All of us had seen movies about the wild, wild West with images of majestic white-capped mountain peaks, pure clear expansive land that stretched to the edge of the world, it seemed, deep green mountain valleys, cobalt blue-sky country, ponderosa pine country, God’s country. We were all astounded, hardly believing we were actually here. We imagined buffaloes roaming this land and the native people of this land, the keepers of it. We had all been romanced by the heroes and outlaws of the West portrayed in movies: Annie Oakley, Wild Bill Hickock, Geronimo, Cochise, Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull, Billy the Kid, and Frank and Jesse James. We knew the stars of those great western movies, like Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, all figures so mighty that no one could defeat them. We were now in the true West, and like those mighty figures, maybe we were feeling we could not be defeated either.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
After two days of eating cold food, we all wanted something hot, and when we saw the sign advertising mouthwatering-looking hotcakes, cheeseburgers and fries, and steaming hot coffee at a restaurant just off the highway, we decided to stop. Still infatuated by the West, we marveled at everything made of logs in the restaurant, everything from the hand-hewn railing that ran along the steps we climbed and along the porch that stretched the full front of the restaurant, to the log building itself. The entry was two enormous pine doors, and above them were mounted horns from a longhorn steer. Everything was totally western. We stepped inside and waited as we observed the “wait to be seated” sign. Beyond the entry, in the dining area, brightly colored woven Indian rugs hung on the walls, and a massive fireplace constructed of rock, larger and grander than any we had ever seen, was at the back wall. We marveled at it and felt part of another world.
“Know what I want?” said Christopher-John. “Stack of flapjacks this high.” He indicated at least a foot of pancakes with upstretched hands.
Stacey smiled. “That all?”
“Nope, not hardly. Want some scrambled eggs, some ham this thick.” Again Christopher-John indicated measurement with his hands. “Sausages and strips of crisp fried bacon, huge glass of milk, orange juice, and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.”
“Think that’ll keep you?” I teased.
“For a while. What about you?”
“Maybe close to the same, minus a few of the flapjacks. I want to see a menu.”
Christopher-John laughed. “What about you, Stacey? And you, Man? Same?”
Stacey didn’t answer as he looked around the lobby and then into the dining area. He seemed apprehensive. Clayton too was unsmiling and his look was stern. There were no other colored people in the restaurant.
I chose to ignore it. “Well?” I said, following up Christopher-John’s question, but before Stacey or Man answered, a man stepped from the dining area and approached us. He did not look western friendly, like the sign outside had suggested.
“Something I can do for you people?” he asked.
We all knew that tone.
I glanced at Christopher-John and Clayton Chester, then at Stacey, waiting for him to speak for us. “We’d like to be seated,” he said.
“What? At a table?” the man questioned.
“We’d like to get something to eat,” Stacey continued. “I think we’ll need a table for that.”
The man sighed and looked back into the restaurant before looking again at Stacey. “That’s not possible.”
Stacey looked past the man into the room. “I see empty tables—”
“Not for you,” the man abruptly interrupted. “This is my restaurant and I’ve got a right to choose the people I serve and where to serve them. Now if you want something to eat, we’ll serve you, but not inside. There’s a door you can go to in back and you can order from there. Food will be the same as served in here—”
Clayton Chester stepped forward, his movement threatening. “We just came back from fighting your war!”
Stacey cut him off with an outstretched hand. “Clayton,” he quietly said, and we all understood. It was an order. Man looked at Stacey and advanced no farther, like a soldier recognizing an order from a superior-ranking officer. “All right,” Stacey said to the restaurant owner, “as long as we can get some food.” I wanted to say something, but out of respect to my brother, I kept my mouth shut.
“Fine,” said the man. “I’ll send word that you’re coming around.” He turned to go.
“Wait,” Stacey said, stopping him. “You don’t mind, could we just order here? Both my brothers, they’re veterans. They just came back from fighting over in Europe. I figure it’s a shame we have to go all the way to the back door just so two soldiers can get some food. Even in Germany they didn’t have to do that. They fought the same war as these fellows did.” Stacey motioned toward the soldiers seated in the dining area.
The restaurateur looked again at Christopher-John and Clayton Chester. “All right, all right, since you’re veterans, I’ll take your order, but you’ll have to wait outside until we bring it to you.” He pulled a pad from his vest. “Now, what do you want?”
Man looked at Stacey and went outside without another word. Stacey watched him go, then said to Christopher-John and me, “You both go with him. I’ll order for us.” Christopher-John immediately did as Stacey ordered, but I stayed. “Cassie—”
“I want to order with you,” I insisted. “Go ahead.”
“I’ll take care of it, Cassie,” said Stacey. “Go on out.”
“Are you going to order or not?” The restaurant man was growing impatient.
Stacey ordered. “We’ll have eight cheeseburgers, four milk-shakes—two strawberry, two chocolate. Four large orders of fries, four orders of onion rings, and—”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” the man said as he tried to keep up with the order. “Give me time to get this all down.” He took a moment and said, “What else? You want some dessert?”
