The Game Changer

by A. G. Lafley

  We never thought we was better then anybody else. Papa always tried to help, like when someone got laid off his job, he ask the whole family over for supper. Some of those men had four or five children, but Papa never wanted to see anybody go hungry. That’s the way he was.

  Working in those mines was hard for my daddy. He was only a kid when he started digging and breathing in all that bad mine dust and dirt. He was a powerful man, strong as a ox with bulging biceps. Stood sort of short at about five and a half feet or less and was on the stocky side. Never did shave as I remember but had a clean face, like tough leather.

  He used to bring those old flint rocks home from the mine and we put them against the door to keep it from shutting. Some of those stones was as big as footballs and had sparkling gold dots the size of ten-penny nail heads all over. The mine people said they had no value so miners took them as souvenirs.

  He told me about the time a dam broke on the creek above one of the mines. Water barreled in there like a flooding waterfall and a whole lot of men got drowned. It took about a week to pump that water out, and there was still bodies hanging from the ladders where they tried to climb out. Some of those mines hundreds of feet straight down.

  Mama said he never talked about how dangerous it was working the mines, but he sure didn’t want none of his children going down in there.

  Papa seemed to favor me. And I favored him. Always bringing me toys like a little windup automobile that went around in circles. Once he got me this old red wagon for three dollars that all the kids in the neighborhood wanted to ride. Mama didn’t like him spending more then a day’s pay on me but he said he didn’t care.

  I can see now why all the local kids loved him also. When he brought home surprises, he tell me to share them with everybody. Didn’t matter if they black or white. A box of peppermint candy. A big bag of red and blue gum balls.

  “Mmmmmmm,” my little friends say, jumping all around. “Mr. Wash sure is nice. I wish he was my papa.”

  When we be extra good, he took us down to the railroad station to watch the big trains go by, wave at the engineer man, and squeal when he let out the white puffs of steam. That was our special treat.

  To me, he was not only my father, but a friend and a pal. All the people tease him—say he had a little shadow because I was always behind him. Then I sit for hours at his feet looking up at his smiling face. He tell me about his times and how it was. And how he wanted me to be.

  “If you want respect, Clyde, you got to give it,” he told me often.

  There was no one better then my Papa.

  I don’t know why he liked to see those traveling shows that was always coming to town. He couldn’t play nothing, had no kind of entertaining talent, but he sure did like those shows. Minstrels. Bands. Comedies. Things like that. Told me he was seeing them long before I was born and almost never missed a one. Mama and the other children couldn’t care beans about them, so Papa usually went by himself.

  It was Decoration Day, May 30, 1909. I was not even four years old yet, but I remember it clearly. In those days, just the colored people recognized that holiday. It was the day set aside to honor all the Yankee soldiers of the Civil War. They had, and still have, a big Yankee cemetery in Salisbury, which is the county seat of Rowan County, and blacks from all over the state and many from South Carolina all coming in for the celebration.

  Papa was smiling down at me sitting there in front of him like always.

  “Clyde,” he said, patting me on the shoulder, “wanna come with me to Salisbury and see the street parade?”

  I didn’t know what a street parade was, but knew if Papa liked it, I wanted to see it also. The two of us rode to town in the buggy, which he tied to a hitching post, and we walked over to the main street.

  Tall men in white hats and very long white jackets were selling good things to eat. Had on big signs sticking out of their hats with words on them. Papa bought me a big, steaming chili dog, which is a frankfurter covered with lots of hot sauce and onions. It cost two pennies.

  Colored people were all lined up along the curb holding small American flags pasted on sticks. I stood beside Papa, holding on to his stubby finger.

  Suddenly, from around the corner marched these colored men. Oh, they walked so tall and stiff. Bright buttons down the front of their uniforms, red caps on their heads with a round button right in the front. As they came closer I saw them playing flashy, shiny instruments that bounced the bright sunshine right in my eyes. Horns all raised up high, blasting so very loud. Some long ones, sliding in and out. Big fat ones going Umph, Umph. Banjos played fast, drums rat-a-tatting, and a huge round drum that boomed-boomed as it went by.

