Humble Beginnings

COLE LINE

Cole Line, USA. West Shawmut, Alabama. 1954. An assembly line, cookie-cutter sheet of three-room shotgun shack, sardine can, see straight through shanties, packed matchbox houses. A tin top, wooden frame, tenement community of twenty or more row houses strung together in da hood of West Shawmut, Alabama, deep south Lower Alabama below the Mason Dixon line right across the Chattahoochee River, not even a small dot on the "Sweet Home Alabama" map.

West Shawmut, the loving, nurturing, and caring community village in which I was raised, thrived and mentored to believe and achieve. This is one black community's memoir of struggle, hope, love, decline, restoration, triumph, victory, and generational reconstruction restoration.

One of my fondest and earliest life memories was that of me at around three years old sitting up under a gigantic oak tree in our front yard on Cole Line "playing teacher" with my Big sister Betty.

Of course, Betty was the almighty, authoritative, all-knowing, stern teacher with her ruler-rod in hand looking mean and tough. I, as Betty's willing student, sat attentively focused, concentrating upon her every instruction or correction.

All Betty lacked was some eyeglasses and an old-fashioned bun hairstyle to complete her schoolmarm character look. She already looked and acted the part of a strict schoolteacher in every sense of the concept.

This was the very beginning of my growing, thirsty, hunger love for knowledge.

"Kerry, you're going to learn how to read or I'm going to spank those legs." Betty meant business. I sat erect.

"Yes, mam," I answered obediently in my best schoolboy voice.

I was wearing shorts and definitely didn't want to feel the scorpion sting of Betty's ruler. Betty was a stern taskmaster who expected excellence returned from every school lesson she taught.

First Teacher's Lessons

IN SPITE OF

Of course, there are those who would vehemently argue that your mother is always your first teacher, but I had to somewhat swerve from that course. Mama was usually overwhelmed with maternal responsibilities of taking care of my elder brother Roger who had been born with the birth defect of cerebral palsy, the year before in 1953. Being naturally bright and discovery minded, I was often left to fend for myself early in life.

When I was three years old, my Big sister had the bold, bright idea to play school teacher with me. She was thirteen years old and a tough teacher and taskmaster who enjoyed spanking me on my legs and hand when I didn't get something right or do it just the correct way she wanted me to.

Very early, Betty taught me the lesson of doing a thing over and over until you got it right. Mama would often tell me, "Son, if you have time to do it wrong, you have time to do it over." This went from making the bed to sweeping the floor. Between Betty and Mama, I quickly learned and applied valuable early age lessons of diligence, industry, perseverance, and achievement.

Betty was a brilliant student herself, only receiving all A's in every subject area. Learning came very easy for her. She was naturally gifted. My brilliant Big sister recognized early that I too was an eager beaver and sponge learner. I soaked up knowledge and mastered academic concepts with ease.

Super thanks to Big Sister Betty's strict nurturing; I learned to read fluently at the ripe, tender age of three. Swiftly, I became engaged in comic books that fueled my fertile imagination. My favorite comic book characters were the Flash, Hawkman, the Martian Manhunter, Dr. Fate, and Dr. Strange. Of course, the Justice League of America (JLA) and Marvel's entire super "kreeative" universe. The High Evolutionary, the Watcher, and Galactus were just a few of my uncanny interests.

Of course, I liked the common ordinary stuff like Batman and Superman; but the extraterrestrial, bizarre, odd, quirky characters and story lines perked my mental interest and got my "kreeative" juices flowing.

My mother recognized my love for reading at an early age and began to introduce me to classic novels. I don't really know where she got them from, but every time she went uptown to West Point, Georgia, she would bring back a four or five-hundred-page novel. Mama started me out on some good stuff like Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Anna Sewell's Black Beauty was perhaps my favorite novel of all time, and I enjoyed Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Of course, I immersed myself in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Before the days of instant video, movie, book adaptations, I imagined myself sailing down the great Mississippi with Huck, Tom, and Jim or soaring across the universe on the planet Thanagar with the Hawkman or even surfing the cosmos with the Silver Surfer.

Of course, in my young developing adolescence, I loved Wonder Woman for her amazon curves and curvaceous physique. Linda Carter only catapulted my imagination to new heights.

Mama would allow me to immerse myself in enjoyable classic literature for hours of undisturbed mentally stimulating pleasure. If any of my numerous neighborhood playmates came calling to engage me in play, she would quickly meet them at the door and say, "Wayne is reading right now. As soon as he finishes, he'll be out to play."

Perhaps dependent upon what mood I was in, I would emerge a few hours later to go outside to join in a rousing neighborhood game of softball in Ms. Mattie Walker's huge yard. Every neighborhood kid far and near would be gathered in Ms. Mattie's yard to yell, scream, and whoop up a stone good time for hours on end. Even a book nerd like me enjoyed the camaraderie of a whole line of playmates.

Ms. Mattie Walker and her daughter, Ms. Odessa, might even, from time to time, make a big silver bucket of red Kool-Aid and baloney sandwiches to pass out if it was real scorching hot.

The softball games were noisy neighborhood affairs from beginning to end, with lots of rooting, cheering, OOOOhhhs, and Aahhhhhhs! As neighborhood heroes, like Eugene Walker, we smacked the cover off a softball, sending it soaring and whoever was in the outfield running. There were several guys in the hood who could knock — slamming, hammering homeruns, and crushing them murderously across the main road clear across the railroad tracks.

Young children such as my little sister Nat-Nat who loved to hunt doodle bugs under our house and most pre- teens weren't allowed to play in neighborhood softball games unless they had exceptional skills. If you were eleven or twelve with super skills, or an emerging teen, you might be allowed to play. Every so often an older twenty something year old might n steal his or her way into a rousing mixed gender rivalry. Teams were chosen on ability, skill, and personality. Substitutions were made often if you happened to show up late or happened to own your own glove as I did.

Big hulking guys like Tommy Lewis Barrow, Willie Barker, and Eugene Walker were community favorites who could knock the leather off a softball. Of course, girls could play if they had skills and weren't too cute and girly-girly.

Neighborhood softball games were played almost daily in the heat of the day around three...