excerpt

A gossamer winged dragonfly is hovering around the ditch in front of the old clapboard farmhouse, he seems suspended in time and space, and he is looking for a mosquito meal or whatever it is that dragonflies eat.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

The two-story house with its rusting metal roof, a few of the siding boards warped and falling off from the lack of paint and the increasingly hot Alabama sun, is home to the Lee family, my family. The only shade in the front dooryard is from a scraggly chinaberry tree which stands by an abandoned well.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water. Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1746

It had rained in the mornings for the past several days, but the ground is so dry that even though it had rained again this morning, the raindrops just puddled on the powdery sand and then, without soaking into the earth, the precious water just disappeared without even making any mud.

It seems as there are always buzzards circling when the rain stops, but even the buzzards leave during the hottest part of the day, maybe that is an omen, and maybe it is just my imagination.

A short walk from the house there stands the barn, a small shed, the remnants of a corncrib, a smokehouse, a chicken coop and a fenced paddock adjacent to the barn, which once was home to the horses, mules and cows; long since slaughtered for table fare. A few scrawny chickens scratched the dusty dirt for morsels, and if chickens have thoughts, they should be hoping that they continue to produce an egg every day or so, or else they will end up like the cows and the horses, as table fare. There is a big old white goose who rules the barnyard, strutting as though he is the squire of the manor; even our hound Ranger gives the goose a wide berth.

There is another well in the backyard, from which our water is drawn, there’s a pail on a rope with a pulley, but there is also a pipe that runs to the hand pump called a ‘pitcher pump’ on the kitchen porch, this is a very up-to-date convenience, since most folks have to tote their water from their wells, however Grandma Lee had it installed just after she married the banker from Andalusia and just before she gave the house to Pa and Mommie.

“Let Us Gather”

Mommie is calling me from the kitchen doorway, “Scooter, Scooter… Robert Ethan Lee, get your sisters and get in here and get cleaned up for the church meeting,” the church meeting was a regular thing, it wasn’t fun, but it is what we did almost every Wednesday night, when she called me Robert Ethan, I knew she was serious, and church night was always somber business.

She said it didn’t matter whether we enjoyed it or not, going to church on Wednesday night was what we were going to do.

“Yes Mommie, I’ll get them, they are out by the chinaberry tree.” I ran around the house calling for my twin sisters,” Lucent, Lunette, y’all better get in the house Mommie wants us to get cleaned up and dressed for the church meeting. An’ if you don’t want a whuppin you’ll get moving.” “Mommie won’t whup us,” Lunette shouted, “Oh yes I will!” was Mommie’s reply as she appeared on the front porch, “you didn’t think I could hear you?” “Well, girl you got another think coming, get washed up and put on your church dress.” “Yes Mommie.” Lunette replied almost in a whisper, as Lucent made a taunting face to Lunette, “Mommie Lucent is making faces” “ Lucent, you get moving too, or I’ll whip both of you” and Mommie was through talking to the girls; while they were arguing I had run upstairs, changed my shirt and had combed my hair and ready to go.

Wednesday evening in the country and even though times were tough there was always time for church, but the Lee family didn’t always go since they were dependent on their old truck and didn’t always have gasoline. But when it did Sandra Lee would get her brood cleaned up and changed and they would be off to First New Antioch Baptist Church in Cottonwood, Alabama

“Elroy is working out in the barn with Paw, and Uncle Robert, they are trying to get that old pump motor running, for Mr. Jacobs down at the dairy, and it ain’t you place to ask questions, jest get cleaned up and dressed.

“Scooter” she called, “Scooter, you better get movin’ if you don’t want a whuppin”

“Yes… Mommie, I’m ready, I’m already outside by the truck.” Immediately we were in the old Ford truck and bumping down the dusty road leaving a plume of dust that looked like a smoking freight train. Passing by a stand of mature longleaf and loblolly pines, past a few dried up corn fields, past the dairy with its sweet smell of drying manure and fresh mown hay, on toward route 84, the “blacktop road” and First New Antioch Baptist Church; a white frame structure with a steeple topped with a pointy stick kind of thing, and the old bell which called us to worship in the Lord’s House. I liked the singing and seeing the other kids; I just didn’t like the preaching.

It was like this every time Sandra Lee tried to get the kids mustered and ready for anything, but the ‘whuppins’ weren’t just threats, they were real, Mommie would use the first thing that was handy. A switch, a belt, every now and then with her hand, but she didn’t like hitting with her hand; ironically she said that “you shouldn’t lay a hand on a child.”

