1961: The Great Awakening
Part One
There is nothing like a journey home to get the writing spirits to shift from emotional exhaustion and physical confusion to a vivid re- connection with the past. Although I’m currently visiting Massachusetts where I was born and lived for 30 years, my mind inevitably drifts back to the year I was eleven, and my family took a road trip through the Deep South on our way to our final destination, the St. Petersburg area on the west coast of the state to spend time with my mother’s cousin Sam from the North End of Boston. He had done the unthinkable back then….married a beautiful white woman named Ursula who’d been raised in the Deep South and was NOT Italian American. Ursula was a Southern Belle of legend in fact. Sam had been snared by her beauty and manners and remained with her to raise their children while never returning to his clan in the North. It was heresy and a deep loss for my mother’s extended family and the matriarch who ruled it with an iron fist. But even though I was curious about the handsome man I called Cousin Sammy, it was not that leg of the trip that left on me an indelible mark that would shape my adult life in unpredictable and startling ways.
Most of the trip through the South in our beautiful 4 door blue and white 1958 Chevy Bel Air was benign. I was happy to be alive and thrilled to have been pulled from my fifth grade class in the middle of a late New England autumn to leave for an entire month. I knew instantly by that single unexpected action that this was not just a trip. It was an adventure. There was, however, one incident on the initial leg of the trip that had a major impact on everything I would believe about my country, about people who looked like me and those who didn’t. It was before we reached Florida with its relentless sunshine and splashy tourist enticements that we passed through the state of Georgia.
My father John loved Claxton Fruit Cake made in Claxton, Georgia where it is still baked and shipped to all 50 states. Remember, this is 1961, capitalism still had controls, people were thrilled to receive such a gift made in a part of the country that was legendary for its plantations, beautiful women, unusual pronunciations, genteel greetings and cotton. Georgia was not really an actual place for many Northerners unless they'd been there. It was simply Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in a film everyone...at least who I knew... loved. But dad insisted we purchase some bars of fruitcake "gold" and bring them to his friends back home, direct from the factory. So we sidestepped the usual highway into Florida and took some back roads. After about 45 minutes, what I can only describe as a drop in my blood sugar brought about a spate of annoying whining and right on cue my sister Georgianna on one side and my brother Jack on the other side, began to poke and tickle me. And so the torment began. After 10 minutes of this, my mother demanded we have something to eat at the first roadside diner she spotted. My father grudgingly complied and parked the Bel Air on the opposite side of the diner. That car spoke not of great wealth as much as working class aspirations to be middle class. (note: the car back then had cost my father two thousand dollars brand new - today these classic cars sell for up to 70,000 dollars depending on the condition. ( Capitalism is only as impressive as we consumers make it.) Anyway we had lunch, I calmed down and we didn't dawdle because the four of us were very uncomfortable with the stares we were getting. Everything about us, especially our speech, screamed Northerners. I remember a man coming to our table asking where we were from and my father making a funny remark....to which no one laughed. It was a quick lunch and as we left I recall hearing in an exaggerated Southern drawl, "Y'all come back now, ya hear" exactly like in the movies. And like the movies I watched relentlessly even then, it was just as fake.
Back inside the Bel Air, satiated by the mediocre burgers and too sweet drinks, we eventually found Claxton. My father was happy with his "steal" at factory prices and we continued on, looking for signs to the highway. Somewhere in that time period, we drove by some shacks in our shiny new car and my father slowed down. We looked at the dilapidated constructions and realized each at the same time that people were living in these shacks. My mother made a slight gasping noise and the car slowed down even more. And in that moment as my father's car came to a stop and we watched a beautiful young Black mother weaving together baskets at a makeshift stand with the saddest face I had ever seen in my life, I noticed my mother trembling. It was very still inside the Bel Air and then my mother opened the door and walked over to the woman weaving. I ran after her and watched. My mother said a very soft hello and complimented the young mother on her weaving skills. And then their eyes met. I was terrified. There were no Black people in my New England town and the only ones I had ever seen up close were from Roxbury and on a television screen. It was a moment and an image that day that was seared into my brain like none since. The recognition of actual dirt poor people living in demeaning circumstances making beautiful artistic and useful objects with their bare hands was the most astounding thing I had ever witnessed. It shook my world to the core. It was the human spirit to survive and my mother's empathy and show of dignity and respect in discussing with this craftswoman the language of creation. She purchased some baskets and gave one to me and another to my sister. And the repercussions of that moment in time reverberated again and again within me as I tried to discover the work that I would do in life and the person I would become. All within a capitalist system that would lead to pain and suffering again and again for so many of us.
(to be continued in Part Two)
