Malcolm Boyd~Priest, Author, Rebel, Activist, Out and Proud Gay Man

The link to the Wikipedia page describing Malcolm Boyd’s life is filled with accomplishment and “firsts.”  Malcolm was at the center of much of the social change and civil rights movements of the 20th century.   He was an iconic Episcopal Priest, for many reasons, most of which pertained to his ability to confront the status quo.  He was defined by many as a “rebel” and that certainly suited him.  His small stature and gentle way made it easy for the hardest of hearts to melt in his presence.  He was blessed and he celebrated his blessings.

His best selling book (1965) “Are You Running With Me Jesus” was a watershed event, introducing an intimate sense of a very personal relationship with God, at a time when most mainstream churches were focused on the ‘Social Gospel” of charitable works for those less fortunate.  “Are You Running With Me Jesus” pushed into that very sterilized sense of “religion” and challenged it with the notion of a God who is with us when we are washing dishes and brushing our teeth.  It was intimate, vulnerable, heartfelt, as was Malcolm.

My first "mentor" priest, John Fuller Mangrum, quoted from "Are You Running With Me Jesus" often in his sermons.  The book had a profound impact throughout churches in America.

In terms of “greatness” or “leaders” Malcolm was a true gentle man.  He was not interested in building empires, or shattering them.  He simply wanted to live a “committed life” and share his humanity with others.  His hope was that in doing so, people would feel less frightened of difference, pretense, and other barriers to intimacy and to God.

I had heard of Malcolm for years before I met him.  I was one of the folks who came to know a "personal Jesus" in the Episcopal Church, influenced by his writing and later his life.  

Our meeting was not typical.  I was living in Miami, and on the board of Whitman Brooks Institute there.  Whitman Brooks created annual training days on GLBTQ issues in the 1970s and 1980s.  We were putting together our Spring event, a Saturday dedicated to learning about ourselves, and deciding upon a keynote speaker.  I suggested Malcolm, the rest of the board agreed, so we invited him to come to Miami, and he did.  In addition to his keynote address, he attended the workshop that I created (I did it for many years, both in Miami and Los Angeles) “Gays and God” an exercise in separating out our pain from religious abuse from a personal spirituality that was affirming of our lives.  It was a great workshop, Malcolm loved it, and I’m sure he gave it his blessing when I moved to L.A. and offered it at Whitman Brooks conferences here.

As a part of his keynote address to the group, he shared about his own concerns of growing older (potentially alone) and living in Los Angeles, and being part of the “Gay Elite” of Los Angeles.  He basically commented about how many of his peers in L.A. were a bit full of themselves, thinking that they were the vanguard of a coming age of Gay liberation.   At the time, he seemed unsure of that possibility, but it proved to be more prophecy than satire.  

In spite of all our foibles, flaws, internal fights, and at times dark expressions of humanity, the LGBTQQ community in Los Angeles leads the world in showing forth courage and leadership.  It was one of the reasons I left Miami to move here, and it remains my first love of the place, even when it’s not easy to live here.  It’s still the best game on the planet, and it has been an honor to have been a part of it, even though we aren't always very loving or supportive of each other.

The author Alice Walker talked about this issue in communities of color, how living a life under siege tends to distort our view of each other, and cause us to inflict pain on people who are just trying to express how they see us.

We have our own version of this "Barrel Full of Crabs" in the LGBTQQ communities, the difficulty of seeing ourselves without the harsh judgements imposed by the larger society.  

Most artists have a deep sense of the relationship between our gifts and the creative nature of God.  True to form, Malcolm refrained from tearing down his fellows, and shared his gifts as generously as he could. 

Early on, I invited him to my apartment in West Hollywood for dinner.  It was cordial enough, he was a lovely man, but we never became close friends.  We came from very different cultural references.  I a Southerner who lived through both sides of the Civil Rights movement in the South.  He, a visitor during the "movement" who remained a "Yankee."   I knew our perspectives were too different to bridge, and I was busy with my own work in Offender Rehabilitation, Substance Abuse Treatment and HIV Prevention.

We did however remain deeply respectful of each other.  I would run into him at the various “AIDS Mass” services that the Episcopal Diocese would hold at least once a year to remind the church that the epidemic was around us, silently taking lives.  As usual, they were excruciatingly Episcopalian (which is generally a good thing), tasteful, well thought, with some self deprecating humor, enough to relieve the solemn seriousness of the massive multiple losses we were all living with.  All of us were pulling into our safe cocoons, there was so much death around us.   In the years between 1985 and 1993, I watched over 130 acquaintances, friends and most of my former lovers die from AIDS.  Malcolm was there with us, in spirit and in the flesh, reminding us of God’s love in a seemingly unloving world.  Malcolm was running with Jesus, and with the rest of us.  

We had a friend in common, the iconic Sallie Fiske.  Sallie was also a writer, journalist, one of the first women to work in and on television in the early 1950s.  Sallie and I had a deep love for each other.  When she passed away, many people came to offer their memories of her life.   Malcolm was one, offering his deep affection and appreciation of her genius.  “She was just so damned GOOD!” he exclaimed at her memorial.  And he was right.

In 2006 I moved to Portland Oregon, a city which offered me many challenges, some opportunities, and time for reflection on my life.  While I was there, a local publisher printed what I think was Malcolm's last book, a work of fiction, not his usual offering.  I went to the book signing at the the Q Center in Portland.  We exchanged pleasantries, it was good to see him and Mark.  That was the last time I saw him.  

When I returned from Portland in 2011, it was too painful for me to return to my old haunts in the GLBTQ community.   I have too many memories, some of them quite painful.  At the time, I was focused on re-building my life here.  After 4 years, I'm doing and feeling a lot better, venturing out more, hoping to re-connect with folks from my past.

Over the last few years, I have spent time with my brother, who returns to the D-Day activities in Normandy France every year, for almost 30 years.  He bemoans the loss of veterans, the brave young men who stormed the beaches, and later erased the scourge of Hitler and the Nazi’s from Europe.  My brother Gene is himself a retired combat veteran, a trained sniper, Special Forces, Airborne, “Black Opps” and we have grown close.  Last year, he received the French Legion of Honor for his work with WWII and other veterans.  He is a Veterans Services Officer with the Disabled American Veterans, helping all veterans get their full benefits, including P.T.S.D. benefits.  He is experiencing his own version of “Multiple Loss” syndrome, and he is able to hear me when I talk about the AIDS holocaust, the (estimated) 650,000 AIDS related deaths in the United States.  Most of the men he served with have died from illnesses directly connected to their military service.  Over 60% of my own peer group died in the plague years.  We have much to share, and the clear sense that we have lived through a very unique set of situations that only fellows who have lived it can understand.  So while the content of our trauma is different, the processes of recovery are similar, along with the need to talk with others who lived it, who are falling away with each passing day.

There was an unexpected and uninvited guest today, a remnant of the past that we all struggled with, an icon of the world we all once lived in, and many still do.  A lone picket, on the sidewalk, offering his comment and protest on Malcolm and all of us.  Imagine this at the funeral of a loved one, and welcome to the world of being "Queer."

Todays service was like a reunion of sorts of all of us (in Los Angeles) who are still alive and were at the beginning of what is often called “The Gay Rights Movement.”  For me that started in 1975, for some, it was earlier.  Being in the church, seeing the ravages of time and hard lives on all of us, was both painful and triumphant.   Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti offered some comments about the nature of our city, and life itself.  We are called the “City of Angels” and the mayor pointed out that we are a city of people who do great things, and are angels to those around us.  We offer a beacon to the rest of the world.