“I often wonder how strange it would be if we could look into the future, just a quick peek through a key hole into the future, catching a quick glimpse of what the future would be. If we knew what was in store for us we could make changes and choices, select options and go down path A instead of B. would this be good or bad? I guess we will never know.”

“I like looking out of the window, in the front of the house, it’s sort of magical, the glass is sort of wavy, it almost seems like looking through water, the old chinaberry tree appears to dance as I move my head ever so slightly from side to side and the dirt in the yard looks like it sort of moves like the ripples on a pool of water, that is if you have ever seen a grey-brown dirt pool, there are no fish in this pond, just our hound dog, Ranger. It’s like Ranger is walking on the grey-brown water of the pond, more like he is now sitting on the grey-brown water and scratching his ear, there is a chinaberry tree on an island in the pond, a bird’s nest in the tree a mockingbird in the nest .”

“Out yonder in the side yard is my Mother, her name is Sandra, but we call her Mommie, she has just finished washing the clothes in the wash tub on the back porch and now she’s hanging them on the line to dry. Mommie makes an art out of everything that she does; cooking, cleaning and washing and wringing the clothes are all an art. watching her hang laundry is like watching someone dance, it keeps me on the edge, she can take a big bed sheet and pin one corner to the line and just when I think that she’s gonna drag it on the dirt it’s just a step and a flourish and it never touches the ground. When the wash is hanging it’s like a picture, shirts, and sheets, overalls and socks and under drawers, everything in order.

We all know that Mommie is amazing; she is the glue that holds our family together.

There’s a photograph of Mommie over the fireplace on the mantelshelf, it was taken before she and Paw, that’s what we call my Daddy, got married, she was only 15 years of age and Paw was just seventeen, Mommie was and is still very pretty; even though she takes care of four children, plus cooking and doing the laundry for Paw and all of us including her brother, Uncle Robert.”

“My Paw’s name is Alexander McNeil Lee, and his friends call him Mac, but we just call him paw. Uncle Robert, lives out in the shed by the barn. My younger twin sisters, Lucent and Lunette, share a bed in the front upstairs room. My older brother, Elroy and I share a bed in the room upstairs in the back of the house. I was not named for my uncle Robert and Paw tells everybody that, it’s not that he doesn’t like Uncle Robert, but he says that I was named for his Daddy who was killed in the war.”

1928 was at the Heart of the Great Depression that was caused by the failure of Wall Street, I heard all of my life about the Crash of Wall Street, but I never knew what or where Wall Street was, till I got much older.

Our grandparents the Myers’s, Mommie’s mother and father, they won’t talk to Mommie since she ran off and married Paw, live in Dothan. Grandmamma Myers sends us little presents at Christmas and on our birthdays, but Granddaddy Myers wouldn’t even acknowledge that we was his kin and didn’t like Robert none too good either because Robert had left the farm in Dothan in 1927 and gone off to Lost Vegas to find his fortune, but when he turned up broke and came home, granddaddy Myers wouldn’t have him back, so he came to live with us.

Paw’s father, Robert Elroy Lee, is dead, he got killed by the “Huns” whoever they were, and he died in ’18 in France during the war. Paw’s mama lives in Andalusia, Alabama and that’s a long ways off, with her new husband. His last name is Hughes, but Paw just refers to him as Justin, Grandma and Mr. Hughes came to visit once when I was just a baby, but they have never seen Lucent and Lunette, like I said it’s a long way to Andalusia.

Paw don’t have much of a job, since all we had was the Dirt Farm, which was Granddaddy Lee’s that Paw had inherited when Grandmother Lee married Mr. Hughes who is a banker in Andalusia.

We work the farm as much as we can afford, but because seed and fertilizer cost a lot, and times were tough, we only grow a little corn, potatoes, tomatoes, beans for us to eat and a small patch of cotton about two acres, hopefully to sell .

