The year was 1962 and it was summertime, and I had just reached the ripe old age of 12. I was born in 1950, May 23rd to be exact. I came into this world and was given the name of Joey with no middle name. We lived in Metairie, Louisiana for the first few years of my life. Just as I turned 6 and was about to start first grade, we moved to Husser, Louisiana where my dad who had no experience as a farmer, decided that he would become a dairy farmer. This was back in the day, when some farmers still milked their cows by hand. My dad did the manual milking for a year or two, twice a day until he came to his senses and acquired some automatic equipment to do the milking. We were dirt poor but lived on a 100-acre dairy farm which barely produced enough income to feed our growing family of 6 children plus my mom and dad. Sometimes, there wasn't enough food to feed all eight of us, but somehow, we made do. We didn't have food stamps or welfare and simply did without. I sometimes went to school bare-footed because I didn't have shoes to wear to school. We often ate fried-bread for breakfast that my mom would fry on her wood-burning stove along with a cup of coffee. The milk was sparingly used because we needed to sell the milk to pay for other essentials. I don't remember ever going to a doctor and when we got sick, most of the time, we were tended to at home by my mom. I didn't know what central air and heat was until many years later. We cooled down in the summertime on the front porch at night just before going to bed. The only hot water we had was heated on the wood burning stove in a kettle and then poured into a small, galvanized metal tub which we called a wash tub for bathing. Somehow, mom made sure that our clothes and bodies stayed clean. When it rained, I remember that I enjoyed playing in the rain but don't know if that was our recreation or just another way of getting a shower to clean up.
Neighbors lived far away, and we saw them very infrequently. Each morning to board the parish (county) school bus, my brothers, sisters and I had to walk down a gravel road that was about a mile long. I don't remember having cold feet so maybe during the winter I always had some shoes to wear, probably a pair that my older brothers had outgrown. Don't misinterpret what I'm talking about. We were poor but I don't remember our poverty being a problem that depressed us. I believe at that time in my life, I just didn't know that we were poor and had been rarely exposed to the outside world of what could be. The "country" as we called it was very rural and we had to chop our own wood for heating and cooking. My older brothers did a lot of the wood cutting since they were older and stronger. My main job in Husser was picking up piles and piles of cow manure from the barn yard from which I earned a nickel or dime per load. You can't imagine how much manure cows can drop in a barnyard unless you've been there. My dad would use the manure to fertilize the rye grass fields which the cows would graze on when it got to a good height. The cows never saw much grain or oats, so they survived mostly on grass. This was before grass-fed beef became in vogue. The fact that the cows didn't get fed much grain or oats meant that they in turn, didn't produce much milk and so the cycle continued to repeat itself.
Now we lived in Husser, Louisiana for about 5 years and after my mom got tired of "making do" we moved back to the city where she could get a job and help out in supporting our rather large family. But during the time that we lived in Husser, I don't remember ever seeing a black man or black child at our school. This was a long time ago and years before integration began. I mention this because it is important to note that I had no experience with being around people of color. Oh, I heard the N word from time to time but didn't pay it much thought because I didn't know it to be a bad word or a good word, just a word of distinction. However back then in my family, for the most part we called black people, colored people but rarely saw any. Times were tough on the dairy farm. We had a two-seater outhouse a good way away from the small tar-papered house which we lived in. My mom washed clothes by hand and hung them on a clothesline in the backyard. So eventually we moved back to "the city". Mom would find a job working at Morgan & Lindsey or a Dairy Queen and always was helping Dad support the family since his job as a security guard didn't pay much. Dad worked long hours and took all of the holiday and overtime work his boss would give him and that was the way it was.
The first summer after fifth grade we moved back to New Orleans from Husser to begin another life in the big city. The first house that we rented was on Hollygrove Street. We didn't know it at first but this was an integrated neighborhood, but it was a house we could afford to live in. It was summertime and I had heard a rumor that the country club that wasn't far from our house, hired young men to caddy on the golf course. Keep in mind that I am all of 12 years of age and have never even seen a round of golf played. We had a black and white television, but it only worked occasionally, and we didn't spend much time watching the television.