“You have apple pie, chocolate cake?” asked Stacey.
“Yeah, got both.”
“Then we’ll take both. Four apple pies, fours slices of chocolate cake.”
“That it?”
“And oh, yes, coffee. Four large coffees with sugar and cream.”
“All right, I’ll figure this for you and get it ordered. You can pay me, then you can wait out at the bottom of the steps.”
Stacey glanced toward the seated uniformed soldiers. “You make all your veterans and their families pay before they get their meals?”
The man glanced back too and relented. “All right, go on, wait outside. We’ll bring your order to you.”
Outside, Christopher-John and Little Man were not around. We figured they had gone back to the car, parked on the other side of the building. “You’d better go on and join them, Cassie,” Stacey said as we went down the restaurant steps.
“No,” I said. “I’ll just wait here with you, but I want to know why you ordered all that food when we can’t eat in there.”
“Just go on, Cassie,” was all Stacey said. I stayed with him.
The wait was some thirty minutes or more. Restaurant patrons came and went. Finally, the restaurant door opened and the restaurant owner emerged with a young man behind him carrying a large box. The owner motioned to us. “Come on up, you two. I got your food.”
Stacey had been leaning against the post railing with his back to the restaurant. Now he straightened and turned toward the restaurant and looked at the man. “On second thought, we decided we don’t want your food.”
“What?”
“Said we don’t want your food. Changed our minds. We can’t eat your food inside at one of your tables, we decided we don’t want to eat your food at all.”
“You—you can’t do that! Not after we fixed all this! We’ve got a bill here!”
“You said you’ve got a right to serv
e who you choose, and we figure we have a right to refuse your service. So, we are refusing your service. We don’t want your food.”
The restaurateur’s face turned fiery. “This is what I get for trying to be nice to you damn niggers! You’re going to pay for this order!”
Stacey said nothing. He took my arm and started away.
“You get back here!” yelled the man. “I’ll have the police after you!”
Stacey now stopped and looked back. “Won’t be the first time,” he said. Then once again he turned, and we walked on with the manager yelling after us. Refusing food we had ordered might have seemed an insignificant way of fighting back, but at times, insignificant ways were all we had, all that allowed us a little dignity as human beings. We knew the way of things down home in the South, but this was Wyoming. We had thought maybe things would be different here, in the great American West. We were wrong.
It was clear.
Being colored was a way of life in America, and it was a full-time job.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
None of us had ever driven through mountains like these before. Stacey was at the wheel. He was the most experienced. He had driven trucks throughout the South and knew better than any of us how to handle the road, but the curves of the mountain roads were challenging. Massive rock formed a sheer mountain wall towering far above on one side of the road while on the other, the land dropped off steeply into the far depths of a valley. I was afraid of this rugged land, yet had never seen land of such awesome beauty. As Stacey swerved around the mountain curves, hitting speed limits way too high, we all kept looking back, waiting for the siren of a police car. We were in Wyoming, the wild West, but we might as well have been in Mississippi. The romance of the West as portrayed throughout America was not for us. For us, America remained as always, the same. Whites Only. Colored Not Allowed.
I was learning about America.
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
“Well, it’s about time you all got here,” said Uncle Hammer when he opened the door to us. It was midmorning and we had driven through the night, but had seen the sun rise over California.
“We were getting worried,” his wife, Loretta, said, standing beside him. “Come on in, come on.” Aunt Loretta was a vibrant woman, voluptuously built, with bright red lipstick and long red fingernails and formfitting clothes. She was a divorced lady with two grown children whom we had never met. Uncle Hammer had married her ten years ago. He had brought her only once to Mississippi so we all could meet her. Soon after that, he had made his move to California, and though he had been back to Mississippi since, Aunt Loretta had not come with him. She was a Chicago woman and very much unlike the women back home in our community. She was a looker, as the men liked to say, and dressed loudly, as the women liked to say, but she seemed to fit Uncle Hammer. I liked her.
“So, what took you so long?” asked Aunt Loretta as we seated ourselves on plush gray furniture.
“You know we told you on the phone,” said Stacey, “trip would take us three or four days. Would have made that time if we hadn’t gotten held up in Iowa.”
“Car broke down,” Christopher-John explained.
“Well, why didn’t you call?” asked Aunt Loretta. “We’re not in Mississippi, you know.” The reference of course was to the fact that no one in our Mississippi community had a telephone. That in itself had been unnerving to Aunt Loretta when she visited. “We’ve got telephones here,” she finished.
“I think they know that,” Uncle Hammer said brusquely, and leaned back in his chair. “Now that you’re here, what’s your plan, Stacey?”
“Like I told you, Uncle Hammer, get a job if I can. If I can do that and it seems steady, I’ll bring my family out.”