  Everything was so new and frightening, had to cover my little ears. People all cheering and shouting.

  Then the big flags came by, carried high and waving long. Men in Yankee uniforms standing up in red-and-white-draped horse-drawn wagons all posing like statues with rifles in their hands. Then another band came marching behind them. Even bigger and louder.

  I never seen anything like this. The excitement was so great—the shining instruments, the music, real soldiers—I almost pulled my father’s finger off asking fool questions. Questions only a wide-eyed child ask. I kept on and on and Papa just laugh. It was a unforgettable experience.

  That night at home, I looked through the Sears, Roebuck catalogue for the musical-instrument section. Especially the page with the baritone horns, they now call them French horns. I tore out that catalogue page and wrapped it around a old comb so the picture was on the outside and blew on it like a kazoo. Did that for hours.

  “Someday,” said Papa, “maybe Clyde take up a real instrument. That boy got music in him.” And he laugh some more as I paraded through the house, blowing and marching.

  When I heard about the John Sparks three-ring circus coming to Albemarle a few months later, I begged Papa to take me again. He was working double shifts at the mine, so Mama kind of agreed to take me.

  It was heaven all over again, only better. The street parade was bigger, longer, and flashier. This time, decorated wagons came rolling by with a band of white men in bright-color uniforms sitting in them playing peppy numbers like Red Wing and Wait ’til the Sun Shines, Nellie. The prancing white horses pulling the wagons had these high feathers all sticking out of their heads and heavy red blankets laying smooth over their backs. They were stepping so pretty.

  Every wagon that passed had something new to see. Painted ladies in tights with big flappy capes. Men doing back somersaults. Growly animals in cages. Tigers. Lions. Big-toothed, bushy bears with spiked collars around their necks. That scared me.

  In the last wagon I saw blackface comedians in huge spotted bow-ties and collars, wearing long coats and laughing like chickens. Playing banjos, buckdancing. Making funny faces, just at me I thought.

  “Oh Mama,” I shouted over the loud music, “looka there at them black ugly men. Ohhhh.”

  “Hush up, boy,” she said, “they got stuff on their face to make them look like that.”

  We followed the parade to the circus grounds where all these sideshow fellows with long sticks was standing out front of small tents, calling everybody in. I saw bumpy ladies dancing up on little platforms. Next to them was a fat woman with three snakes crawling and twisting around her neck. One platform had this seal band—real seals all tooting horns, some playing drums and other instruments.

  “Mama! Mama!” I hollered, pulling at her skirts as the seals took their bow. “Looka them funny-looking dogs up there.”

  “Shut up, Clyde,” she said in a low voice. “People think you stupid. Those are seals.”

  Now, Mama had illustrated Bible books at home with pictures of Daniel sitting in the lion’s den, elephants walking into Noah’s ark, stuff like that. But no seals. This was new to me.

  One tent in particular had this colored ragtag band playing slow and loud. Never heard that kind of music, not even on the cylinder records our white neighbors let me
hear. This fat, black woman was out front, all painted with bright red on her cheeks and thick black eyelashes sticking out. Had on a wide hat with long, pretty feathers coming out the top. Glittering spots all over her tight dress, all jiggling, and her waist was pulled in very, very tight by a big belt.

  When she started to sing slow, people came around.

  I’m Alabama bound,

  I’m Alabama bound,

  If the train don’t wreck on the road,

  I’m Alabama bound.

  I stood there listening to the blues until Mama pulled me back. “Come ’way from there, Clyde. That’s not for you.”

  Finally we went inside the big top, which cost Mama fifty cents but was free for me. The man said I was too small to pay anything. We sat over in the colored section where I could see all the fantastic things happening around me.

