Tough Times

I see people talking on TV either out of ignorance or to push a lie about current events and/or past history and I find myself yelling at the TV. Then I see people’s comments about their “new” understanding of how they have benefited through their “white privilege” and I think about what their grandparents and great-grandparents went through and I want to cry. See, I know some of these people, but I know so much more about their grandparents and their great-grandparents than they will ever know. I hear them compare what they experienced in their short life during good periods of the country with someone talking about how things were for others during current and other times. I could write a book about what they don’t know and have not bothered to ask, but I will provide a little history to start the learning process.

From a personal point of view, let me share some history about my family. My father married my mother when he was 26 and she was 17 in 1934. Times were tough for everyone and they were not excluded from that. My mom quit school at an early age to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. I don’t know because she never told me, but maybe marriage was a way out of that situation? They were “share-croppers” and did not own any land or much else period. They had their first child in 1936, my brother, when she was almost 19 and dad was almost 28. They moved to Lufkin sometime after that so he could find work at the sawmills. My older sister was born there on December 8, 1940. Still struggling to get by, they moved to Houston sometime before I was born in March 1943. This country had gone to war following Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and some jobs were available at the shipyard. The work was hard with long hours and under some very harsh conditions. We lived in a small house in the Heights. While houses there today may be very expensive they were not much back then. The rent rates had been frozen during the war and the 2-bedroom house we lived in on Lawrence at 23rd was old and most likely had been built for workers at the old mattress factory across the street. The rent was $9.00 a month and it was home for a family of 6 after my younger sister was born in September of 1945.

I had a lot of childhood illnesses that required being in the hospital multiple times and multiple surgeries. With no insurance, those expenses were paid out of pocket by my dad. My mom made most of our clothes and hand-me-downs were the norm. My brother was almost 7 years older than me so any that I got from him would never fit me. He was much bigger than me, but I got some from extended family or even other kids in the neighborhood. During those years, food was hard to get even if you had money, but you learned to feel full. We did not feel we were mistreated or that we were any different. Everyone we knew was in the same condition. All of our neighbors, all of the kids at school, and as far as I knew the whole world was the same. There was no TV and we could listen to the one old radio for only a little while some nights, but that would be a radio series program. We had a hard freeze in 1949 that lasted many days when power was off and streets were iced-over for many days. That old house had many cracks in the floor and it was too cold to move. We might have never moved from that house except the rent freeze was lifted and the house was sold to be torn down for a business to be built there.

It was Thanksgiving weekend when we moved to our “new” home in 1951, I had just started in the 3rd grade, but my brother was in high school and he had been attending Reagan High School. The closest high school was Davis and it was too far to walk to school. All of his friends he had were gone and none of the kids in the area of our new house were his age. When we lived in the Heights, he had worked at the grocery store and the pharmacy to earn spending money, but there were no businesses near our house after moving. He saved enough money to buy an old motor scooter to ride to high school and to work. While riding to school one morning behind the school bus, the school bus stopped quickly and he slammed into the back of the bus hitting his head on the back of the bus. He was unconscious for an extended period and the expenses were paid by my dad. His cracked skull kept him from working for most of his senior year, but he graduated on schedule. With my younger sister starting school in January of 1952, my mom got a job working in the elementary school kitchen cooking lunch meals and cleaning up the kitchen afterward. She worked so we kids could have some store-bought clothes and a pair of new shoes for the new school year. We were not able to participate in school activities or clubs until high school when both of my sisters were on the school drill team.

I worked at various jobs starting in the 6^th grade and every year through graduating from high school after school and on weekends. Most of the people that lived on the north side of Houston were poor people and we were all the same in school. We were no different and we did not dwell on what those that went to Lamar High School might have had. We focused on doing the best we could and we had also seen that things had gotten much better during the growth of business after WWII and the Korean War. We did not experience gang fights and maybe the stories about getting killed on the north side kept some problems away. Some of those graduating in those years went to college and for those that did, most of them were the first in their families to go to college. Most of them went on with their lives trying to carry on the “can-do – never give up” attitude they learned from their parents. My parents were able to make improvements to the only house ever owned. The 2-bedroom home later got an air-conditioner and a wall-heater after I got married in 1964 and later my mom had central A/C installed after the death of my dad in 1978.

My mom retired from working at the school when my dad got too ill and she needed to be with him. My dad had emphysema for many years prior to lung cancer that took his life in 1978 before age 70. After his death, my mom worked as part of a cleaning crew, cleaning office buildings downtown and also some other jobs when it was too dangerous for her to drive at night. She was robbed while sitting at a light by a man with a gun. My dad had suffered from ulcers and other problems from stress in his life and hard work under a lot of tough conditions. With 4 children with ages that spread over 9 years, there were always issues to deal with. Dad was very tight with the money he earned, but he was determined to leave his wife and family without any debts that he had incurred. He bought a new car when he had saved enough money to pay cash. I was not so understanding but I always found a job doing something to earn spending money for what I wanted – not really what I had to have.

I learned a wonderful lesson that helped me for the rest of my life and I have tried to share that knowledge with my children and grandchildren. If you focus on doing the right things, stay out of trouble, work hard (as if you are working for the Lord), then be happy where ever that takes you. I have been blessed, not because I was born “white” but because I was born in America and into a family that did the best they could regardless. I could write so much more, but I hope some of you will look beyond some of the things being said today and spend a little time learning the truth about your own family.