Revisionist History – Juanita Style       

My mother has been in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s for a while now.  Part of the process of the move was selling her house and dividing up her stuff.  From that time period I have a couple of cardboard boxes that I have never really gone through.  In an attempt to organize the closet in my man cave, I pulled out those two boxes.  In one I found my baby book.  I was the first child of a 50s’ mother who was married at 17 and had her first child when she was 18.  I don’t really know if she continued the tradition of a baby book with my 4 siblings, but I suspect not.  The last time I remember looking at this book I must have been in 4^th grade.

What grabbed my attention this time around as well as in the 4^th grade was the section recording the mother’s  and father’s first words on seeing the baby. For my mother’s first words, what is now written in the book  is, “My goodness, he looks like a Negro”.  These are not the words that I remember from looking at the book in 1961.  Instead of Negro I remember the less socially acceptable “N” word.  To me now, it does not look like the “N” word, but it does look it was something else besides Negro. It might have been “Negar”.  My mother is an intelligent woman, but perhaps she did not know the correct spelling of either the proper word or the slur. Maybe she was channeling her inner Mark Twain and trying to write dialect. Perchance that is how they spelled it in McIntosh County in 1952.  Conceivably even then she was trying to clean it up a bit. It is really hard to tell as part of the book is in pencil and part is in ink.  There is also more than one hand writing in it.

Whatever was there before has been altered at some point.  Which leads me into talking about my mother, I do not think she has a racist bone in her body. My mother grew up in McIntosh and Muskogee counties in Oklahoma.  She grew up poor and rural.  At more than one point my grandparents were sharecroppers.  You can go lower on the social ladder, but not very far. I am sure what was then the common appellation for African- Americans would not be political correct today.

My mother related a few times the story of her mother’s black friend who used to come to her house to visit.  My grandmother and she would chat while they cooked or baked.  My mother would play with my grandmother’s friend’s child. Not a big deal, except this was rural Oklahoma sometime around 1940 give or take a few years either way.  It was not something that was commonly done.  But then again my grandmother was also divorced which was a bit out of the ordinary.

I know growing up that if we had be unwise enough to use the “N” word we would have been introduced very quickly and very forcibly to a bar of soap.  Another story that my mother did tell after my father’s death was his use of the “N”word.  Again, he grew up poor and rural, but in Kentucky.  I know that in the first part of his life he had racist attitudes.  He would have been hard put to not have internalized a racist attitude growing up as he did.  My mother, however, insisted, once children were in the home, that he not use this word.  And I do not recall him ever doing so.  From spending 10 years in the Navy, he also came to hate strong language. While no soap was involved, he would certainly dress you down if he heard one of us boys using such language.  I will give my father credit.  After seeing the treatment of the children at Central High School in Little Rock, AR on television, it triggered something within him.  It probably did not completely eliminate the attitudes of his upbringing towards African-Americans, but it definitely softened them.

I remember having my first disagreement about the “N” word sometime around 11 or 12 years of age.  One my chums was using it regularly, and I asked him not to.  It did not result in fisticuffs, but we did have words.  That has happened to me a few times in my life, some things you just need to challenge.

All this as explanation as to why I found it so surprising to find this particular word there, and perhaps why the small revision of this particular piece of history might not have been a bad thing.

I do wonder when my father supposedly uttered the phrase in my baby book.  Since my mother was back in Checotah, I am assuming my father was out to sea when I was born.  I seem to recall seeing a letter or telegram to him on the subject of my birth. My father’s recorded first words were, “Well, at least he’s human.”  This might have been relief. It might have been self-deprecation. Who knows for sure, but those words are among the most positive he has ever said about me or to me.  We called my father Mr. Humble, not because of his humility, but because he seemed to feel it was his function in life to make sure his sons were kept in their place.  He was not one to build up his offspring’s ego.  I do, however, seem to recall he said something positive to me in my 50s.  I reckon I must have  prayed for patience myself.

Is there point to this?  Maybe, maybe not.  Just seeing those phrases in my baby book started me down the rambling road of an old man’s recollections.  Maybe you  too, gentle reader, have prayed for patience.

And so it goes.

Keep well.

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