The Big O

by Oscar P Robertson

  He worked in a defense plant for a time, then got lonely for Mom, came back, and then left again, this time to look for a permanent job. About four months later, my mother, brothers, and I gathered up our meager possessions. We sat in the back of the bus, and became part of history—this nation’s second great Negro migration to the North—making the all-day trip, three hundred miles, through Tennessee and Kentucky. Along the way we ate from the basket of bologna sandwiches that Mom had packed. When the bus stopped, we weren’t allowed in the restaurants on the side of the road. And like every other black person on the bus, we marched around behind the restaurant in order to relieve ourselves.

  Aunt’s house didn’t have a phone; that luxury was simply out of the question, so my mom had no way of communicating with my father in Indianapolis. When we arrived at the bus station, nobody was there to greet us, and we had no way of getting in touch with my dad. So my mom, my brothers, and I gathered up our belongings and walked the twenty-four long blocks from the station near the old Claypool Hotel all the way to Aunt Inez’s house on the city’s west side.

  Dad answered the door, surprised. He’d had no idea we were coming.

  I was four years old.

  I don’t know if anyone told my dad how racist a state Indiana was. Or, coming from the South, if he just figured every state was segregated by race. The truth was, we weren’t headed to any kind of heaven. In Indiana’s not too distant past, the Ku Klux Klan had openly financed the campaign of the governor, Ed Jackson, as well as a number of pro-Klan judges, mayors, and state legislators. Signs—NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU HERE!—dotted the state’s rural landscapes and fields, and in almost any town, white robes and peaked hats were readily available at six dollars apiece. In Indianapolis, the state’s capital city, things weren’t much better. Yes, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had successfully fought against a city zoning ordinance officially segregating black and white neighborhoods. But as a response, white landowners had constructed what were known as “spite fences” around some properties. Civic leagues had been founded with the sole purpose of keeping whites from leasing to blacks. Handbills frequently circulated asking, DO YOU WANT A NIGGER FOR A NEIGHBOR? Curfews existed for black folks but not for whites. Simply put, if you were black, you could not move freely through the city.

  We lived with Aunt Inez for a while, but that wasn’t going to work out. So Dad found a little shotgun house on Colton Street in an area that was your basic black ghetto. Everyone called it Naptown, or sometimes Frog Island. With Century Canal to the east, the White River on its south and west, and Fall Creek to the north, Naptown was a low-lying area surrounded by water, prone to flooding. There was no indoor plumbing, and the city came around just once a year to empty out all the waste, so the air was perpetually full of bad smells and festering diseases.

  Colton Street wasn’t much of a street—maybe two blocks long; it wasn’t paved, just surfaced with a mix of gravel and oil that had been packed down over time. We found a small house at 1005 Colton, adjacent to the Lockefield Gardens housing developments. The place was your standard shotgun shack. Its rooms joined in a straight line that you could look through, and the roof was made of tar paper—just strong enough to protect us from rain, but too flimsy to shelter us from cold, windy nights or flies and mosquitoes. There was running water, but the toilet was outside. A big potbelly stove sat smack-dab in the middle of the house, and there was a bin outside, underneath the house’s frame, to hold the coal. The house had four rooms: one for Mom and Dad, one for the potbelly stove, one for me and my brothers, and one room for cooking and eating.

  Even with the potbelly stove, there was no heat in the wintertime. You would get under all the covers you could, but the wind would come right through the windows. You would hear people across the street arguing and fighting all the time. And gunshots at night. Later, my father got a toilet put in, a commode, but no bathtub. You bathed in a foot tub. Standing up.

  Being black in America at that time was not the greatest thing in the world, let me tell you. At the time I did not know we were poor. I did not know we were being discriminated against. The only time I even saw white people was at a very early age, back in Tennessee—those farmers that my dad worked for. Otherwise I never had any contact with white people. I never thought about them. There were places my parents said we could go and places that we knew not to go, and that was fine with me. My brothers and I had a roof over our heads. We had enough to eat. Yes, there were craps games floating through the neighborhood. Yes, the streets could be rough. Yes, there were druggies, drunks, and people doing all sorts of wrong things. But we were happy in our new home.

