Most of all I would miss the trips to Chicago to visit with Ma and Bop Bop and DeDe and Grandada, as well as my cousins and other relatives scattered throughout the Chicago Southside. I would miss the family barbeques, when Grandada would cook his Kentucky-style barbeque ribs with a strong accent on vinegar. He would wrestle with us kids, letting us ride on his large back and broad shoulders before tickling us to death. On hot nights we sat on his lap while he smoked his pipe or played his harmonica, rubbing his rough, tickly whiskers against our soft brown faces. I would miss watching Bop Bop come home from work at the post office, dressed neatly in a suit and tie, bringing us his bus transfers to use as play money. He would quietly go upstairs to change, come down with his Bible and
Christian Science Monitor
, sit quietly on the corner of the black leather sofa, put his spectacles on over a serious face, and silently read. This was his way of keeping at bay the demons of alcoholism, which he had soundly defeated many years earlier.
I would miss my grandmother DeDe, who always reminisced about the old days, sharing stories of her family, demonstrating the Charleston; my father's sister, Aunt Doris, and my cousins, Mark and Keith; and Ma, dressing us like prissy rich kids, greasing our faces with Vaseline, feeding us non-fried food and wheat bread, and constantly reciting from the Bible.
My grandparents represented everything that we were and hoped to be. Now, we sadly had to leave them behind. I remember Grandada standing there with his bug eyes and thick eyelashes, his stomach bulging over his brown trousers. DeDe stood next to him in the brown flowered dress that she often wore on hot, muggy days.
“Have a safe trip, and, Brother, you be careful, you hear?”
DeDe always affectionately referred to her son as “Brother.” We drove off slowly, with us kids looking out the back window at the two figures standing on the green lawn, looking back at us. I would never forget that image.
It took me many years to forgive my parents for taking us out of this haven of comfort. I carried a lot of anger for a long time, not really understanding or caring why. I never quite felt that security, that contentment, that familiarity again.
3
The Search for Home
When the night has come And the land is dark And the moon is the only light we'll see No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid Just as long as you stand, stand by me
âBen E. King, “Stand By Me,” 1961
Moving two thousand miles
away was a traumatic experience for everyone, especially my mother. I remember her bursting into tears at the sight of the Lake Washington floating bridge, the portal to the Pacific Northwest. Despite her relief at being free from Ma's tight hold on her, Mommy missed her mother and father and Chicago, with its segregated neighborhoods and Midwestern culture, a distinct Black culture that enabled Black people to develop their own system of self-sufficiency. Poppy, in contrast, was an explorer, an adventurer, and an artist. He was sincerely inquisitive about the unknown, the taboo, and was excited about the possibilities that lay ahead. We kids just sat in the back of the '52 Plymouth, looking at the new topography of mountains, evergreen trees, and water, homesick for Grandada and DeDe, Ma and Bop Bop, and our first home, Birch Village.
Those first couple years we must have changed residences and schools three or four times, trying to settle down to something as secure and familiar as what we had left behind. Early in our search for a permanent home, I saw Mommy and Poppy perform an act of compassion that had a lasting effect on me. We were living in a very rundown part of Seattle, on Hiawatha Street. Our two-bedroom flat was dingy and dilapidated, but it provided our family a place to rest after the long trip. One cold, rainy Sunday evening there came a knock on the door. It was an older Black gentleman, dressed in worn, tattered clothing. He had a sad, hopeless look on his face.
He asked, “Can you spare something to eat?”
Mommy and Poppy invited him in. Mommy went into the kitchen and made him a sandwich from the roast she had been preparing for supper, along with chips and cookies, packing all of it neatly in a brown paper bag, and gave him some money as well. It was something I would see Mommy and Poppy do many times over. These acts of kindness helped shape my concern for others.
In 1960, three years after our departure from Birch Village, we moved into our permanent Seattle home, in a mixed neighborhood called Madrona Hill in Seattle's Central District. Across the street from our house was a neighborhood park with a baseball field that doubled as a football field, and at its other end a tennis court. The streets of the neighborhood were lined with large maples and reddish-brown Madrona trees, native to the Pacific Northwest. On our block and the blocks west of us, most of the inhabitants were Black, Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese. We lived on 33rd Avenue. On 34th Avenue and down the hill heading east toward Lake Washington, the residents were mostly white.