  My head was going in all directions at once. Animals running and jumping over there. Horses doing tricks. Elephants standing up high, with small hats on their heads. White girls swinging on ropes over long nets. Clowns falling down. Dogs wearing big glasses. Long, tall men walking on fenceposts. Little people no bigger then me rolling on the sawdust floor. Band music playing. Streamers flying. I just couldn’t keep still. Was laughing and clapping for hours.

  “Mama! Mama!” I shouted, “can I stay here with the circus? Can I, huh?”

  “Boy, what you goin’ to do here?”

  “Wanna carry water to the big elephants.”

  “Come home now, Clyde,” she said dragging me out, “or you get a good whipping tonight.”

  I knew she wasn’t fooling so I went right along.

  Mama liked to whip her children. The only time I ever saw my daddy get mad at Mama was when she beat us. Grandmother Mauney believed it was necessary to beat children—thought it was sinful if she didn’t do it often and I’m sure Mama thought so too.

  I remember one time Mama couldn’t find a kitchen knife and accused us kids of taking it. Said we had to find the knife or she punish us all. When we couldn’t, we all got a good whipping. Later, she found it on a chair under her apron where she left it. But we still couldn’t sit down.

  When I was about seven, some lady in the neighborhood everyone knew didn’t half feed her children stopped me as I passed by. “Come on in Clyde and get something to eat.”

  “Don’t want none of your ‘something to eat,’” I sassed her. “You ain’t got enough for your own boys.”

  She went and told my mother what I said. Mama got a old peach tree switch from out back, pulled my little pants down, and near about tore my hide apart.

  “Sass grown people will you?” she hollered. “Next thing you know you liable to back talk me.” Then she whipped me some more.

  That’s when Papa came in. “All right Liz, you done enough whipping.” He didn’t like that kind of treatment to kids. “You act like you don’t love your children, puttin’ those bloody marks all over their behinds like that. Confound it woman, what’s wrong with you?”

  Oh man, they had it out hot that night.

  Mama had a standing floor-mirror that some white lady gave her. After every whipping I turn my bare behind around and see what was happening back there. When I see all those zebra stripes on my butt, I cry some more.

  But Mama never stopped whipping her children. The boys and girls. Sometimes for practically nothing. Like maybe we didn’t move fast enough when she said move. I once saw Hortense get horsewhipped so bad she left home when she was fifteen and worked for white people. Man, Mama was brutal and strongminded. Papa would scold us sometime, but never hit nobody.

  They never cussed and never, never used the Lord’s name in vain. Never heard either of them say “damn.” Once in a while Papa would say “doggone” when he got mad, but not very often.

  The Gold Hill mines closed in 1910. Not because they didn’t have no more gold, but because people came from all over to work and they couldn’t handle the crowds. Everybody hollering for jobs that wasn’t there. Families living in little tents, drinking out of the lake they made. And the sanitation was a bad problem, too. So the mines closed and are closed to this very day.

  I know there’s still gold in those deep shafts. Some of them go down almost eight hundred feet, but they are permanently flooded and nobody can get in there.

  So Papa went to work in the Candor mines, about thirty-five miles from Gold Hill. Went by train and lived over there in a little miners’ shantytown. Came home every other Saturday and stayed the weekend. I sure missed my Papa when he was away in Candor.

  I started school in November of the next year. Mama fix up a nice lunch pail for me and 7:30 every morning I walk the road some four miles to school. It used to be a old grainery but they cleaned it out, put little tables and chairs inside.

  My teacher was Miss Louvenia Parker, a mean old lady. Treated the kids very strict, and every day one of us got bent over for a good paddling or rapped on the knuckles with a ruler. Maybe go stand in the corner on one foot. Yes sir, I got my share and didn’t like it at all.

  But colored school was barely three months long. Some children needed for spring work, and schooling was just not the most important thing.

  Papa kept taking me to all the weekend shows that came around. Silas Green Minstrels was in often. So was the Rabbit Foot Minstrels. And the Florida Blossom Minstrels. We didn’t miss many. I once saw a minstrel trombone player take off his shoes and work the slide with his bare feet. It was the funniest thing I ever saw. And every time I heard a ragtime band with a blues singer, I went around the house the next day trying to act and sing like them.

