(The following is a diary I had published once before. I have deleted the diary and republished it because the previous edition didn't allow comments. Enjoy!)
I used read stories to my kids at night; tales of hobbits and dwarves and talking teddy bears and nature. My kids loved to hear me spin a tale, especially without my "Cheating Manual"--the actual book. I think they liked it best when I told them stories about growing up. I'm in a jawin' mood, so I'll tell you one. Let's call it a break from election-meta-fever.
Follow me below the fold. A caveat here, though: I've changed the names of my familiy members because of anonymity and as well as to spice up the story. Saying "my grandad" over and over would be boring. So we have fake names.
My family was it in our corner of NC for decades. My great-grandfather Houston Sr. was elected mayor for two terms here. Houston was born in 1868. He begat my grandfather, Houston Jr, in 1896. This was the age of western expansion and gold-mining and shit like that, but we remained, even after the civil war, a wealthy family. Houston Senior was a well-to-do tobacco farmer and his uncle Clem actually fought for the confederate army. Clem was promptly killed three days into his stint in the war. Got shot in the face with cannon fire. In any case, Houston was born after the civil war, which was, for a while, very bad for the south. Farms failed, people joined militia groups and lynched blacks and committed awful crimes in their desperation. But Houston's family hired indentured servants—which was no different from slavery; the only difference was that Junior got to watch his father fire his black labor instead of watching him whip them. Houston senior was actually, according to family records, very even-handed with his servants. He just refused to pay them, is all. When they got mad about no pay he fired them for being “impatient” and “uppity.” Such was the “even-handed” treatment his workers—uh, slaves—received.
Ah, 1896, what a year to be born in! Segregation was upheld by an all white-male panel of racists called the Supreme Court. William McKinley, republican of Ohio, was elected president, people of an economic mind were talking about “bimetallism”, and western expansion was riding high. Yet my family remained in North Carolina, building their wealth. Houston Senior ran for mayor and won. Served two terms. From what we can tell, he didn’t really do a hell of a lot as mayor but drink quietly in his office and fume at the daily news. There’s still an obscure campaign sign in the attic of my my family home. Just says HOUSTON FOR MAYOR! Looks real old and dusty.
Now, Junior, my grandad, made a very good living off his farm. He was said to have been the first to actually renovate the old house, adding the back porch area, as well as purchasing more land.
In 1917, my father was born. Granddad had married a woman named Debbie-Ann Charles, who was a daughter of big-money. Carpet baggers, some said, that had come from Maine to take southern jobs. But that old talk was long ago. Those who spoke ill of the Charleses were duly criticized and rebuked by the citizenry. Our town owed a lot to the Charles family. Debbie’s father, Dexter Charles, was the owner of a large general store downtown. He also owned a barber shop on Main Street.
Now, grandad wanted to get out of the farming business and get into cutting hair. He had, for some reason, seen cutting hair as a hobby that bloomed into a real talent. In any case, after the marriage he bought the barber shop and made it a local success. There’s a picture of him cutting the ribbon at the place. It was a small and simple brick store with a candy-cane stripped barber’s pole printed onto a glass window. The text read “Houston's Family Barbershop.”
Needless to say, the business got very big. A mayor’s son cutting good white folks' hair on Main Street? You’re damn right! So Gene, my father, was born and bred to accept the fact that he was going to take over the family barbershop. He went to barber college, served an uneventful stint in World War II—Gene was the first member of my family to fight for America in a significant war besides the Civil War. He spent a few years in Italy, and then was shipped back because he had a bum back and couldn’t hack it as a soldier. It’s a fact dad never liked to talk about. Mostly in the army he just buzzed hair and buzzed hair and told the next person in line to step on up and buzz more hair.
Dad liked to claim that his injury was sustained while parachuting out of a plane in Germany, but this is likely false. We have no evidence that he was even in Germany. All the documents we have suggest he buzzed hair and asked new recruits to step on up and buzzed more hair.
When he got out of the army he returned home to find a very successful barbershop ripe for the takeover. Houston Junior was sick with what was later verified as colon cancer and couldn’t run the store. In 1945, when grandpa was twenty-eight, he found himself running and operating a business.
Segragation was still the law of the land, and grandad never allowed black people in his shop. Dad didn't believe in that. He'd seen black men die in the war along side white men. As far as he was concerned, he could cut a black man's hair just as well as he could a white's. So he invited Melvin Searles, an individual dad knew from the army. Dad was fond of playing country music--even got to play on a memorable occasion on local television with his band--and he was equally as fond of saying that Melvin could play drums better than any man alive.
So when Melvin walked in to take a seat, the three or four old white men waiting, and the old white man in his seat, all peered as if they were looking at something unpleasant.
"This the way you do business, Gene?" one of them asked.
"How you mean?" dad wanted to know.
"I thought this was a white's only shop!"
"It is," Gene said, "I always wear a white goddamned shirt. If you got a problem with me cuttin' Melvin's hair, how about you go down the street to that other bigot."
"Okay, then."
So needless to say, the other white men left as well. Presumably down the street to the other bigot. Melvin sat in the chair. "I hate you lost your customers because I'm here," Melvin said.
"Don't be," Gene said. "If you had to sit and listen to twenty minutes of that idiot you'd realize you did me a goddamn favor. And them never left good tips, anyway."
Dad cut Melvin's hair. And Melvin gave dad a great tip. Didn't matter in the end. Turns out, the other barber was a drunk that messed up so many haircuts and since the next barber shop was so far away, they all came to my dad, anyway. Black, and White alike