My father died when I was five years old. It was March 9, 1960. I was right there. He had a heart attack while sitting on the toilet. I watched my mother carry him out of the bathroom on a blast of adrenaline. She laid him on the sofa while she went to call an ambulance. She was blind and could not see that I was standing next to my daddy's head patting his cheeks and trying to get him to wake-up. He didn't wake-up. I smelled poop and yelled to mom that daddy had just soiled himself. It's what the body does when it dies. Mom shooed me away and the men in white coats came to put him on a wooden stretcher and carry him out the door for the last time. I blame Jimmy Hoffa.
We lived in a small Victorian house on Perry Street in Detroit, Michigan. The house might have been called a "Painted Lady" had my parents selected different colors to paint it other than white and green. The Teamster's Union was about 600 feet away from our house at the end of the road and across Trumble Ave. Somehow my dad had started going over there to sit around with "the boys" and chew the fat. Soon after Jimmy started parking his car in front of our house asking that we keep an eye on it. He later started parking it in our backyard for closer security.
My mom and dad and oldest brother were born in Montgomery County, Tennessee. They moved to Detroit in 1942 so dad could work in the Automobile Industry. He eventually bought a gas station across the street from Briggs (Tiger) Baseball Stadium. My younger brother, in diapers, and I helped our dad "flag-down" fans to park in his station for a few pennies during baseball games.
The night he died, he and mom were headed-up to the gas station because there was something wrong with the books. My dad could not read, write or do arithmetic. My mom kept the books. Dad had been doing auto repair and such for Jimmy Hoffa and his "buddies" and somehow things started to get messed-up. Dad was very stressed-out. On the way to the station he began to feel poorly and they came back home. Then he died.
I'll always remember the day, years later, when Jimmy Hoffa went missing. My mom watched the newscast and when it was over she turned around and said: "You know, I never did like that man." Apparently others did not either.
We continued to live on Perry Street until 1963 when mom received what my brother called "The Mafia Payoff." Hoffa managed to buy her house for three times what it was worth so the Teamster's Union could build a parking lot there and they did. We moved to the suburbs in the blossoming time of "White Flight." The Civil Rights Movement was in full-swing by then.
The Christmas before we moved out of Detroit my older brother, Clyde, bought me a BLACK Chatty-Cathy doll. My mother's reaction was to ask: "Clyde, what do you mean?!" He bought that doll for me because he knew that I would love it, cherish it and care for it in a tender way, regardless of the color of her skin, and I did. She disappeared when we moved to the suburbs, but nearly 50 years later my first grandchild would be half black and half white. Oh, don't get me started on how much I love, cherish and care for that child! I also cherished my older brother, Clyde, who throughout the years managed to interject opportunities like this for me to grow beyond my upbringing. He was my hero, my father-figure, my big brother.
No comments:
Post a Comment