Malcolm was one of those angels whose light shone brightly over much of the human experience.  The mayor also reminded us that “in the end” the only thing that matters is whose lives we’ve touched, and what we have done to make the world a better place.

Thank you Malcolm for sharing so much of yourself with us, and making the world a better place.  

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

CLICK HERE: for Dr. King's 1963 speech in Detroit, one of his best !

I grew up in a segregated world, in rural central Florida.  It is difficult for younger people to comprehend that world. As the late jazz poet Gil Scott Heron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron) said, "When movies were in Black and White, and so was everything else."  

Non-Southerners always want to balm their consciences by relegating racism to "The South," but the reality is that racism permeates all of American society, it was just codified and overt in the South.

Third grade photo, circa 1958, four years after "Brown vs Board of Education"

So, as the promise, or threat, of the end of legal segregation loomed over the South, the discussion of that impending change became a constant mantra among most white people.   In the midst of all of this, I was a very "strange" kid, who didn't fit in very well, and had the daily reminder of it via the name calling and generally non-esteem that I was held in by my peers.   

Me and my brother Gene, in Key West, 1959

Living with the daily torture of being "Gerber Baby" and "Mrs. Garren" (due to riding a  used girls bicycle my father had brought home when I was 7), and then my brother's tag which spread like wild fire, "Jelly Belly", life was not fun.  Then in the 4th grade, a severe flu passed through my body and left me with extensive allergies to virtually all of the environment, particularly Live Oak trees, which proliferated everywhere in that part of  central Florida.  Years later in college I found out that the Tampa Bay area has one of the highest year round pollen counts in the nation.  All I knew as a child was that my nose was constantly running, and no amount of handkerchiefs could match the constant flood of mucus and "boogers" coming out of my nose.  So I got the additional tag of having "Kooties."

Circa 1961

So the only thing that I could fit in with was the the objection to, and fear of, "integration."  I wasn't exactly a zealot about the issue, but I kept the "party line," not willing to risk even further social rejection.  Some of my pronouncements that passed from my lips then, now bring me shame, and a constant reminder of the power of ignorance and fear.

Confirmation photo, 1961, I was eleven (11) other kids were twelve (12).

6th or 7th grade

So, there was this Black man, Dr. King and his allies, who asserted that our way of life was wrong.  In the face of that, every black person in our lives became an ambassador for stability.  When asked "What do you think about Civil Rights" the universal response was "Oh, I don't agree with any of that stuff, I like things just fine the way they are."  It never occurred to us that the response was rooted in a pervasive fear of white people and that any honest disclosure would result in lynching, or the person's house being torched, or both.

In the midst of all this "Let's just get along folks," most white people were absolutely clueless to the real issues that were the daily experiences of black people in the South and ultimately the rest of America.  

We all lived through those years, Lyndon Johnson pushed more Civil Rights legislation through congress than any president in history, before or since.  He took great pride that as a "fellow Southerner" he knew first hand why the legislation had to pass.  Once it was signed, the world didn't collapse, large swarms of black people did not emerge to destroy white people in the South, the whole thing (after the fact) was sort of a big, "What was the big deal?"

Summer before school integration, in Georgia with cousin Walter and 

Uncle Carl & Aunt Velma

Early on, during the first year of a voluntary integration plan in our local school district, two of the brave young women in my high school offered me an opportunity to confront all of my presumptions.  In an instant, I saw, heard and felt humanity, and full equality of that humanity.  All of my beliefs, presumptions and sense of "correctness" melted away in that instant, replaced by a new freedom to explore reality, rather than continue clutching my fears.

Years later, I would come to the realization and acceptance of the source of my own irrevocable "differences" and make peace with being homosexual.  Just typing that word is still difficult, which is why "Gay" is so much easier.  The "Homo" word still evokes images of really AWFUL stuff, such are the levels of internalized homophobia in all of us.

The year before I realized I was gay, hiding behind my facial hair.

A year later, less hair and less weight.

Not hiding anymore.

As I began my journey into both self acceptance, and working for social change, the life and legacy of both Dr. King, and his mentor, Mohandus Gandhi, became my personal beacons of knowledge and clarity.  Particularly Dr. King because like me, he was also from the South, and was dealing with layers of fear, based in ignorance and sexual fears.  In case you're wondering about that last one, it's simple, the fears of many white people that black men unchecked would all seek out relationships with white women, and of course, rape them as well.  Like all fears, totally insane, but to many Whites, very real.  A great line from Loraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in The Sun,"  the sister in law asks (of the whites in Clyborne Park), "What are they so afraid of, that we'll eat em?" to which the sister replies, "No honey, marry em."

Many Whites in the South believed that black people carried virulent strains of venereal diseases, and fueled by the "wet toilet seat" and "water fountain" fears of spreading such diseases, lived in absolute terror that their children would catch horrific diseases if they mixed with black children.  

My aunt Louise explained the V.D. myths very simply during that time.  She had worked in a V.D. clinic during the depression as a W.P.A. worker.  She explained that the actual bacteria was so fragile in the face of sunlight or temperatures cooler than 98.6, that they had to literally run from the exam rooms where culture samples had been collected to the lab that would do the test.  But it was the depression, and telling a spouse, particularly a husband, that the disease could only come from an extra-marital affair would assure the dissolution of the family.  So the lie was fabricated so that the wife (or husband) could "save face."

Laura Louise Brackett Beasley at 78

But most people didn't know all this.  When I explained it to one older black woman, who had made her career in New York as a domestic worker in wealthy homes, she looked at me and said, "That must be why they were always so insistent on seeing my health card."  

And then I lived through and was a major participant in the "Gay Rights" movement, from the mid 70s until today.  You say "Today?" and I say "Yes, I was slandered and fired from a job at Ft. Bragg North Carolina in 2010, a (ironically Black) colleague spreading the news that I was Gay and fueling the presumption that I must also be a child molester because of it.   JIn 2013, my (straight) housemate was involved in a child visitation hearing to get more time with his (then) five year old son.  One of the objections the mother and grandmother (a retired teacher) made was that the child could not be left with me for child care because as a gay man, I am (presumed to be) a pedophile.  

So like racism, it's never really gone, or never really "over."  It's just having legal protections, sort of.  But the burden of both proof and "justice" still falls on us, not our accusers.  

What did Dr. King, and the legions of black people in the South (and ultimately America) teach me?  The first thing is that they decided they just were not going to cooperate in their oppression any longer.  They were not going to rationalize the status quo, and salve themselves with the assumption that nothing could, or would, change.  

The next gift, was honesty.  They decided to stop cooperating with their oppression by letting the status quo continue.  Instead they gently, corporately and at times, individually, started telling us the truth of their experiences, and why the system that we took for granted, was a source of constant pain and suffering for them.

And although many white people joined in their struggles later on, initially, it was just a collection of poor and middle class black people who risked all of their meager existence to challenge a reality that was suffocating them.   In other words, no one "handed" them their rights, they got out and insisted on them.  "We're not going away until it's done."  So I learned the importance of self determination, that no one will ever support "us" more than we have demonstrated our support for ourselves and each other.