Since it was summer and I had lots of free time on my hands, I decided that I wanted some spending money. Early on, I learned the valuable lesson that if you worked you would get paid money. If you didn't work, you didn't get any money. Allowances didn't exist in my family although I do remember my dad occasionally giving me a nickel for a candy bar at school in the country which I shared with my brothers and sisters. It was a Friday morning, and I walked the few blocks to New Orleans Country Club which was reputed to have members who had "old money", whatever that meant. Money was the key word that caught my attention so I show up at the country club bright and early and I wandered around, not know who to talk to or where to go. Finally, a tall, kind black man asked me, "What can I do for you young man?" I told him I was looking for a job as a caddy even though I didn't know all that a caddy did. He looked at my scrawny size and youth and said, "Do you know how to play golf?" I replied, "No sir, but I can carry that golf bag." He must have suppressed a chuckle, and I didn't see him smile but he said, "You have to know how to play golf to be a caddy." I remarked back to him, "Well, you must have another job around here that I can do?" He paused for a moment and said, "Well all right, you be here tomorrow morning at 7:00 am and we'll see what we can do." It was a Saturday morning, and I was there at 6:45 am and quickly spotted "Mr. Smith" the tall black gentleman directed me to wait for him and told and pointed me to go around the side of one of the buildings. I did as he had directed, and when I turned passed the side of the building I saw a bunch of young black boys about my age, sitting on old-time wooden benches. There must have been about 10-15 children there from age 10-13, and none of them were white. I thought that was kind of unusual but quickly realized that most of the children who lived nearby were black. That point didn't faze me at all, but I noticed that there were a couple of spare seats available on the benches but no one moved to signal that I could sit, so I just stood there. Finally, after a while Mr. Smith came around and informed me of my new job which was picking up golf balls on the driving range. Back then, there were no machines to drive around picking up the golf balls and the driving ranges often hired young boys with quick eyes and good coordination to pick up the golf balls. Another thing to keep in mind was the fact that the young boys were required to pick up the golf balls while the golfers were still hitting the balls into the field. The golfers would do their best to avoid hitting us, at least I think most of them did. We had to keep an eye on the flying golf balls while we were picking up the balls that had already been driven into the range. The golfers for the most part did their best to avoid hitting us and we would clean up the left half of the field and they would drive the balls to the right portion of the field and vice versa. Now I got paid a pittance, but it was more than I had ever had before, and it bought nice cold snowballs which are shaved ice presented in a cone with sweet colored syrups and that kept me going back every Saturday morning. But there was ONE PROBLEM and his name was Michael.
Michael was just one of the local boys who regularly frequented the New Orleans Country Club for the golf ball gig, and for whatever reason, he really didn't like me. Thinking back, I guess you could say he hated me. Now you might say that my thinking is skewed by what I am about to say but hear me out anyway. Every Saturday I would show up like clockwork and every Saturday I had to fight off Michael's incessant surly stares. Those stares eventually turned into a fight. He was about my size and weight, and we gave each other our best without doing too much damage to either of us. Finally, one Saturday morning, there was Michael looking meaner than ever, and taunted me into yet another fight. We threw punches and finally, we wrestled each other to the ground. Michael spotted one of those dark-colored, long-neck broken beer bottles lying on the ground. I had him in a headlock and was holding on pretty tight but he reached for the broken beer bottle and shouted at me and said, "If you don't let me go, I'm going to cut your belly open!" With my left arm still around his neck, I saw a rather large rock nearby that fit my hand quite well and grabbed it with my free hand. I shouted at him, "You go ahead and then I'm going to crack your head open like a coconut?" I didn't have a lot of experience at fighting back then and didn't know that if a man threatened to cut you or kill you, you had better not give him the chance but being naïve, I did what I thought was the right thing to do, at least at that time. Just about that time, here comes Mr. Smith, and his demeanor had changed quite dramatically when he saw the commotion Michael and I had started. He bellowed at us, separated us quickly and sent both of us home. I must have told my older brothers about the fight because it wasn't but a week or so after that and we were already being moved to another rental house. I forgot to mention that the white people occupied about 3 city blocks of Hollygrove and if the white boys were caught riding their bicycles on the streets where the black boys lived, they would chase us and hope to give us a thrashing or worse. Local residents murdered poor old Mr. Cruppie, the owner of the hardware store on Hollygrove Street when they robbed him one day, not long after we moved from the neighborhood. So as usual my mom made sure to keep us safe.
I reflect back on those days and wonder if a part of racism is simply buried in the haves and the have-nots? Regardless, that first brush with what I believe was a case of racism probably had a lot to do with economics but at the time, that perspective whooshed right over my head. When I joined the Marine Corps, I eventually made it over to Southeast Asia to Vietnam and my best friend in Nam was black. The only name I ever knew him by was ironically, "Red". If you see an old jarhead who is dark green out there and goes by the name "Red" tell him to look up ole JoeyA as I've been looking for him for almost 50 years.
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