The Cold Days of Summer
Episode 2 - Chapter 3: A matter of color, part 1; Chapter 4: An education
Welcome back!
Previously in The Cold Days of Summer: Episode 1: Intro; How it all starts; Odessa, City of Dreams.
Chapter 3: A matter of color, part 1
Once my sister Elizabeth was born, my Mom had more than enough to keep her busy without paying much attention to me. I learned how to be on my own. I could make a mean peanut butter sandwich, wasn’t too bad at making a pimiento cheese sandwich as well and could pour my own milk and juice from the refrigerator. My Mom did get upset when I tried to make a hamburger on my own when I was five. I had formed the patty, found the iron skillet in a cabinet underneath the kitchen counter, managed to get it up on the stove top without hurting myself, and had even turned on the electric burner when my Mom walked in with Elizabeth on her hip. That was the first time I ever heard her scream. No harm was done, save for the lingering soreness of my rear and the tears that streaked across the dirt on my face.
Elizabeth took the lion’s share of attention from my Mom. West Texas in the early 60’s was a different place than today. I spent a lot of time out of Mom’s sight, sometimes in the backyard, sometimes in the front, sometimes down the street playing with friends in the neighborhood and sometimes on my own, wandering around the streets and vacant lots.
When I was five years old we moved into a rent house on Locust Avenue, a short walk from Sherwood Park. About six blocks from our house was a small shopping center, with a Piggly-Wiggly grocery store and a Wacker’s 5-10 Cent store. On the edge of the parking lot of the shopping center was a gas station and a locally owned convenience store. Sometimes my Mom would send me to the Piggly-Wiggly to pick up some milk, cereal or bread and she would always give me a little extra money so I could have a little candy for the walk home.
One afternoon in August of 1964 she sent me to get a fresh loaf of bread. As I walked I thought about what I kind of candy I would get. The more I thought about the candy the more I decided to try out the convenience store. My Mom didn’t like convenience stores, saying there were too expensive and catered to beer drinkers, but I had heard from the kids in the neighborhood that the best selection of candy in that part of Odessa was at the convenience store. I thought that it would be okay to spend a little more on the bread if I could get a really good piece of candy, maybe even a Charms Sweet and Sour pop, just about my favorite candy, but often hard to find.
I marched past the Piggly-Wiggly right up to the convenience store.
Before I go on with this story you need to know a few things. First, I was born with coal black hair. Second, the more time I spend in the sun, the darker my skin gets. I rarely burn, I just get darker and darker. Third, Odessa averages somewhere around 300 days of sunshine. Fourth, by August I had spent nearly five months outdoors wearing rarely more than a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Anything more, including shoes, was for Sundays when I would be dragged to church. Add it all together, the day I walked into that convenience store I was dark, real dark, my hair was black and I was barefoot.
I walked in and, keeping first things first, found a loaf of Rainbow bread. Then I walked down the candy aisle. I was amazed. I had never seen so much candy in one place. I walked up and down that aisle looking at all the wonders in front of me. Down on the bottom row I found them, Charm’s Sweet and Sour pops. I squatted down, rummaged through the box and found an apple flavored pop.
I walked to the front of the store with the bread and pop in hand. I placed them both on the counter and reached into my pocket for my money. The man behind the counter just shook his head looking at me. I didn’t know what that meant, but I pulled out a dollar and offered it to him. He continued to shake his head. I stood there, my arm stretched out with the dollar in my open hand over the counter. That just seemed to make him angrier.
“Can’t you read, boy?” He pointed to a sign on the wall behind him. I was six years old and about to start the first grade. I could read a little, but the sign he pointed to had a whole bunch of words and the only ones I could figure out was “We .. the .. to .. .. to ..” I had no idea what the other larger words said. I shook my head no.
Looking down at his feet, he mumbled to himself, then he looked up and said “We don’t serve spics.”
I didn’t want spics, I just wanted to buy some bread and a Charm’s Sweet and Sour pop.
He looked at me again, this time like I was the dumbest thing on the earth.
“Boy, didn’t you hear me? We don’t serve spics. Now get the hell out of my store!”
Well, I understood that last sentence, I just didn’t understand what I had done to make that man so angry at me. I did know that when an adult you don’t know gets angry at you the best thing to do is get away. I turned around and ran out the door towards home.
I hadn’t run far when I realized I better not come home without the bread so I ran across the parking lot to the Piggly-Wiggly. Once inside I went to the bread aisle and grabbed another loaf of Rainbow bread. I walked up the checkout stand, handed the cashier my dollar and the bread and watched her put the bread in a paper sack. She counted out my change, handed the sack to me and I walked home.
On the way home, I tried to puzzle out the sign the man pointed to but all I could remember was “We the to to” and I couldn’t figure out the words in between.
Once I got home I handed Mom the bread, the change and said “Mom, what’s a spic?”
Everything grew quiet. My Mom stopped what she was doing, put the change and the bread down on the kitchen counter and looked at me. It was a cold, angry look and I knew I was in trouble when she said “Where did you hear that word?”
I thought about that for a moment, and wondered if I should put together a lie, but just as quickly I realized I better tell the truth. I told her what the man at the convenience store had said to me and I told her about the sign he pointed to and the words I was able to figure out.
“Drew, is that the truth?”
It was the truth and I told her so. She walked over to the kitchen table, sat down in one of the chairs and looked sadly at me. She stretched her arms out to me and said “Come here, my little man.” I did and when I got to her, she hugged me long and hard. She whispered “It’s all right, my little man” then she leaned back, straightened her arms out and looked at me. Her eyes were moist, and I noticed a tear on the edge of one eye.