  Dad’s plans went awry when all the factory jobs had been filled. He ended up landing a job as a meat cutter at Kingan and Company, a meat-packing plant on the White River. It wasn’t what he wanted, and over the years he moved through a variety of different jobs. Dad was a quiet man. He was strict with us, hut I do remember him coming home from work at night sometimes with the smell of meat and blood still on him.

  Mom was also very strict and stern, very bossy, a strong country woman. She sang gospel in the church, was always quick with an opinion, and was a very good cook. When Dad came home, she’d have dinner ready. Since we couldn’t afford too much beef, we usually had a one-dish meal, without any sides or extras. Just cabbage, beans, or cornbread. But no matter what we had or did not have to eat, our parents never made us feel like we were poor.

  I know that it galled my father that he was not allowed to go into the restaurants whose food he helped pack. I know that Mom had her hands full with the four of us and her housework, and soon she’d be working part-time jobs as well. My parents had real problems making ends meet, and Mom was always telling Dad about things our family needed. But they never talked about race. They did not lecture us about what we could not do. Rather, they simply worked hard and did what they could. I can vividly remember my father preaching to us about education and being a good student, dead tired after a day’s work and still making sure to check that we had finished our homework. For me, they embodied the idea that integrity depends on inner dignity, and from their example, I learned that inner dignity is one thing that should never be compromised.

  I can remember my mother reciting scripture to us, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah. She would take complicated Bible verses and break them down for us, reducing them to basic elements so that we could understand them. Matthew 25:15, for example, a very complicated passage, she explained this way:

  God gave three men a talent. The first one threw it away and the birds ate it. The second man put his in the sun and it melted. The third man took care of his. The Lord will give you more if you take care of what he gave you.

  My brothers and I had a lot of time to ourselves. We couldn’t go into the south side of town because it was all white. The east side was very, very tough, so we stayed away from there too. We weren’t wanted downtown and didn’t have money to spend there anyway, so that was out. And while some blacks lived on the north side of town, we didn’t have either the money or the transportation to get there. My brothers and I didn’t roam around Naptown either. Indiana Avenue, long a mecca of African-American commerce in Indianapolis—comparable to Harlem in New York City, Beale Street in Memphis, Walnut Street in Louisville, or Twelfth and Vine in Kansas City—had begun its slow decline. Storefronts were boarded up and residential houses abandoned. Most of the businesses there had turned into nightclubs, and then bars. Two major theaters, the Lido and the Walker, remained on the avenue, but the Lido was a basic, no-frills theater, and at times it could be dangerous. As for the Walker, there were occasional fights there too, and the place was a lot more snobbish—I never liked going there either. Douglas Park had the only African-American swimming pool in the city, but it was also a place where fights were common. Riverside Amusement Park was along the northern edge of Naptown, but its roller coasters and roller skating rink had scores of “whites
only” signs, so that was out too. Every once in a while they designated “Colored Frolic Days.” But so what? Me, my brothers, and all our friends from the neighborhood, we stayed put.

  When you are growing up in the ghetto and don’t have any money, sports are king. Everyone plays. If it’s football season, guys tell each other, “Run down six cars and turn left by that green Ford.” During baseball season, fire hydrants and stoops serve as bases, the middle of the street as the field. In Indianapolis, basketball was the emperor of them all. Guys played sunup to sundown. There was a vacant lot a few blocks from our house. Some enterprising guys put up a pole, a backboard, and a basketball hoop on the lot. Soon all the dribbling and running would send dirt, clay, and dust flying everywhere. People started calling the courts the Dust Bowl. Neighborhood kids and even some of the high school players from nearby Crispus Attucks High School would stop by, joining in a pickup game. I used to pretend there was a hoop set up on a tree by our home. Since we didn’t have the money for a real ball, I used a dingy rag ball I’d fashioned, held together by elastic, or else I’d use rolled-up socks, tied together with string. That’s really how it began: me playing make-believe in front of the house, shooting at an imaginary basket with a ball of rags.