Madrona was like a lot of the neighborhoods in central Seattle back then. Formerly occupied largely by Italians and Jews, these neighborhoods were now “in transition,” as many Black men and women had returned from WWII and the Korean conflict and moved in. They had served their country and many had worked in munitions factories, helping the United States to victory. Now it was time to enjoy a piece of the pieâand home ownership was part of that pie.
Japanese Americans released from WWII internment camps, who had in many cases lost their homes, businesses, and possessions, also moved to the area. The Central District was the only part of Seattle where Asians, Jews, and Blacks were allowed to live, due to the racist zoning practice known as “redlining” and racial restrictive covenants. In response to the influx of Black and Asian families, many whites had moved out in droves, relocating across Lake Washington and farther south into the suburbs.
Two blocks to the north of us was a small business district with a little Chinese mom-and-pop grocery store, owned and operated by Joe and Mae, who would give credit to anyone in the neighborhood who needed it. On the corner was a Black-owned cleaner, and across the street was a Chinese drugstore. Two Black-owned gas stations stood directly across from one another on 34th and Pike. Nearby were an A&P grocery store and a Bavarian bakery that my parents were very fond of.
Madrona was a little paradise of Asian, white, and Black families, a bit removed from the rest of the city, with Lake Washington as a natural boundary to the east and the Harrison Valley to the west. The park was the hub for all the kids in the neighborhood, the focal point where much of our growth and maturation would take place. It was a battleground of sorts, a training ground for athletic endeavors, a spot to meet friends and acquaintances, and often the scene of physical confrontations.
On hot days we would go down to Collins' Soda Fountain, an old-fashioned soda shop operated by Mr. Collins, a slim, white-haired, elderly white man. We would sit on the twirling stools, surrounded by old wood and leaded glass, sipping hand-mixed sodas or malts or milkshakes. When we were done, Mr. Collins would carefully bring out a wooden box of penny candies, wrapped in waxed paper. Afterward, we would run across the street to the Rental Freezers and take refuge inside the cold store, trying to cool down from the scorching sun. Along with our newfound friends, on summer days my brothers and I would make go-carts with broken roller skates and wooden crates. Or we would make stilts, swords, bows and arrows, and slingshots. We would play marbles on patches of dirt or lag pennies against the wall, winner take all. Sometimes when we needed spending money, we would cut the grass of our neighbors' overgrown lawns.
Our house was large and spacious. Its hardwood floors were softer than the concrete floors in Birch Village. Joanne got her own room, but even though there was an extra room designated as the “TV room,” Elmer, Michael, and I had to share a bedroom. The front and rear verandas, extending off the upstairs bedrooms, soon would serve as our escape route out into the night. Sometimes I caught Poppy standing and surveying his new home, beaming with pride and contentment. He brought home young trees and planted them around the house, one for each child. Seattle, especially Madrona, was much more racially and socially diverse and tolerant than the segregated Southside of Chicago had been; for Poppy, that is what his artistic soul needed to heal from the scars of war.
Poppy always sought out people from other cultures. I remember the friendship he struck up with Mr. Aschak, the old Russian man who lived down the street from one of our temporary apartments. Poppy and Mr. Aschak would get together and drink vodka and eat Russian rye bread. Even though Mr. Aschak could barely speak English, he and Poppy seemed to have a genuine liking for each other.
It was not until we got to Seattle that I had any lasting contact with a white person other than schoolteachers. Mr. Santo lived across the street from another of our temporary living quarters. A short, squat, red-faced Italian man in his eighties, he lived in his yellow house by himself. Sometimes we would trample through his well-cultivated garden on our way to raid the cherry trees next to his house, and he would give us a good scolding. I remember sitting in the yard next door with my friend Cornelius Bolton, watching Mr. Santo in the hot sun in his straw hat, working his garden of tomatoes, squash, and beans. He looked up and motioned to us with his hand to come over.