Martin Luther King made it very simple in his speech in Detroit in 1963.  "What does the Negro want?  It can be summarized in three little words, all, here and now.  We want all of our rights, we want them here and we want them now."  In that simple expression, I learned the importance of assertion.  That there are always excuses and reasons to postpone change.  It falls upon those who are oppressed to assert our issues, and not go away until they have been addressed, and resolved.

And most of all, I learned forgiveness.  That ultimately, we are all on this planet together, and as he also asserted in Detroit, "We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools."

He also said what was a most significant comment on becoming a "whole person,"  "As much as we want to blame white people for all of the things that they have done to us, we will never be truly free until we take responsibility for letting them do it."

How does all this apply to being Gay?   The content of our oppression is different, our identity is not our skin color.  But sooner or later, often sooner, people figure out what we are, and then the hell starts.  If we are unfortunate enough to have homophobic parents, the hell starts at home.  Because we are not "reared" by our own, we are taught to hate ourselves and each other from a early age.  My father could never make peace with significant elements of his personality, so of course, I was his worst nightmare come true, and his response to my being a "sissy" was to try to beat it out of me.  So I got beatings three times a week for most of my childhood.  He later confessed to me that he was trying to "beat it out" of me and asked my forgiveness.

The specific inspiration for tonight's epistle came from my attendance at a meeting of the "Tribe" in West Hollywood, a group of Gay men who meet once a month to discuss issues relating to being Gay.  Tonight's topic, "Otherness and Assimilation."   We all had various stories that reflect the daily challenges of trying to "fit in" while being very conscious of our "being different" in a way that can be particularly volatile, and the presumed fears of "What will happen" if we assert our issues in a group of "straight" people.

The concept of "privilege" was discussed significantly.  In racial terms, "White Privilege" is very simple.  It relates to all of the issues, fears and concerns that never occur to white people (like the issue of segregation in my youth), that form daily challenges for non-white or mixed people in our midst.  

For "Queer" people, it is all of the issues, fears and concerns that we consider on an hourly basis, that "straight" people never even think about.  Issues pertaining to love, family, relationships, employment, housing, survival and acceptance, to name a few.

If you need more specific contemplation, consider the persons you meet who you find "attractive" and you may or may not act on that attraction, mostly depending upon your marital (or relationship) status.   Presumably, those attractions cause you no internal or external conflict, the concept of "boy meets girl" is central to most of the literature in our society, and encouraged in song, poetry, literature, commerce and religion.

For us, it's "boy meets boy" or "girl meets girl", or "boy meets girl and boy" or "girl meets boy and girl" or some variation of that theme.  How do you take that one home to your family?  Or share with co-workers, have your love blessed at church, or get a "blessing" from the government so you can have access to your loved one's medical care, and make decisions if necessary for their well being.  Filing joint tax returns (at the federal level), inheritance rights, and the other few hundred legal protections that go along with being legally married.

So, on a daily basis, we are slapped in the face by all these things that straight people take for granted, and we are shut out of.  It's our version of the "White" and "Colored" signs of my youth, a constant reminder that we are not good enough, not equal and held in contempt by a larger and more powerful "them" who have passed over 260 ballot measures  in my lifetime (in the United States) to specifically exclude and separate me and my kind in the eyes of the law.  It is our version of "Jim Crow" and it is very real to us.

That's privilege, because "Straight" people get these things automatically, and we "Queers" have spent a lifetime waiting for the doors to open for us.

Dr. King is not a "Black Hero" (though his life and legacy represent the finest of the "Black Experience" in America, and in my mind, so does Malcolm X).  

Dr. King is an AMERICAN HERO, and if you hesitate at that concept, then perhaps you need to re-check your status as an "un-prejudiced" person.  

As one of the early proponents of this day becoming a holiday, I am personally thankful for the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. because he helped me to learn how to negotiate the very treacherous curves between "otherness and assimilation."  

As a fellow Christian, he taught me the true meaning of the hymn, "In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide earth.  In him shall true hearts everywhere, their high communion find.  His service is the golden cord, close binding all mankind."

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, 

rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions."

     - Letter from Zora Neale Hurston

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston

 to Countee Cullen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countee_Cullen

Leslie Carol Charbonnet Educator, Health Care Administrator, Feminist.

I was barely 21, had dropped out of the University of South Florida, was working at the Gas Company in the service department office, and taking one class at night at USF.   Into that class came Leslie Carol Charbonnet, a plump little woman, a five foot tall dynamo of energy.  Leslie had an expansive sparkle about her.  In an instant one knew that she was "larger than life."   

It was cold that night, and in conversation she had mentioned that her car was parked in one of the "free" lots at the edge of campus.  I had a 65 Corvair hardtop, and it was parked close to the building, so I offered her a ride home.  The Corvair was Chevrolet's answer to the Volkswagens of the day, rear engined, air cooled, but much more sporty and powerful.  We got in and as we pulled out, I commented that it would take a minute for the heat to come up from the back.  "Why does it come from the back?" she asked.  When I explained that the engine was back there, she screamed, "But twice as many people are killed in rear engined cars !!" as if somehow I had entrapped her in a death mobile.  I ignored her and when we arrived at her car, we traded phone numbers.

A Two door version of my 65 Corvair Monza

This was in the period of my life before I realized I was gay.  In fact, I was still a virgin.  I had spent my adolescence as the overweight kid with thick glasses.  I was completely un-athletic, and had been more than a bit of a social pariah.  Of most things related to courtship, and life in general, I was inexperienced.  My primary focus had been on simply surviving my abusive father and emotionally unavailable mother.  They weren't bad people, but they were not equipped to deal with an obviously "different" (if not downright strange) kid.

One of the draws with Leslie was that she had a similar background in terms of family.  Her father, an Army sergeant, had traveled with the military.  Her mother, a dutiful Army wife, kept things together in their very Roman Catholic home, mostly by doing what she was supposed to do, and ignoring her very unhappy, angry husband.  In other words, she did not protect her children from the husbands wrath.

One of Leslie's earlier memories was when they were stationed in Korea, at the outbreak of the Korean war.  She had commented upon the efficiency of Korean heating systems, buried in the floor.  Then she explained that one day they heard what sounded like thunder from over the hills, laced with distant firecrackers.  Her mother thought it odd, until a jeep rolled in with a driver, "Sorry to tell you this Mrs. Charbonnett, but I have orders.  The North Korean army is attacking, they are less than a mile away, you have five minutes to get your valuables and then I am to drive you to the airstrip where a plane will be taking all dependents to safety."  

The incident sort of underscored Leslie's life, everything would be extra dramatic, extra traumatic.  It would always take a war to get rid of her.

The family went back to Hammond Louisiana to wait for dad, who eventually arrived.  Her father "Les" had wanted his first born to be a boy, and in his disappointment that she was not, had named her Leslie anyway.  

The rest of her childhood was spent not being able to please him.  When puberty hit, his mantra at the table changed from how stupid and ugly she was to how fat and ugly she was.  It took her years to figure out that the real issue was rather simple.  Her father, an obvious "chest man" (as in "look at the knockers on her" at the sight of any well bosomed woman) and after years of looking at his very flat chested wife, suddenly had a daughter across the table with a "D" cup set of breasts.  Like many of his era, if he had any feeling he didn't like or understand, his response was to destroy the object of those feelings, all in the name of love.

So, Les's torments of his daughter ramped up.  It was around this time that she tried to hang herself.  She got a coil of rope, went out into the woods, threw it over a branch, tied it, noosed it, and jumped.  The new and very strong rope snapped.  God had other plans.