  When we were old enough for my mom to get us membership cards, I’d follow Bailey and Henry around to the YMCA on Senate Avenue. I should say right now that Bailey was one hell of a basketball player. He had a great nickname: Flap. Flap was a talker. Talked all the time. Talking, irritating opposing players, as they irritated him, doing whatever he could to get an edge, anything to win. Flap got his name because of his shot. He could shoot—much better than I ever could. And his shooting style was very dramatic—all wrist, with this exaggerated forward extension, like he was waving at the ball as it left for the hoop. Even as he ran back down court afterwards, Bailey’s hand kept flapping.

  My brothers and I lived an outdoor life, playing basketball and baseball, going to the Y and the Dust Bowl and the courts over at Lockefield Gardens. When the sun went down, we’d come home, do our chores and our homework. On Friday nights we’d gather around the radio and listen to the Pabst Blue Ribbon Friday Night Fights. I don’t remember watching television or listening to the radio all that much growing up, but I do remember listening to boxing. Whenever a black person, a Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, or Kid Gavilan, had an opportunity to fight, it would be great for the black community, a real source of pride and interest. I can remember cheering when Joe Louis knocked out Billy Conn in the eighth round of a championship fight, and listening when the “Brown Bomber” defeated Jersey Joe Walcott in successive brawls.

  Basketball and boxing, church and school comprised my young social life. But the day summer came and school let out, Mom got busy, packing up some of our clothes, wrapping a day’s worth of fried chicken in paper bags. The next day, soon as morning broke, she’d walk me and my brothers onto the bus that went back to Nashville. Eight hours and three hundred miles later, my grandmother would be crushing us in her bosom with massive hugs. Aunts, uncles, cousins, half-cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents. We’d make the family rounds on foot, along lengthy dirt roads and well-beaten paths that rose and fell across the hot and rolling land. Whenever we got to my great-grandfather’s house, Daddy Marshall would be sitting on the front porch. He would say hello and whatnot, then we would leave. You couldn’t be around him very long because he would get irritated. I guess when you get to be his age, you don’t want to be bothered by a whole lot. I imagine you sort of live in your own world.

  One of his children, my Aunt Nelly, was really fair-skinned, and some of her sisters looked almost white. On that side of the family, you could see the entire range of colors. My mother’s side was filled with dark, handsome men. Every Sunday, the entire extended family met up at the Mount Zion AME church—the women heading inside to listen to a preacher with a big rolling voice, the men lingering outside, sipping whisky, talking, and laughing. I loved those summers, that place, and that time.

  Every year on the third Friday in August, there was a huge family outing called the Charlotte Picnic, a huge gathering of relatives and friends from all over. The Charlotte Picnics continue to this day, and I still go every year, but back then white politicians used to attend, stumping, trying to win votes. And they’d always bring liquor with them. Most of the men were country folk, guys who spent all day working the fields and didn’t drink all that often. They’d spend the day drinking all that free liquor, and by the end of the night a lot of them were drunk. Guys would question one another’s manhood, and that’s when the fighting would start. I never participated.

  In those days, you could walk for miles in the fields, maybe fall in creeks, and nobody worried about you. I was free to explore the whole wide world. There was this huge gorge near my grandparents’ house, and my grandmother would tell me, “Don’t go fiddlin’ in that gorge.” But that forbidden gorge was so tantalizing, and I wanted to swing across the gorge, wanted to see if I could do it. So I cut this huge tree vine. I swung across it. Didn’t tell my grandmother. I loved the danger of it. We’d pull on a vine, and if it didn’t come down, it must be all right. We’d be out there, just sailing over the danger.