For the rest of the day my Mom treated me nice. I stayed in the kitchen with her and as she cooked dinner we talked about all kinds of things.
Once my dad got home Mom pulled him into the kitchen and told me to go play in the living room. I could hear them whispering and minute by minute my Dad’s voice grew deeper, quieter and harder. That was never a good sign. Finally he said “I’ll take care of it.” He walked back into the living room, picked up his keys and towards the front door. He looked at me and said “I’m going to get a pack of cigarettes, what kind of candy do you want?”
This didn’t happen often, in fact, it didn’t happen at all and I didn’t know what to say at first. Finally I found my voice and said “Charm’s Sweet and Sour pop. Can I come with you?”
He shook his head and said “Not this time, champ.” With that he walked out of the door and was gone.
It didn’t seem like much time passed, but my Mom was nervous the whole time. She couldn’t sit down, and walked back and forth between the kitchen, the living room and Elizabeth’s room. Elizabeth had been taking a nap, but she was awake and perched on my Mom’s hip when I heard my Dad’s car pull up in the driveway. My Mom heard his car too and walked into the living room with a worried look on her face. The front door opened and Dad walked in. He seemed fine, fine as ever. Then I looked at his hands, the knuckles were starting to bruise, the skin was scraped, and there was a little blood on them. He looked at my Mom, then at me and said “The son-of-a-bitch said he was sorry.” Dad handed me a whole box of Charm’s Sweet and Sour pops and said “In fact, he was so sorry, he wanted to make sure you got these, Drew.”
Chapter 4: An Education
First grade is a time of great learning and great discovery, but it can also be a time of first failure.
Few six year olds are strong enough to separate what they hear from what they believe. When you are six, you believe what an adult says. Every word, every sigh, every shrug carries great meaning. No adult would lie. No adult is wrong. A six year old trusts the adults in their lives, because the adults know everything.
The first grade we receive can mark us as either children of great promise or as the others ones who have to work hard all their life to get by. We all get marked as children, some with the mark of success and promise. Others get marked in a different way, all because they didn’t get it right the first time.
I know this is true because I was first marked as one of the struggling ones. I was lucky, the mark wasn’t permanent.
It was the first day of first grade. We were sitting at our desks, some of us bright and eager to learn, others, already biding their time. I was one of the bright and eager ones. Our teacher, Mrs. Chalton, told us all about the rules, about how we would spend our days, and what she expected us to learn. She then asked if any of us knew how to write our names. Only a few hands rose, mine was one of them. She called on me to write my name on the blackboard. I walked up proudly, confident in my skills and knowledge. She handed me a piece of chalk and I wrote my name on the blackboard. I wrote my name perfectly, perfectly wrong. I wrote it in reverse, as if looking in a mirror. I wrote werd. My mind and eyes saw it as right. I knew how to say it, I knew what it said but my hand wrote it in reverse.
Luckily, very few in the room could tell what I wrote. Most of us knew our letters, but few knew how letters worked together to form words. Mrs. Chalton stood quietly for a moment or two then said quietly “werd?’
I said “No, ma’am,” proud of my good manners, “my name is Drew – d r e w – Drew.”
She looked at me, looked at the blackboard then looked at me again and said “But you wrote werd.”
I shook my head confidently and said “No, ma’am, I wrote Drew – d r e w – Drew.”
She looked at me again and said “You can sit down now.” Then she said “Michelle, please show the class how to write your name.”
I stood there for a minute longer, a little lost. I had written my name, I had written it well, the letters were well formed, large and neat. What was wrong? I started to walk back to my desk and as I did I could hear a few whispers.
“Look at that, he wrote his name all wrong.”
“He can’t spell, why did he go up there if he can’t spell?”
And I heard “werd” over and over. I shut down that day; I didn’t hear much of what was going on. During recess a couple of the kids teased me, making fun of how I couldn’t spell.
I was still confused. I had spelled my name right, exactly right and it was my confidence in my ability that caused problems all through the first grade. This inability to see the world correctly was a source of great frustration for my teacher and me. Mrs. Chalton was frustrated by my inability to spell anything correctly. I was frustrated because she couldn’t see I could spell. I knew how to spell but when it came to writing the letters down, they came out sometimes in reverse order, sometimes jumbled up, but not too often correct.
Over the next few months I learned how to flip things around. I put another mirror in front of the mirror in my mind to reverse the images back to their correct order. I forced myself to see the world as others saw it. I didn't know it then, but that ability to flip images around in my mind would pay off as I grew older. Right then, in first grade, it allowed me to see thing as I thought others saw them. The rules and tricks taught in school rarely worked for me. I learned to read differently from how I was taught. I learned to read right to left, sounding out the ends of words, then sounding out the rest of the word. I guess in my original mirror image view of the world working right to left was natural, and perhaps that explains why manipulating numbers has always been easy for me.
By the end of the first grade Mrs. Chalton had changed her opinion of me from someone who would have continuing trouble and frustration in school to one who was hardworking and determined to learn. It took a few more years for others to see something else.
I never liked school, I always had more fun outside of those buildings than I ever had in and I spent most of my time at school thinking of ways to get out. One would think that such an attitude would lead to a poor performance at best but I never had a problem with passing the tests and making the grades. In fact, whenever I set my mind to it I would wind up near the top of the class. That wasn't too often, I would do it once or twice a year for a few weeks, just to prove to myself and to the teacher that I wasn't hopeless, just bored.
The first day of school taught me a big lesson that I ignored time and time again. I had been supremely confident when I wrote my name on the blackboard but I had been utterly wrong. I did not know that was to be the theme for much of my life.
Episode 3 - Chapter 5: Sometimes I just watch, part 1; Chapter 6: Building a wall, brick by brick