Around this time, one night at dinner, her father got mad at her and threw his fork at her, she showed me the scars on her neck from the two holes where the fork had penetrated her skin.

Her mother, oblivious to all this, pretended that all was well.  "Your father loves you Leslie" was her way of doing damage control.  Much like my mother, she made excuses for inexcusable behavior, anything to keep the family together.  

This was years before the beginning of the "Humanistic Psychology Movement" so any form of therapy was out of the question.  Only crazy people went to psychologists.

After high school, she escaped her hell on earth home life by joining the Army.  Having a sergeant for a dad prepared her well for such duty, it seemed like a good plan.

In the Army she met a man, who like her father, couldn't take his eyes off of her chest.  He seemed to care about her, so they got married.  Being "good Catholics" they quickly had a child.  A pregnant Leslie had to quit the army, but married life suited her.  They were stationed in California, at Ft. Ord on the Monterey peninsula, as beautiful of a spot as can be found.  Shannon's family was from the Salinas area nearby, all looked good.

Their daughter Carol, looked just like her dad, darker complected, thin, and had a quiet temperament.  Soon child number 2 was on the way and that's when all hell broke loose.  He was no longer in the army, his enlistment up, his obligation over.  It was Viet Nam, he had dodged that bullet, so it was time to party.  He left the service, and Leslie.  Stashing her and his young daughter at his mother's, he took off with his motorcycle buddies.  

Leslie's interpretation said it best, "When he realized that having sex with me was making mouths he had to feed, the sex stopped and he was out of there."

The last time she saw him, he had stopped on his motorcycle to pick up some clothes.  They had a fight, she said, "Shannon, I'm going to divorce you."  His response, "You'll have to pay for it" as the door slammed and he drove away.

The next day, his mother came in to her room and said, "Since Shannon is gone, and you two are getting a divorce, you need to leave.  Do you think you can be gone by the end of the week?"

So at 20, five months pregnant, with a ten month old baby, and family "back east" who had cut her off when she got married, she took desperate actions.  She placed her ten month old into temporary foster care and signed herself into a mental hospital because she was again contemplating suicide.

Leslie with first born, Carol

Somehow she got herself back to Florida, where her parents were now living.  Her kids went from foster home to foster home, where she presumed they would be better off than with an unstable mother who was still battling with major depression.  When she found out something really awful had happened to one of them, she took them back, figuring that a not so good real mother was better than an abusive foster one.

She got a job working at "The Cape" (Cape Canaveral), and started at Brevard Junior College.   While in school and working, the apartment above hers caught fire, all of her and her kids possessions were ruined by smoke and water damage.  Her kids went to live with her parents, she came to Tampa to continue at the College of Education at USF.

She got a place in "the projects" in Tampa, and moved her kids into public housing with her.  She would tell of becoming the president of her block club because she was the only one who spoke English.   She loved the actual apartment, with many large closets, a roomy bathroom, laundry area, large kitchen.  She was the first, and perhaps only, full time student at USF who was also a full time staff member.  She got her classes free that way.  

The family daily routine was to get up at 5 AM, Carol would fix breakfast for herself and her sister Rachel, and then get them both dressed.  Leslie would fix and pack lunches for all of them.  They would get into her beloved 59 Chevrolet, "Theodora" and she would drop the kids at day care and go to work, mixing her classes in during lunch hours and after work.  She would finish around 8 PM, pick up the girls, go home and start over again the next day.  

She became an exceptionally frugal homemaker.  She could stretch her food stamp dollar farther than anyone on earth.  Since you can't buy cleaning products on food stamps, she was extra frugal with them.  She would cut her "Brillo" (scouring) pads in half, and dry them over the pilot light on the gas stove.  Powdered milk was the only kind drank.  A package of cookies became desert for two weeks of meals, etc.  She calculated the cost of everything, counting slices of bread, how many sandwiches form a loaf, buying the cheapest bread with the most slices.  As her daughter Rachel says, "Mom could squeeze a nickel till it screamed, and then she would water board it."

She survived all this scarcity and graduated with a full President's Award from the University for her 3.96 GPA.  In four years, she made one "B", the rest, all "A's."  Fulfilling her life dream to become a teacher, she landed a job in the recently burgeoning Hudson Florida, teaching 10th grade English, and rewarded herself with a move into a modern house in "Beacon Square" with all the modern amenities.  

Her Chevrolet died, so her father gave her a Plymouth he had.  She promptly named it "Clytemnestra" who was some evil figure in Greco Roman mythology.  She hated her father, and everything attached to him including his name he had given her.  She didn't have much kind to say about her mother either.  She described her mother as a women who was dutiful to a fault, including her Sunday afternoon offering of her feminine parts to her father, while reading "Good Housekeeping" so it would be an out of body experience.

Quickly she realized that she was no longer living a subsidized life, and expenses were far more than she anticipated.  She was going to have to move out of her dream house in Beacon Square, and it was devastating. Later she realized that part of her self destructive tendencies included messing up a check book register and bouncing checks.  She closed the account, got purses for each of her expenses, food, car/gas, clothes, entertainment, etc.  She was paid once a month, so she took her check to the bank, got money orders for her bills, put the rest into her purses and that's how she got by each month.

She found a simple concrete block house north of Tampa in Lutz, in a compound by a lake, and settled in, discovering the commute of 25 miles, mostly through the swamp, was not the hardship she thought it would be.  I kept Clytemnestra running, offering tune ups, carburetor overhauls, setting the carburetor extra lean to improve mileage, adjusting the front seat so she could actually see over the dashboard.

When Clytemnestra finally died, she researched what car would give the best fuel mileage.  Honda had just entered the American market with it's legendary 600 series, a tiny box on wheels with a two cylinder air cooled engine and a six gallon gas tank.  It was $1,700 out the door.  The man at her credit union told her she needed 20% down.  She politely explained she didn't have it.  When he started to brush her off, she threw a crying fit, "You don't understand, without a car, I'll lose my job, they'll take my children away, I'll be homeless on the streets."  He quickly recanted and she got a check to take to the dealer for the car.

It was Leslie who taught me about spices and cooking.  My mother was from North Georgia, Leslie was from the Gulf Coast.  There was no comparison, she put onions, peppers and garlic in almost everything, as well as other traditional Italian, Spanish and French seasonings.  She was an exceptional cook, and I was blown away by her ease and skill in the kitchen.  The core of what I know about cooking, I learned from her.  Every time I use olive oil I can still hear her refer to it as "poor man's butter."

I marveled at her perceptions and abilities.  She had the best "single mom" skills I had ever seen.  From her I learned to have separate toys in the car, and a third set in a bag to take to doctors waiting rooms, etc.  The toys were "fresh" and it kept her kids well behaved and occupied.

Carol and Rachel were complete opposites.  Rachel was her mother reincarnated, but a little less Italian/French and a bit more Irish (from her dad's side).  

By now, both girls were in school.  Carol, the consummate "good girl" was always appropriate and generally well behaved.  Rachel absorbed all of her mother's displaced anger, as she had also inherited her mother's intelligence and creativity.  Leslie was incredibly smart.  I have known a few genuinely smart people in my life, Leslie may have been the smartest of the bunch.  

Rachel went through the entire first grade declaring that she would not learn a thing.  "I've figured this school thing out.  It's a warehouse that the grown ups stash kids in during the day to keep us away from important things.  I don't like it, and i'm not going to cooperate in my oppression."