  By the time I was thirteen years old, it was assumed I could put in a man’s day of work, but even as a child I spent some time in the field. The day after arriving back in Dickson County, I went out in those fields with my brothers and cousins and picked tobacco or shucked corn. Any other chores Papa Bell told me to do, I did. My grandparents and everyone else on the farm got to working before sunup and stayed at it until past sundown. Papa worked the fields; Mama Pearl cooked all day long. I emulated my grandfather in every way I could. I tried to work like him and talk like him. Once I even made a wagon that was a replica of his wagon, and I used to pull it around, pile it full of rocks, toiling just like he toiled. Unlike my little wagon, however, Papa’s was horse-drawn and full-sized. Though it couldn’t have been crawling along at more than two or three miles an hour in those fields, to me it seemed like it was going twenty times that. As it moved along the fields, we had to pick up the bales, throw them in, and stack them.

  I didn’t mind the work. I never even thought about questioning what I was doing. The only thing I didn’t care for down there were the snakes. There were water snakes in the bottomland, rattlesnakes wedged between the rocks of wooden areas, and copperheads all over the place—especially in the shade under bushes and tobacco plants. It got to where I’d be stripping tobacco suckers from the plants, and I’d be able to sense a lurking copperhead. I could smell them—like cucumbers. People thought I was crazy when I told them, but it was true. There was also this big rat snake in the barn—I couldn’t smell it, but a lot of times I’d be working in the loft, all of a sudden I’d discover that big king snake, coiling up, getting ready to strike. Whenever I told my grandfather about it, he used to say I better not kill that snake. It was a good snake. Killed the rats.

  Down in Dickson County, the rule was that you let the good snakes alone, so whenever I was in that loft, I just had to be careful. Another county rule stated that you should keep a mean snake dog around to take care of any bad snakes. I didn’t know the difference between a good and a bad snake, but Papa Bell had himself one hell of a snake dog. I guess it must have known how to separate the good from the bad.

  Whenever I tried to befriend that dog, it bared its teeth and gave me a snarl. If I complained, my grandfather told me to leave it alone. One day I asked why I wasn’t allowed to feed the dog, why the dog stayed under the house and was supposed to be left alone. Papa told me he fed the dog only once a week because he didn’t want that dog depending on him. “You know,” he said, “that dog’s got to take care of himself. I might not always be around.”

  I thought about this for a while and soon enough understood. Instead of waiting for table scraps, that dog had learned to forage for itself. It went and killed what it could, then dragge
d the kill off somewhere and ate it. It was just an extension of farm mentality. That was a big lesson for me. Everybody had to pull his own weight. Dog included.

  I was eleven years old when my parents divorced. It’s a sensitive topic for me even now, all these years later. But I think all the financial pressures may have had something to do with it. Even after the divorce, money was so tight that my father kept living in our house, sleeping in the same room as my mom. He’d get up and leave for work before me or my brothers were out of bed, or while we were getting ready for school. Then at the end of the night, he’d come home from whichever of the three jobs he might have been working. Mom and Dad didn’t talk to each other. And they never told us about the divorce. We just kept living our lives. Me and my brothers wouldn’t find out they’d been divorced until years later, when I was in high school.

  By now, mom was working too. Although she was trained to be a beautician, she got a part-time job as a domestic, cooking for a white family. I don’t remember their name, but I’ll never forget the street. It was the 5500 block of Broadway. Every day she arrived at the home of the rich white family she worked for and would walk around back, to the servants’ entrance. She even had to eat her meals on the back porch.

  That Christmas, in the middle of all this hardship, she brought home what turned out to be the best and most important present of my life.

  It seems one of the boys in that family had discarded a basketball.

  It was sort of scarred up. Old. Didn’t have the greatest trim on it. But then again, the tread wasn’t lopsided, and the ball was regulation size.

  It was my ball.

  Located in the heart of Naptown, Crispus Attucks was a source of pride for the black community of Indianapolis. Named after the African-American who had been shot by British troops in the 1770 Boston Massacre, the school was a lumbering, three-story red brick building. The foul-smelling canal was close to its front doors, and Fall Creek was just a few blocks away. The building didn’t have a regular-size fieldhouse or a regular-size track. It was overcrowded, with almost double the number of students it had been constructed to hold. And yet it was a miraculous place. The principal was black, and the majority of teachers were black Ph.D.’s who weren’t allowed to teach in white schools.