“Have you ever had fried squash?” he asked us in his accented English.
We shook our heads no, looking inquisitive.
“I'll cook you some.” He got up and went inside. About three minutes later he came out with fried squash and fried tomatoes that were very tasty. After that we were much more careful of Mr. Santo's garden. Later I learned that he was the father of Ron Santo, the famous all-star third baseman for the Chicago Cubs.
Poppy and Mommy began to make friends in Madronaâartists, musicians, folk dancers, beatniks, communists, a mix of Black, Jewish, and Greek individuals. Our house sometimes resembled an international festival. Once a month the rug was rolled back and the cheese and wine put out as my parents entertained their friends, who all belonged to the same folk-dancing group. It was fun to watch the adults sipping wine and eating cheese, having political discussions before engaging in Greek, Italian, and Jewish traditional dances. On the weekends, Poppy sometimes tried to paint before taking us out on long Sunday drives to explore the natural splendor of the Puget Sound area.
Much of Mommy's time was spent taking care of the familyâcooking, cleaning, serving as president of the PTA, watching over us at home, reading us classics such as Edgar Allan Poe, or keeping tabs on us at the park. Not long after we moved into the neighborhood, a couple of the local bullies took a baseball mitt that Elmer had found. They said it was theirs, and it may have been, but the way they snatched it from Elmer did not sit well with Mommy. After Elmer ran home to tell her, within seconds she was out of the house, all 110 pounds of her, yelling and chasing the bullies, Tommy and Delbert. She gave them a good tongue-lashing. They politely gave the baseball mitt back to Elmer, and from that day forward, all the kids in the neighborhood knew Mommy respectfully as Mrs. Dixon.
Even though Poppy had a good job as a technical illustrator at Boeing, Mommy finally had to go to work to help pay the monthly house note. She started working at Christmas and other holidays at Frederick and Nelson, the large department store downtown, battling subtle racism every step of the way. When she went to apply for the job, they said they didn't have an opening, even though it was posted on a sign. She insisted they give her a job and they finally relented. Customers as well as her employers often spoke to her in a disrespectful manner, and she would tell us all about her battles at work. Eventually she got a job as a doctor's assistant at Virginia Mason Hospital, where she worked for many years until retirement. She never got the opportunity to finish teachers college, which had always been her dream.
My father was gregarious and outgoing, but the war had left him hard in many ways, and he still lived in its shadows. He called himself the commander in chief of our family. Parading around the house in his military hat with a broom on his shoulder as a makeshift rifle, he would bark, “Attention!” and then “Parade rest,” spreading his feet and putting his rifle out front. Poppy also frequently recited Tennyson's “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and the speech from Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar
about the great Pompey walking the streets of Rome. He taught me how to recite Shakespeare's verse, and the Pompey speech was forever etched in my mind.
My own shy, inward nature was sometimes at odds with his “get up ân' go” style. Once, when I was in the fifth grade, he told me I was nothing but a dreamer. I did love to daydream about faraway places and fantasy worlds. I still had not gotten over being uprooted from the Midwest, taken away from the security of Birch Village and from my grandparents and all our other relatives. This anger I held on to like a piece of fungus clinging to an old dead tree. I was sometimes sullen, preferring to be by myself. Ma, my grandmother, had told me I was a deep thinker and said that one day I would be a minister. Elders often praised me as a thoughtful and kind person. I would buy cards for birthdays and little boxes of candy for my mother, especially for Valentine's Day.
Despite these attributes I found myself in more fights than I care to remember, and I often hung out with the baddest kids in school or the neighborhood. Fighting was something I had to do once I started school in Seattle. Colman Elementary School, where Mommy enrolled us when we first got to town, was a predominantly Black school. I guess since I was a new kid, shy, and curly-haired, I was fair game. At times it seemed that Colman Elementary was a “gladiator school” of sorts, where you were trained to defend and take care of yourself. I began hanging with some of the tough crowd, feeling connected by our inner anger. When my family moved to Madrona, I continued to attend Colman but also had to fight all comers at the park across the street from our house. It seemed a fight could break out for any reason.