Her teacher, a friend of Leslie's promoted her socially to the 2nd grade, but by November, Rachel was still saying the same thing, some sort of intervention needed to be done.  So Leslie started reading the "Chronicles of Narnia" each night for an hour before the girls went to sleep.  She had a water bed, so the girls would come in, slosh the thing around some, then their dog "Zonker" would follow, and the four of them would curl up to keep warm while Mamma read through the stories.  

About half way through the third book, Rachel decided "This reading thing is good.  I want to learn how because it seems like fun, and it's something grown ups know how to do, so I need to know how too."  Within a month, she learned how to read, and had polished off all the "Lord of the Rings" books on her own.

Occasionally Leslie would snap at me because she was angry most of the time and I was male.  But most of the time, she was very appreciative of my help and company.  When she first moved into the concrete house (the interior walls were concrete too, and it was not insulated so the outside walls got quite cold at night, and very hot in the afternoon sun), I and my God sons Dale and Dean came out to paint the inside.  She promised us, "Once the weather warms up, I'll have you all out for a swimming party here."  The house was next to a lake, part of a family owned property with several houses on it.  Though the house was not lake front, it was a short walk through the orange grove to the beach area.

By this time, she had started going with me to St. Mary's Church, where John Mangrum was the priest.  We were all part of a Sunday entourage that I'm sure puzzled some of the more conventional members, but most folks liked us.

The promised Sunday came.  Leslie prepared a huge meal, burgers, hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, etc.  The kids went down to the lake to swim.  Leslie and I started cooking the food.  All of a sudden Dale appeared in a panic, "Leslie, there's some man down at the lake with a gun telling us to get out."  We dashed to the lake shore and there were actually three men, one with a shotgun.  "This is a private lake and Niggers aren't allowed here."  Leslie looked at him and said, "When I rented my house I was told that I and my guests could use the lake.  These children are my guests, from my church."  "I don't care who they are lady, Niggers aren't allowed in the lake and you've got about one minute to get them out of here before we start shooting."

The kids were already fleeing for the safety of the house.  We just turned and went back, to try to at least enjoy our lunch.  We endured lunch while small groups of neighbors walked around the house, loudly saying things like, "Red Birds don't flock with Back Birds.  White people shouldn't flock with Niggers."    As soon as they abated, we packed the kids in the car and took them back to Belmont Heights, leaving Carol and Rachel locked in the house as protection against someone throwing in a torch or other object to burn the place down.

When we returned, the shotgun trio was waiting for us.  It was predictable, a short one to do the talking, a big one for muscle, and one with the gun for backup.  Shorty dressed me down for 45 minutes, pulling out all his stops to try to get me to take the first swing so they could lay into me.  One of the benefits of being an abused child is a thick skin and the relative inability to "take the first swing."  So after I wore them down with my "Yes sir's" and "I understand sirs" and other forms of polite humiliation, they gave up and left.  The sheriff was called, the deputy came out with his "UKA" pin on the lapel of his shirt (United Klans of America) and we knew that even though it was 1971, no justice would be served.

Racial stuff and all things "liberal" were important to Leslie.  Her own southern Louisiana heritage was quite mixed, and she got very dark in the sun.  She claimed Italian, French, Irish and enough African American to be considered legally Black under the definitions outlined under "Jim Crow" laws.  One day, a mutual friend, Valeria P. came over in her blue VW Karman Ghia.  Val was a bit hysterical.  Leslie had been hiding out in my spare room, having left the girls with a friend, needing a night off.  She was grading papers when Val stomped up the stairs, came in, slammed the door and exclaimed, "Some God Damn Nigger tried to run me off the road on the way over here."  Val sort of had this gift for inciting the worst in people, so we ignored her tirade which went on for about ten minutes of "G.D.N." this and "G.D.N." that.  Finally Leslie looked at her and said flatly, "Val, I wish you wouldn't talk about us God Damned Niggers that way.  Some of us Niggers have been passing for white for years."  Val's eyes popped out of her head.  She was trapped, Leslie was between her and the door.  No apology came, just a full on sulk, followed by a silent tip toe around Leslie and out the door.

We had a lot of fun, and that fun eventually turned "romantic" (euphemism here folks).  Leslie sort of defined the term "Cougar" before it was coined.  She was about five years older than me, and suddenly we became sort of sexual.  After an initial duet, our singing became multi-layered, and included other women, whom she obviously was attracted to.  It was in one of our evenings together that she invited another man to join us.  "Tony is Bi" she said.  I had read enough to realize that this was a man that I could kiss, and I was primed to try.  I had very private fantasies, which I did not share with anyone, so this was an opportunity.  It came, I engaged, and a flood of emotions poured out of me that scared me to death.  My resolve was simple, "I'm never letting that happen again" and I also decided that I was not in love with Leslie and that she obviously was in love with me, so I had to break it off.  Our escapades had revealed that Leslie had her own attractions to women, which she would speak of, but also felt that she was obligated to be a "Southern Lady" like all the women in her family.  So as much as she had issues with men, she was unwilling to consider a relationship with a woman.

While I was struggling with my own feelings, I was indifferent to hers, and not easily able to communicate what was going on in me because I had no words for what "it" was.

As if by magic, a new man surfaced in her life, younger, seemingly sure of himself, and he started courting her relentlessly.  They quickly became a couple.  Soon after, they decided to move to Houston, which offered much more opportunities than Tampa Florida.  

Leslie and Dick got married.  She not only changed her last name to his, but changed her first name as well to Kathryn.  She claimed it was after Kathryn of Aragon, losing the implications of that choice, Kathryn was Henry's first wife, the only one who kept her head and got to go back home to Spain, with their kids after a divorce.

She got a job at Baylor University as an administrator, where she really shined.  Her organization skills and management skills were superb.  She quickly gained the reputation as the go to person if one wanted anything expedited quickly and perfectly.  In the mid 80s, I visited her and she took me on a tour of the new virology/oncology research building that was being built.  She was the principle administrator on the project, and ran the place after it opened.

Part of the funding was for AIDS research.  When I talked about how the plague was killing so many gay men, her response was, "Good, that will open up more jobs for women."

On that same trip, I took a Video of a new comedian, Whoopi Goldberg, her legendary "Live on Broadway" show done in 1985.  Leslie's response to Whoopi's dreadlocks was, "She's gonna have a lot of trouble being accepted."   Leslie had been a flaming radical, Kathryn was a very conventional person, desperately seeking approval.

Her work at Baylor had required that she work extra hard to be a proper "Lady" in all aspects of her life.  Because of her intellectual capabilities, she rationalized all of her emotions.  So the world saw a successful woman who wore dark blue business clothes (skirts only, never slacks), nylons, a string of pearls, a vision of heterosexual responsibility.  This image served her well at Baylor, but it increased her emotional deprivation.

Kathryn in the 80s.

Soon after, Dick realized that he was more attracted to men than women.  He left, and it all started falling apart.  She got a new boss at Baylor who hated her.  His preference was to have women around who were ornamental, not efficient.   Soon she was out of work, and unable to find a new job.  She was living with daughter Rachel, trying to figure out the next move, and taking comfort with the only friend who had never betrayed her, food.

Years later, I discovered that Leslie had done to Rachel what my father had done to me.  My father in his torment, tried to beat out of me, all of the parts of him he could not deal with.  As Rachel grew older, she was not conforming to Kathryn's expectations of proper Southern womanhood.  So she made her life hell on earth for years, even signing her over the a bewildered juvenile authority, simply because she would not do things that her mother demanded of her.  This drama lasted until Rachel moved out.  Rachel herself joined the army to escape, and returned to UPS in Houston where she was a shop steward in the Teamsters Union as well.

