so she was also my aunt. Later, Uncle Bug and
Aunt Alta would move to a home on Calumet Lane and this is the home that I
really associate with them. You could
stand in Uncle John’s backyard and look across a field to see the back of Aunt
Alta and Uncle Bug’s home.
So we had quite a bit of family localized in a small area. My family’s little corner of Dayton is what I would later call our “Kennedy” Compound.
While I have memories of my own home, I have just as many at
the homes of my other family members. Mom tells me that before I was born, my
cousin Linda, everyone called her Kookie, claimed me as her baby. She would
often come to our Knox home, put me on her hip and pack me back to Aunt Alta
and Uncle Bug’s house where I enjoyed the love of myriad family members.
Sometimes she would take me to Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s house where I would
enjoy the company of even more family. I was like a little nomad constantly searching
for another spot to land and wherever I landed, I was surrounded by loving
faces.
Just as I was constantly traveling between homes, others were
visiting and staying with my family there on Knox Avenue. My maternal
grandfather stayed with us for a short time. My aunt and her three children
stayed with us briefly two or three times. Dad would drive down to Kentucky to
pick up Mom’s siblings to visit us during breaks from their schools.
On Thanksgiving and Christmas, my uncles, along with my male cousins would travel to one house and have a meal before continuing on to the home of another family member for another meal. They made rounds getting in as many delicious meals as possible before my uncles had to return to the children's home and school.
So I was either traveling around to see family or family was coming to Knox to see us. It was such a sweet time filled with so much family and love.
I especially recall visiting at Aunt Alta’s and Uncle Bug’s Calumet Lane home. I believe that I saw them on a nearly daily basis. I remember that Granny
raised chickens and I can recall her getting a shipment of baby chicks. I can
recall a cardboard box with holes dotting the top from whence a cacophony of
peeps could be heard. I remember waiting in anticipation as Grandma opened that
box and I recall peering down into the bottom of that box to see yellow fluff
balls trying to climb over each other to get out. She would take the chicks to
her chicken house and feed and water them with upside-down mason jars with
special feeding and watering “lids”.
After those chicks grew up, they would lay eggs that Granny
would fry for breakfast. A few unlucky ones would end up as fried chicken but at least, they didn’t end
up as ordinary fried chicken; they ended up as Granny’s most delicious fried
chicken!
I remember when Mary Poppins first came out, Kookie took me
on an electric bus downtown to watch it at the theater. That was such an adventure!
I got to ride on an electric bus. I had so often been awed when
seeing those streetcars go about town tethered to the lines overhead. That was probably the
first time that I had seen a movie in a theater. My family usually watched
movies at the drive-in down Third Street. Those movies were special also
because sometimes, there were fireworks after the show!
I recall after seeing Mary Poppins, someone had purchased me
a vinyl “carpet”bag with an attached umbrella that I was convinced was just like
Mary Poppins’ magical possessions. Our neighbors behind us would babysit my
brother and I occasionally. They had a low overhang over their basement access.
I remember plans to climb up onto that low roof to go flying off with my magical
umbrella and carpetbag being thwarted by a much too observant babysitting neighbor!
I remember sitting on Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug’s front porch
in the summers. Sometimes we would be waiting for Granny to use her huge
butcher knife to slice open a big ripe watermelon bought from a local stand.
The watermelon of my youth was the sweetest, juiciest, most delicious
watermelon I have ever eaten. Maybe having fun spitting the seeds made it
better…or maybe swallowing the seeds and anticipating growing your own
watermelons is what made them so good!
We also sat out on the porch waiting for Dad, Uncle Bug or
someone else to bring home a gallon jug of ice cold root beer from the stand up
on Third Street. Everyone would hold a glass out so it could be filled with
cold, delicious perfection, unmatched by any root beer to this day.