  “Now Clyde,” Mama would say, “stop singing those nigger reels.”

  She didn’t take kindly to that kind of music around the house. Sometimes I went outside to imitate the funny dance steps I saw the black minstrels do, and some of the cranky old colored people around town tell Mama it was sinful. She stopped me from doing that, too.

  Besides Papa, I was the only one in the family that liked the minstrel and ragtime band shows.

  It was spring that Papa came down with his heart attack. March of 1912 it was.

  “Pray hard for your daddy to get well,” Mama told me.

  I was so upset seeing him laying down all day. Wasn’t like him at all. I was old enough to realize it was the mines. Living in drafty shanties, eating bad food, working in all that dirty, thick dust.

  People came from all over to see Papa. He was head trustee of the Morning Star Methodist Church and had many friends. They bring food. Leave a piece of money. That’s the way people was in those days.

  When he started getting better, the doctor told him to stay away from the mines. So he went out with his wagon, buying up loads of farm foods, and peddled it around. Sometimes on Sunday he open the front yard for a big country picnic. Put out a gang of wooden chairs and tables he made, all painted nice in green and white with yellow trim. And right in the middle set a wood-burning heater with four grates. Papa was a good cook and when he got the heater to flaming, put a big pile of lard in the four pans and fried up the best chicken and fish you ever put your teeth into. Could smell the tasty, flavoring food blowing in the breeze for miles.

  Mama cooked a whole table full of cornbread, chocolate cakes, and apple pies and sold slices for a nickel. She also had five-cent bottles of soft drinks all sitting in big ice tubs.

  Papa made some handbills and passed them around as far as Salisbury. Colored and white folks buggied over from ten miles away to buy fish fries and chicken sandwiches, sit and enjoy themselves.

  One time Papa hired out the eight-piece Mt. Pleasant Brass Band to entertain the crowds. Some people stayed all day. Others until the next day. Papa put them up on a cot or in our rooms and made a pallet on the floor for us. Others slept in blankets out in the yard.

  I was always helping Papa because of his sickness. Sometimes we ride the Saturday train some two hundred miles over to Morehead City to get him his fresh fish. We leave on the 7 A.M. train and tr
avel all day. Stay overnight, come back the next day. I do anything for my Papa.

  One time I brought home a empty wooden milk crate, the kind that held twelve bottles. Got up at 4:30, stood on that box, and hitched our old horse, Mary, to the wagon. When Papa woke up, it was waiting for him.

  “Who did that for me?” he asked. “Must have been one of the Patton or Owen boys.”

  “I did it, Papa. I wanna help you ’cause you ain’t feelin’ good.”

  “Well, doggone, if you ain’t a little rascal. Seven years old and doin’ a man’s work.” And he patted me on the shoulder.

  Papa brought me home a pet squirrel when I was about eight. Cost twenty cents with the cage. One day I was playing and it bit my finger right down to the bone. Wouldn’t let go. Papa heard my screams and choked the animal until it fell off dead. I never liked squirrels after that.

  Just before we moved from Richfield, a medicine show came to town and stayed a few weeks working under a canvas tent. People came from thirty miles away to see that show. Had four musicians playing ragtime music and four dancers—two ladies and two men. Only the boss was white and he sold the bottled medicine. Said it was good for everything: spells, whooping cough, pimples, toothaches, the vapors, even big bunions. The show was free if you bought the medicine for fifty cents. People buying medicine so fast, they run out of the stuff before the show was over. But they always had more for the next performance.

  By September 1913, Papa decided his luck be better in New Hope, which was down the road from Richfield. Got a house there for two and a half dollars a month and rented out our Sears, Roebuck place for three, which gave Papa a fifty-cent profit. Our new house wasn’t as modern as before, but it had five rooms.

  New Hope was near Palmerville, Millertown, and Ebenezer. Eventually, they made those four towns into Badin. At that time, New Hope only had a grocery store and livery stable.