Rachel, Army Years

One day, while visiting Margaret in Santa Fe, with Alan (two previous articles) I got a panicked phone call from Rachel, "Mom just died."  As the story unfolded between her crying, Rachel explained.  She had awakened with indigestion, thrown up a couple of times, went back to bed, then got the chest pains and left arm numbness.  The paramedics came but could not do CPR because she had so much fat on her sternum that when they pushed, their hand just "slid" off to the side.  Everyone watched as she died in agony, unable to save her.

To add insult to injury, she was so large that they had to take her body out through the sliding glass door, it wouldn't fit through the apartment doorway.

Rachel and I talked a lot about her mother's death, and life, and her pervasive unhappiness.  What surfaced was basically a woman who was very creative, unconventional, probably bisexual with a lot of baggage about men, and huge resentments towards men, that she never reconciled.  She just kept trying to be someone she was not, a "Proper Lady."

That inspired her daughter to live her own life a bit differently.  Rachel has become her own woman in ways that her mother would never understand, and would have been very frightened of.  The tragedy here is that just like with my own father, the parents internalized homophobia, and and extreme need for approval from peers, made appearances more important than happiness.

While there is no "right or wrong" here per se, one grieves the loss of the soul of another.  This is the essence of the evils of homophobia.  Leslie might have been a lot happier if she's settled down with another woman.  

Just like my father taught me the importance of emotional integrity, by way of his negative example, living a life based in fear, so did Leslie provided that legacy for Rachel.   

Rachel sent me this video of her recent skydiving excursion, I hope you enjoy it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-ypuwedt9Y&feature=player_embedded

I miss her laugh, her intelligence and wit, her dedication to her friends, and I mourn the loss of her life too soon. 

Carl & Velma Yearwood. Farmer, Naturalist, Family Historian, Folklorist.

Velma Georgia Brackett was my mother's older sister.  Early in life, she had a child, Ann, who later married Alan "Jimbo" Murray.   In the late 1950s, she married Carl Yearwood, a widower.  Carl's first wife, Hattie had died of cancer.  All of these folks had sort of known each other.  Velma lived in "town", Toccoa Georgia.  She had lived with their mother, Nancy Garner, and another sister, Frances (photos below), and had become an LPN/LVN.  She and Carl courted for a while, and then one night eloped.  As fate would have it, I met the minister who married them years later in his retirement, while he was retired, an unpaid minister at the tiny Providence Methodist Church in the river side community of "Deercourt" where all of these girls, including my mother had grown up.

Velma Georgia,  Alan "Jimbo" Murray's father,  Nancy Brackett-Garner,  Frances Brackett  circa 1940s

The impetus for our trip to Georgia had been a visit by Velma, and a couple of her grandchildren, Michael and Wayne, to the older sister, Gracie who lived in Tampa.  Gracie is another story.  She and her first husband, Alger Kemp owned a rooming house north of downtown Tampa, and Alger also owned a small tattoo shop off of north Franklin street.   A friend of mine who worked in "ink" told me that he is well known in ink circles, having designed many tatoos that are still popular today.     

So, my brother and I went toTampa to visit Velma, Michael and Wayne, and at the end of the visit, as we loaded up in our car, Gracie stuck her finger into my mother's face, "You need to take these boys back home to meet their people!"  The emphasis must have worked because that summer, 1959, we loaded up our new Opel Caravan and drove north to Stephen's and Habersham Counties in northeast Georgia.  

The European version of our Opel Caravan.  Ours did not have fog lights, or the white paint under the middle stripe, but did have the luggage rack and white paint under it.

I would find out later that this was the first trip "back home" my mother had attempted in over a decade.  Her mother had put her out of the house at 15 (as apparently was her custom with rebellious daughters).  Her mother was now dead, so she was spared any maudlin homecomings.  Maudlin was not my mother's style.  

For we kids, this was an adventure.   Not only was the ice chest filled with sandwiches and juices, but we had luggage, so this would be a notable trip.  There were no "interstate" highways then, at least in our part of the world.  First we went north on U.S. 301, and somewhere in north Florida, near Lake City, we switched to U.S. 441 "The Uncle Remus Route."  It was so named because it went through the town of Eatonton, home of Joel Chandler Harris, who had authored the "Uncle Remus Tales."

For those of you not familiar with the "Uncle Remus" stories, a synopsis is this.  In the 19th century, before the Civil War, a young boy was befriended by an old slave on his family plantation near Eatonton Georgia (which is on 441).  The boy, Joel Chandler Harris, was told folk tales, that apparently are West African folktales about a very crafty rabbit.  All of the animals had the title "Brer" in front of their creature names, so these tales featured Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, etc.  Most of the tales centered around how Brer Fox and Brer Bear were always trying to catch Brer Rabbit, and how the wiley rabbit always managed to outwit them and escape.  Like most folk wisdom, the stories taught wisdom on multiple levels.  Brer Rabbit was an "everyman" figure, Brer Fox & Bear represented mean spirited people who resented his enjoying life.  In Ghana, the character of Brer Rabbit is adapted to "Anansi" the spider.  

Southerners, at least the white ones I knew, celebrated the wisdom contained in the stories, as well as the deep affection that Harris had for Remus, and obviously Remus had for the boy.   The stories were made into a movie in the mid 50s, "Song of the South."   Alice Walker is from Eatonton Georgia and admits to the stories having significant impact on her childhood imagination and creativity.

Like all movies that deal with race relations in the south, and the south in general, the re-telling of these stories can cause all manner of controversy because they do stir up memories that some would rather not stir up.  But it was 1959, my brother and I were kids, and from our Opel, which had no air-conditioning and no radio, we entertained ourselves with thoughts of who and what was living in the woods that rolled past us as we traveled north into the bosom of "Sherman's March to the Sea."  

The landscape gradually changed as we left the last of the low country, the Okeefenokee swamp, and started our climb through the red clay.  The hills became more pronounced as the clay became redder, changing from pale orange to deep red.

At this point, conjure up an Alman Brothers song, such were our travels through the small towns, the railroad tracks lined with freight cars that had "Southern Serves the South" on the side, and corn fields that seemingly went on forever.  Corn is not grown in Florida, at least in any quantity, so seeing the acres of green stalks, leafy and filled with a growing ear of seed was very different than the sandy landscape planted in orange trees back home.  

We were devotees of the comic strip "Snuffy Smith" who was always making "corn squeezins" to keep his jug filled.  We would look at a cornfield and joke about "I wonder how many gallons are out there?"  My mother went along with the game, I'm sure lost in her own bitter sweet memories of her childhood and leaving home very young.  What we did not know was that the two principle characters in the strip could have been inspired by Velma who was a large woman, and Carl who was a lean man.  Carl later confessed to my brother and I that he had operated a still on his land during the depression.  "But Uncle Carl, I thought having a still is illegal?"  "Only if the catch you" he later admitted to having been caught, put on probation and out of business.

We found our way to Mt. Airy Georgia, and then began the arduous task of finding the Rt. and Box number that was the mailing route and location for the Yearwood farm.  Velma had sent a letter with directions, like most directions, an important step or landmark was missing.  We would end up in a strangers yard, and ask about Carl Yearwood.  "I hear tell they's some Yearwood's back over that way" pointing through a patch of trees.  After repeating this scenario a few times, we found the right road, as a described landmark popped up and then went by.  Finally we turned a corner, climbed a little hill, and there we found the small house, with a yard full of people in it, all waving at us.