Uncle Hammer took a cigarette from a silver box. Aunt Loretta came over and took one as well. I had been surprised the first time I had seen her smoke. No other woman in our family smoked. In fact, I had seen no other woman in our community smoke. Out of respect, Aunt Loretta had not smoked in the house or in the presence of Big Ma, Papa, or Mama, but she had lit up in front of the boys and me. She lit Uncle Hammer’s cigarette with a lighter, then lit her own, and sat back down. Uncle Hammer watched her, then looked again at the boys and me. “And what about the rest of you? You all planning on jobs out here too?” He looked directly at Christopher-John.
“Well, I don’t know yet, Uncle Hammer,” Christopher-John answered. “I’ve got a part-time job at a dealership and the owner said maybe I could be full-time if I come back. Right now, I’m just on leave, but they’re holding my job for me for a few weeks.”
Uncle Hammer drew on his cigarette. “What about you, Little Man?”
I laughed. “He doesn’t answer to ‘Little Man’ anymore, Uncle Hammer. Says that’s the name for a child.”
Clayton Chester spoke up for himself. “Man’s okay, Uncle Hammer, you want to call me that. I still answer to family, no one else. I just don’t like being called ‘Little’ Man anymore.”
“Why should you?” stated Uncle Hammer. “Childhood names sometimes stick a little too long. Sometimes folks forget your given name, they call you by these nicknames so long. Folks used to call me ‘Babe’ ’til I put a stop to it. So, in answer to my question, you planning on staying here?”
“Haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ve been accepted in the engineering program at the University of Toledo under the G.I. Bill, but if I stay here, I’ll apply to a California college. Depends on Stacey.”
“You got a girl?”
Christopher-John laughed. “Yes, sir, he’s got a girl all right! Man’s always got a girl!” Man shot him an annoyed look, but didn’t say anything.
“And what about you?” Uncle Hammer asked of Christopher-John. “You thinking on marrying soon?”
Now it was Man’s turn to laugh. “More than likely, he’ll be married before the year’s out.” Christopher-John smiled and made no reply.
Uncle Hammer nodded at that. “The boys have all had their say, Cassie. Still waiting on you. What are your plans, or are you waiting on what Stacey does too?”
“Pretty much. Course, too, I just wanted to see the country.”
“And what do you think about the country?”
“Learning about it.”
“And just what did you learn?”
“You really want me to tell you?”
“I ask a thing, I expect an answer.”
That was a fact. So I told him in detail about Iowa, about Wyoming. I told him about the food we had ordered and walked out on, leaving the threat of the police coming after us.
“Y’all did that?” exclaimed Aunt Loretta. “Oh, y’all bad!”
Uncle Hammer looked at her. “Could’ve done worse.”
“Oh, baby, I know you have,” she said, grinning widely at him. Uncle Hammer only grunted and looked away. “Well, on that note,” said Aunt Loretta, “looks like that’s my sign to go fix some food for y’all. This man’s already grumpy from waiting for y’all, so I better get this food on the table.”
I rose to help.
Aunt Loretta waved her hand at me. “Ah, girl, sit down! You’re tired and fact is, I do better by myself. Just talk to your uncle. He’s been talking ’bout hardly nothing else since he heard y’all was coming. I’ll call you when the food’s on the table.” As she passed Uncle Hammer, she leaned down and kissed the top of his head. Uncle Hammer showed no reaction except to look after her as she passed. The boys and I smiled at that. As gruff as Uncle Hammer could be, it was obvious that Aunt Loretta was his match. We also knew that though Uncle Hammer could be gruff in manner, there was always love in his heart for his family, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for the people he loved.
After we had eaten, Uncle Hammer said, “Now that you got food in your stomach, there’s a man I want you to meet, Stacey. He’s a colored f
ella, owns a trucking company. Man named Strickland. I’ve talked to him about you. Told him you’d had experience driving big rigs. We can go see him now, ’less you feel you need some sleep first.”
“Slept in the car. I’m not tired. Course, I would like to wash up first.”
“We all would,” I said.
“Well, then, I’ll show y’all upstairs,” Aunt Loretta volunteered, getting up from the table.
I got up too, picked up my empty plate, but then Aunt Loretta stopped me.
“Girl, you leave those dishes. And I mean that! I’ll get to them later.”
“But—”
“No ‘but’s! One thing you have to understand, Cassie, is that I’m lady of this house, and though your Uncle Hammer takes care of everything else, I take care of this house, and what I say about this house, that’s what goes!” She laughed good-naturedly. “Right, Hammer?”
Uncle Hammer looked at me and lit another cigarette. “Leave the dishes, Cassie.”
I put the plate down.
“Now, come on, follow me,” said Aunt Loretta. “All of y’all now.”
We did as ordered. We gathered our luggage and followed her upstairs. Aunt Loretta led the boys to a room the three of them would share. There were two twin beds and a sofa that unfolded into a bed. The boys were more than pleased. She then led me to a room of my own. I had never had a room of my own before. It was beautiful, like out of a movie. She showed us the bathroom, which was large and spacious and had not only a tub but a separate shower stall too. The floor was tiled in gray and coral ceramics, and so were the walls. It was elegant.
All the Days Past, All the Days to Come Page 12