gray-haired, rotund woman of weary carriage and a dignity appropriate to her remarkable birth. Now and then she unbent enough to invite Doris or my cousin Kenneth or me into her dark kitchen for a piece of butter bread, Morrisonville’s universal treat. One afternoon I wandered intoher backyard to find her hacking the meat out of a huge, freshly killed terrapin.
“What’s that, Annie?”
“It’s a tarpon.”
“What’s a tarpon?”
“Tarpon’s big turtle, child.”
“Why’re you cutting it up like that?”
“To make soup. You come back over here when I get it done, and I’ll give you some.”
White Morrisonville’s hog-meat diet hadn’t prepared me for terrapin soup. I hurried back across the road giggling to my mother that colored people ate turtles.
“Colored people are just like everybody else,” she said.
Despite the respect accorded Annie, no one else in Morrisonville held my mother’s radical view. Nor did Annie. Only when there was death or sickness did Annie presume the social freedom of white households. Then she came to help in the sickroom or sit in a rocker on Ida Rebecca’s porch comforting a sobbing child in her lap. In time of crisis her presence was expected, for she was a citizen of stature. An historical monument. A symbol of our nation’s roots. “Born in slavery.”
For occasional treats I was taken on the three-mile trip to Lovettsville and there had my first glimpse of urban splendors. The commercial center was Bernard Spring’s general store, a dark cavernous treasure house packed with the riches of the earth. Staring up at the shelves, I marveled at the bulging wealth of brand-new overalls, work shirts, gingham fabrics, shoe boxes, straw hats, belts, galluses, and neckties and intoxicated myself inhaling the smell of plug tobacco, chewing gum, gingersnaps, cheese, leather, and kerosene, all of which Bernard Spring sold across the same polished counter on which he cut bolts of cloth for the women to sew into new dresses.
Nearby stood the Spring family’s mansion, the most astonishing architectural monument I had ever seen, a huge white wedding cake of a building filled with stained glass and crowned withturrets and lightning rods. The whole business had been ordered from the Sears, Roebuck catalog and erected according to mail-order instructions. Since Mr. Spring insisted on top-of-the-line in all his dealings, Lovettsville could boast that it contained the finest house in the Sears, Roebuck warehouse.
Just as wonderful to me was a contrivance my Uncle Etch kept behind his Lovettsville house. Uncle Etch, Ida Rebecca’s fourth son, was married to the town undertaker’s daughter and had inherited custody of a hearse, which he kept in his backyard shed. It was not one of your modern internal-combustion hearses, but a beautiful black antique horse-drawn hearse with glass windows on all four sides and elegant wood carvings jutting out hither and yon. It was a hearse fit for a royal corpse, but I never saw anything in it but a few of Uncle Etch’s chickens who enjoyed nesting down inside during the heat of the afternoon.
My cousin Leslie, Uncle Etch’s oldest son, much older than I, assisted in the family undertaking business and took part in one of the most appropriate buryings ever held in our part of the country. The customer was Sam Reever, the famous bootlegger.
For several months before their triumph Leslie and his grandfather had been unnaturally depressed. The cause of their sorrow was a unique coffin foisted upon them by their chief supplier of funeral goods. The thing was made entirely of glass. They hadn’t ordered it; the supplier had just had it delivered out of the blue one day. His covering letter explained that glass coffins were the wave of the future. To help popularize them, he was sending specimens to a few lucky customers for showroom display. Leslie’s grandfather had been selected to be among the few let in on the ground floor of the glass-coffin
“What’s that, Annie?”
“It’s a tarpon.”
“What’s a tarpon?”
“Tarpon’s big turtle, child.”
“Why’re you cutting it up like that?”
“To make soup. You come back over here when I get it done, and I’ll give you some.”
White Morrisonville’s hog-meat diet hadn’t prepared me for terrapin soup. I hurried back across the road giggling to my mother that colored people ate turtles.
“Colored people are just like everybody else,” she said.
Despite the respect accorded Annie, no one else in Morrisonville held my mother’s radical view. Nor did Annie. Only when there was death or sickness did Annie presume the social freedom of white households. Then she came to help in the sickroom or sit in a rocker on Ida Rebecca’s porch comforting a sobbing child in her lap. In time of crisis her presence was expected, for she was a citizen of stature. An historical monument. A symbol of our nation’s roots. “Born in slavery.”
For occasional treats I was taken on the three-mile trip to Lovettsville and there had my first glimpse of urban splendors. The commercial center was Bernard Spring’s general store, a dark cavernous treasure house packed with the riches of the earth. Staring up at the shelves, I marveled at the bulging wealth of brand-new overalls, work shirts, gingham fabrics, shoe boxes, straw hats, belts, galluses, and neckties and intoxicated myself inhaling the smell of plug tobacco, chewing gum, gingersnaps, cheese, leather, and kerosene, all of which Bernard Spring sold across the same polished counter on which he cut bolts of cloth for the women to sew into new dresses.
Nearby stood the Spring family’s mansion, the most astonishing architectural monument I had ever seen, a huge white wedding cake of a building filled with stained glass and crowned withturrets and lightning rods. The whole business had been ordered from the Sears, Roebuck catalog and erected according to mail-order instructions. Since Mr. Spring insisted on top-of-the-line in all his dealings, Lovettsville could boast that it contained the finest house in the Sears, Roebuck warehouse.
Just as wonderful to me was a contrivance my Uncle Etch kept behind his Lovettsville house. Uncle Etch, Ida Rebecca’s fourth son, was married to the town undertaker’s daughter and had inherited custody of a hearse, which he kept in his backyard shed. It was not one of your modern internal-combustion hearses, but a beautiful black antique horse-drawn hearse with glass windows on all four sides and elegant wood carvings jutting out hither and yon. It was a hearse fit for a royal corpse, but I never saw anything in it but a few of Uncle Etch’s chickens who enjoyed nesting down inside during the heat of the afternoon.
My cousin Leslie, Uncle Etch’s oldest son, much older than I, assisted in the family undertaking business and took part in one of the most appropriate buryings ever held in our part of the country. The customer was Sam Reever, the famous bootlegger.
For several months before their triumph Leslie and his grandfather had been unnaturally depressed. The cause of their sorrow was a unique coffin foisted upon them by their chief supplier of funeral goods. The thing was made entirely of glass. They hadn’t ordered it; the supplier had just had it delivered out of the blue one day. His covering letter explained that glass coffins were the wave of the future. To help popularize them, he was sending specimens to a few lucky customers for showroom display. Leslie’s grandfather had been selected to be among the few let in on the ground floor of the glass-coffin
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