The front of the Yearwood home in the 60s.

"Let me hug your neck son" Velma exclaimed as she hugged me.  I froze, we didn't hug at home, affection was new.  Afterwards the assembly fell into delightful chaos of stories, how we got lost, how we found, missed directions, length of travel, etc.  "Go get a Co-Cola out of the Frigidaire honey, your mamma looks thirsty."  "No, all I want is some water,"  Edna explained.   We took a bucket out into the back yard, turned a spicket, out came water, but it had a funny plastic taste in it.  "They just put this electric pump on the well two days ago. The man said it would take a few weeks for the plastic taste to get out of it."  So, we opened the cover on the well box (over the well opening) and lowered a bucket down the 60 feet down to the top of the water.  We heard it splash with a deep resonance, then reeled it back up again.  The "windless" was a peeled log on an axle of sorts, one end being a bent piece of steel that formed a handle.  We cranked the water up and then closed the well, pouring the fresh bucket into the house bucket.  Someone handed me a dipper full of the chilled water and my lips met heaven.  If you've never had water out of a deep well, you can't imagine how delightful it is.  No pipe taste, just pure water.  If you have a reverse osmosis filter, then it comes close.

But in 1959, the well was about 30 feet out the back door.  Between the well and smokehouse was a path that ran along the garden to the "outhouse."  The kitchen had a wood burning stove, there was a back porch with wood piled on one end, and small enamel bowls on a plank shelf between the uprights for face washing and such.  

The front porch was for sitting, and had a stunning view of the valley that we had driven through to get to the Yearwood house.  The house itself is what we would call a "Tar Paper" house, the outside covered in a patterned roofing type of paper that looked like brown bricks.  This sealed the house somewhat, though I would find out later that it didn't help warm the single floors very much.  

Uncle Carl came home from his work, driving a water wagon for a local road construction company.  He could only work in the summer because they could not pour asphalt below certain temperatures.  His work day began before dawn, so he came home around 5, a couple of hours before sunset.

For the next few days, we toured all of my mother's childhood "haunts."  We went back to "Deercourt" and visited "Jarrett Manor" (now called Traveler's Rest, a stagecoach inn just across the Tugalo River from South Carolina).  The woman who lived in and took care of the place was named Mabel Ramsay.  We have since discovered that she was a relative.  My mother's father was Edward Ramsay, but their had been no marriage or vows between my mother's parents, only the shame of secrets and things known but not spoken.

Mabel was very kind and told my mother, "Oh just show your kids around, you know as much of the history as I do, maybe more."  We were impressed that someone would defer to "Miss Edna" so easily with such important information.  

We started in the basement, which was mostly kitchen, with it's huge fireplace that you could step into.  Above were the first and second floor rooms, with small beds in them.  We were told that the beds were small because people were smaller then, lack of full nutrition (that today we take for granted) kept most men shorter than 5'10" and most women at 5'.  Finally, we went up into the attic, with it's holes for shooting out of, and a very curious pattern of stains on the unfinished wood floor.  "It's blood" my mother calmly explained.  "There were a couple of indian massacres here.  This is the blood of the settlers that had fled up here who were killed by the indians."  One of your ancestors survived, a boy, by hiding in one of the trunks up here.  They didn't find him.  If they had, none of us would be here, the entire family was wiped out except him."  We looked again and realized that the pattern was multiple foot prints, arches, toes and all, from the blood stained feet.

Stories of spirits and "poltergeist" were shared.  My mother, ever the cool one, "Oh, don't put too much stock in all that.  A ghost can't kill you, but they do try to frighten you to death."

We drove past an empty train station, upon one side of the roof was a faded advertisement, "Jefferson Island Salt" painted into the wood shingles.  I would realize years later that it was probably the place my mother had grown up in.  

We stopped at a simple home by the side of the highway.  "Hello Pearl, is Granny Lyles here?"  "My God Edna, look at you !!"  The woman dressed in a house dress, no make up, partial teeth, slippers, came out the door and gave my mother a hug.  Edna, who owned a business, bought her clothes at Maas Brothers and O'Falks in Tampa, looked like she had arrived from another planet.  I realized later, we had, Florida.  

We went inside, and there was "Granny Lyles" ensconced in a feather bed, also in a house dress.  The whisper on the way into the house had revealed that she was 105 years old.  Like Pearl, her daughter, she was a thin as a rail.  We sat around the bed while Granny Lyles and my mother visited for about a half an hour.  Lots of questions about people I'd never heard of, some short answers about our daily life in Florida, and a clear sense that for Granny Lyles and Pearl Pitts, not much changed from day to day except the seasons.

At the end of the visit, Granny Lyles started crying, "I'll never see you again, I'll be dead before you come back."  "No, I won't take so long to come back Granny.  In fact, I'll be back in a couple of weeks to get these sons of mine."

We went back to Velma's and two days later, Edna left for Dade City, and the real fun began.  During the day, we were home with Velma and a whole farm, and the woods behind it, to explore.  At night, Carl came home, we had supper, watched a little TV and went to bed about an hour after sundown.  Carl and Velma would be up at 4AM, but insisted that we boys stay in our bedroom.  Once I looked out the keyhole and spied them in their underwear, playing with each other.  It was nothing significantly erotic by todays standards, just a bit of "Give me some sugar darlin."  I never saw that at home, so I decided it must be very private and stopped spying on them.  

Velma's daughter Ann at high school graduation.

Alan "Jimbo" and Ann Murray, parents of Michael, Wayne, Tony and Walter

My brother and I had all sorts of adventures each day.  Michael, Wayne, Tony, Walter and Roger, all our cousins from town, would come up to join us.  There was 40 ares of woods behind the farm, they had a lot of fun exploring.  In spite of Velma's admonitions about "Cattymounts" (wild cats) and Coach Whip Snakes, they went tent camping by the creek.  I preferred the feather bed in the house.

I was fascinated by all of the machinery related to the farm.  Most of it was simple hand operated stuff, but I'd never seen anything like it before, like a corn sheller.  You'd put in an ear of corn, and out came a cob, and a handful of grain would be on the bottom of the box it was attached to.    I probably would have shelled several bushels if Velma would have let me.

Velma was a local historian, storyteller, folklorist, and comedian.  Her humor was legendary, which brought her welcome wherever we went.  Close your eyes, listen to "Cousin Minnie Pearl" from the Grand Ole Opry" and you have a sense of Velma, except Velma was more multi dimensioned.  A staunch Kennedy Democrat, she cried when the Kennedy's son Patrick died.  Her patent comment about politics, "I remember the depression.  Thank God for Roosevelt, if it'd been left up to Hoover, we'd have all starved."

When she passed away, stepson Odes Yearwood looked at her grave and said, "There is more knowledge of history, family and wisdom in that grave than any of us will ever know."

Velma's neighbor, Lorrie Iverson, her mother Annie Dean (almost 100) and Velma on a visit to Annie's

Velma was filled with caution that my brother and I ignored, such as "Stay away from Ole Doc, he's a killer horse" and her absolute terror at the thought of driving.  She had once seen lightening hit one of her dogs in the yard, so she believed that dogs attracted lightening.  When a thunderstorm blew up, her dogs would run under the house for protection.  Velma would panic, knowing that at any moment, a lightening bolt was going to come through the roof, ceiling and floor, to hit one of those dogs.  She would run around in the house, jumping up and down on the floor, yelling, "Get out from under there dogs, get out from under there."