Often, Kookie and I would just sit out on the porch swing and
swing. Sometimes we would just sit. Sometimes we would talk. I remember once
that Kookie told me that Granny was more hers than she was mine. I asked her
how that could be. She told me that Granny was her grandmother but she was my
great-grandmother. Of course she was my GREAT-grandmother, Granny’s greatness
was surely beyond question! Besides,
wouldn’t that mean that Kookie was just Granny’s granddaughter while I was her
GREAT-granddaughter!
Uncle Johnnie worked just up Calumet and across Third Street
at Estridge’s Market. Kookie would often walk with me up to see Uncle Johnnie
there. I was Uncle Johnnie’s tenth birthday present as we shared birthdays and
we would often celebrate with cake together.
When we visited him at Estridge’s, he would buy me a pop,
usually a Barq’s Red Crème Soda and candy. He would let me pick out a whole
little paper bag full of penny candies. I guess that Kookie would hop me up on
sugar and if I got too hyper she could take me home!
Uncle Johnnie also worked at a little donut shop on Third
Street. I remember on the weekends, he would bring home a box full of donuts
that he and his buddies had made at the shop. Those were the best donuts that I
have ever eaten too! It seems that all of the flavors of my childhood make more
recent flavors pale in comparison. Perhaps it is not that the watermelons, the
root beer, the donuts of my youth tasted so much better but that the presence
of long gone loved ones is what made them so very sweet.
So my first eight years were filled with boocoodles of
family; great-grandmothers, great-aunt/grandmother, great-uncle/grandfather,
great-uncle/uncle, great-aunt/aunt, uncles, aunts, cousins of every
“denomination”. I was surrounded by family and seeing that family was not a
rare occurrence. Many of them I was blessed to see on nearly a daily basis.
This idyllic childhood came to a rather abrupt end in the
April of my eighth year. One day instead of going to visit with Aunt Alta,
Uncle Bug, Granny, Cousins Kookie, Dale and Denny, and Uncle Johnnie, I was
whisked over to the Cecils’ home who were Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug’s neighbors.
Granny had been taken to the hospital. I did not know what was going on. I only
knew that my Granny was in the hospital and I was not allowed to go see her.
I remember sitting quietly and still in a chair in the Cecils’
living room. I remember a vise clamping down on my heart and with each moment
that passed, the harder became its grip on my heart. I remember the fear, the
confusion… Where was my Granny? What were they doing to my Granny? Why were
they keeping me away from my Granny, the angel that had been a sweet daily
presence in my life?
I don’t know how long I sat there in the Cecils’ living room
but eventually, someone came and took me home because Granny had died. I am not
sure if I knew what dying meant. I am not sure if I cried or continued to sit
quietly or maybe I went on about play? I just don’t remember that.
I do remember going to Granny’s funeral. I remember refusing
to walk by her casket to see my beautiful Granny lying in a box! I wanted to be
standing by my Granny as we looked down into a box of chaotic yellow fluff
balls together not into a box at my still, sweet Granny!
I did not cry until they started singing “In the Sweet
By-and-By’ and then my cries burst forth. Granny was so well-loved and I know
that others shed quiet tears but the sounds of my eight-year-old heart breaking
must have seemed like an erupting Krakatoa amongst that quiet grief. I probably
added to my mother’s own grief but I could not help it. I recall saying over
and over, “I want to go home! Take me home!”
For some reason, it seemed so very important that I go home.
Perhaps my eight-year-old mind had thought that if I were at home, I wouldn’t
have to wait until the “sweet by-and-by” to see my sweet Granny. Perhaps I
imagined that Kookie would come by the house, take my hand, lead me outside,
around the corner, across a path worn into a patch of grass, up by Uncle John
and Aunt Hortense’s house, across a field and into the house on Calumet where I
would go into the kitchen and hug my sweet angel Granny.
So April 22, 1968, was the date that my fondest memory of
childhood, really a tightly woven strand of many memories, ended. Two or three
months later, my family moved to a farm in the countryside a few miles outside
the small town of Wartrace, Tennessee. There I had an aunt, an uncle and an
older male cousin that lived a mile or two up the road.
The idyll ended in April and a few months later the “Kennedy”
Compound ended…at least for me.
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