Carl was filled with adventure.  On Saturdays and Sundays, we would pack up in his old Chevrolet and go riding in the mountains.  We had a glass in the glove compartment for the many springs we encountered by the side of a remote dirt road.  Carl could go for miles on one dirt road, cross a thin strip of asphalt and onto the next.  The north Georgia hills unfolded in front of the Chevrolet like a travelogue.  Next thing you know, we would be in Copper Hill Tennessee, 80 miles from home, having only crossed pavement three times.  He knew all these roads, without a map, mostly because he had helped build them.

Myself, Walter Murray, Carl  &  Velma Yearwood, early 1960s on one of our mountain trips.

Carl loved nature and all things natural.  He was a genuine man of the hills.  We found out one day that the extent of his literacy was signing his name and reading a STOP sign.  That was it.  He had grown up on a farm, the nearest school was at least ten miles away, by foot or horseback.  But of all things natural, he was gifted beyond comprehension.  He could look at the earth and tell exactly when it was time to plant.  We would walk amongst his corn, from seed handed down in his family for hundreds of years, and he would fold in wisdom about how to care for the earth, along with lessons in courtship and family togetherness.  I found out later that in the spring, he often ran his tractor in the night, plowing his earth by moonlight, in the nude, or in his "long johns."

Carl's favorite adjective was "God Damn."  He had never been a church goer, was not a fan of preachers, who he considered a high form of hypocrites, along with politicians and undertakers.  "In the end, they all want your money.  That's all they're good for.  They live off of the fears and misery of others.  I've got no use for any of em."

Once his son Charles Odes Yearwood, told me about the single time in his life that Carl had struck him.  Odes had been trying to put a horse in it's stall in the barn.  The horse balked, and tried to kick Odes.  He pulled a coil of rope off the wall, and struck it across the horses hindquarter, just as Carl was walking into the barn.  Carl ripped the rope from his hands, "So you'd hit a defenseless animal, let me show you what it feels like" as he lashed Ode's buttocks with the rope, then ordered him to "go up to the house."  All the while ignoring Ode's pleas, he was too angry.

Over supper, Odes finally got to state his case.  His father stopped eating, apologized profusely for hitting him, and was morose for weeks.  He passed those days without eating much, devoid of any joy, because he had struck his son.

My cousin Tony recalled a similar memory of his own father, Alan "Jimbo" Murray.  Jimbo was a mechanic ih the Coats & Clarks thread mill in town.  On Saturdays, he and two friends "cleaned out" wells for extra money.  Jim was small, so he got lowered into the well, about 60 feet into the earth, with a headlight and a small shovel, he would stand in the water in hip waders, digging out the accumulated mud which his friends would haul out, one bucket at a time.  When his work below was done, they would haul Jimbo out, one foot in the bucket, holding the rope, back to the surface. 

One Saturday Tony came in from playing baseball, as Jim was taking off his wet coveralls.  Jim stopped Tony with a question, "Son, are you happy?"  Tony said "Yes."  Jim said, "Well son, everything I do is so that you can be happy.  Now if all you want out of life is this (as he held up the wet coveralls) then have fun with your friends, playing ball and such.  But if you want more, make sure you crack them books and get them A's, cause all I want is for you to be happy."

All four boys completed university educations.  The oldest, Michael, won a full Governor's scholarship to Georgia Tech and became a chemist.  Wayne had a career in offender rehabilitation, Tony and Walter became attorneys.  

Carl ground his own corn into meal.  He took the corn for meal for the hogs to a gasoline driven mill, but the corn for his bread went to a water ground mill.  "I can taste the gasoline in it" he said of the gasoline mill.  If he wanted chicken, he took one from the yard, and butchered it the same way that is commanded in the bible, so that the blood would drain out of it.  "Carl won't eat a store bought chicken, says it doesn't taste right with the blood still in it" Velma would say.  The ham and bacon came from his own hogs, beef from a steer he had raised.  He knew every ounce of food those animals ate, and understood the importance of their diet as it affected both the health of the animal, and his own health.

When Velma pressed him about having a toilet installed in their home, he refused.  "I don't eat outdoors and I don't shit indoors" he would say.  

One night, Carl, Velma, Gene and I were sitting around the table, having our usual summer supper, pinto beans, corn bread, greens and fresh tomatoes from their garden.  I picked out a tomato, and noticed a black spot on it.  As I started to toss it into the bucket for the hogs, Carl stopped me.  He said, "Let me show you something."  He pulled over his bread plate & took his pen knife, and cut the tomato up into sections.  At the end of his work, he held up the section that was black.  Pointing to the plate, "Now you see, you were gonna throw away all that, because of this" holding the one black section.  "Everything in life is like that tomato, most of it's good, some of it is bad, you have to learn how to use the good, while dealing with the bad."

I contrasted his style of parenting to that of my father, whose single mother had been reared in Roman Catholic orphanages, who herself had beaten my father for most of his childhood, and who himself only knew one parenting style, abuse and shame.  Had this interaction occurred at my house, I would have been beaten for trying to waste the tomato, and sent to bed without dinner to "teach me a lesson" for being wasteful.

As I have traveled the many miles of my life, and experienced a myriad of lifestyles, I continue to marvel at the gentle loving nature of most "country people" and contrast it with the harshness and brutality of people who otherwise consider themselves "superior" to "those ignorant hicks" who live in the country, particularly the South.  

All of my relatives from Georgia came from very humble beginnings, and worked very hard, usually exploited by their employers, and had happy lives because they had a clear sense of self, and an even clearer sense of their relationship to the earth, and the people on it.

That life is generally gone now.  Few people embrace it, including the descendants of those farming people, who had hard lives, but were "pure" in ways that we can't imagine in this day and age.

In the movie "Off The Map", a tax man comes to visit the Grodin's.  At one point in his visit he says, "I think you're a genius Mr. Grodin.  You've got a beautiful wife, a great kid, your house is paid for, you have food stockpiled for two years, Your life is your own."

How many of us can say that our lives are our own?

My uncle Carl died on his way to the out house.  He had suffered with Adult Onset Diabetes for a little over a year.  Like all other intrusions into his freedom, he resented the changes ordered for his diet, and having to take pills every day.  "I've eaten pinto beans and corn bread all my life and it never hurt me.  Why should I change now?"  He threw the pills in the firebox of the stove one morning.  

The day he died, Velma was cooking breakfast on the new gas stove that had been delivered the night before.  As he left the house, she said, "Are you sure you want to go out there?"  His response, "I do better out there."  She found his body on the path, he never ate a meal off of the new stove.  Carl had died his way, at home, on the earth he loved so much, surrounded by the icons of his life, his farm, his land, his animals.

Velma in the late 60s after Carl had passed away.  "Clowning" in the early 70s at our house.

Years later my brother visited the Yearwood property, which is no longer in the family.  The new owner let him take theses photos of the buildings.  The house is now gone.

The front of the Yearwood home in the early 21st century.  This is the same front porch as in the black & white photo.

Back of the home.  A porch had gone across most of the back.  Note brick chimney for the wood burning stove in the kitchen (on the left).

Lower barn where horses, cattle were sheltered.  

The outhouse, approximately 80 feet from the main house.