Paw works as a Turpentiner when there is work and when the weather ain’t too hot which was anytime but the summer. A Turpentiner’s job is to go out in the piney woods and do all of the things necessary to harvest the sap from the pine trees. First they cut the “cat face” on the tree, which is like a big scratch that makes the tree bleed its sap, and they install the cup that catches the sap that’s used to make turpentine. They go out and harvest the sap by emptying the cups into barrels that are lashed to a mule. They then replace the cups and go on to the next tree and then the next, this is repeated day in and day out and when you finnish the tract that you are working, it’s time to start again. The sap which is real sticky gets on your hands and when you slap a bug, it gets on your face, there isn’t any place to wash up, so on and on it goes. This may be the hardest work in the world, you got all sorts of bugs to contend with, plus you got all kinds of snakes; rattlesnakes, copperheads, and it you get near the swamps you got cottonmouths, plus it’s long hard days, just you and a mule, in the woods from before daylight till after dark and sometime you spend the night in the woods, so you can get an early start the next morning. Paw always said, “You work from can to caint“.

On Sunday paw is usually at home and he always has time for us kids, even Elroy. Paw will sit in “his” chair and read to us, he puts a lot of expression in his reading, we all sit spellbound, while paw reads, even Elroy. He reads anything he can get his hands on, often he gets a newspaper from Mr. Jacobs down at the dairy, it’s usually a day or two old but that doesn’t matter because it’s new to us... he starts his reading quiet like and builds up like a preacher, emphasizing the high points by lowering the paper and raising his eyebrows and voice together.

When he reads the sports, he gets really excited and I think he adds some of his own lines, especially in baseball season. Mommie says that’s because Mac was a pretty good first base player, when they were in school.

I really like it when it’s just me and him, cause he sets me on his lap and I am between him and the paper, he often lets me read aloud to him

A Buick sedan roared through the streets of Dothan, two men wearing white robes were in the front seat and three more were in the back. They were out to meet up with another group in a truck and set a cross on the front lawn of Asa Gottlieb, the butcher, the Jew. Their plan was to set the cross up and set it on fire to let him know that Jews weren’t welcome in Alabama particularly in Houston County and more especially in Dothan. These exhibitions of bigotry and hate were directed toward anyone who was “different”, Jews, Negroes, Catholics, Italians, Greeks; you name the group if they weren’t like them they hated them. It wasn’t so much hate as deep down inside they feared them, feared the “foreigners” because they were often successful in business, feared the Catholics because they didn’t understand their religion and feared the Negroes because, if you weren’t careful they might get and education and take our jobs, the Klansmen never outright admitted this but the truth would come out after many more years.

Now back to the Gottlieb residence 4^th and Church Street, Dothan, Alabama, the car was followed by an old truck, there were more robed and hooded men in the truck and that’s where the cross and coal oil were, first the men in the car rolled up in front of the Gottlieb residence, there was lots of yelling and cussin’ then someone threw a rock through one of the front windows, that’s when all Hell broke loose, the two men in the truck were getting the cross out of the back of the truck when it happened….. boom,….boom it was Mr. Gottlieb’s neighbor, Mr. Mangiano the baker, he had a 12 gauge shotgun that he had loaded with buckshot and he was letting loose at the Klansmen, well they never expected any defense from anybody, “Ow, I’m hit,” one of the hooded men yelled, “damned Jew, he has a shotgun.” They thought the firing came from Gottleib’s house they didn’t have any idea that the neighbor Mangiano would come to his defense. BOOM – BOOM again the gunshots and this time the back window of the old truck exploded into a million pieces of glass. “Let’s get out of here,” “get me to old Doc Turner’s house,” “somebody throw a match on that cross.” “forget that, I’m bleeding, just get going.”

I guess that these immigrants were getting fed up with the intimidation and threats of the Klan and remembering some of the reasons that they had fled their native lands, finally they had, had enough and decided to fight rather than run and hide.

A few minutes later, Sheriff Ringo and Deputy Cochrane were both coming up 4^th street from opposite directions, the oil soaked cross, the oil can and broken glass were all of the physical evidence however a crowd of neighbors and relatives were arriving from every direction.

“I don’t have to ask what’s going on here, it’s pretty evident that somebody was planning a cross burning; well hello Mr. Gottlieb,” Sherriff Ringo exclaimed as he took of his hat and acknowledged Mrs. Gottlieb and Mrs. Mangiano standing together, both still dressed from their respective dining rooms, “Ladies.” “I’ma have enough ofa thisa kinda shenanigans” coughed Alonzo Mangiano, “they been a drivin’ around our houses for the pasta several nights, drivin’ by and honking their horns and throwin rocks, shoutin’ and a cussing, Dirty Dago, Filthy Jew,” Mangiano paused, and continued “we had enough of thisa back in the old country, but there it is a politically thing, here in America I donna’ unnerstand, American country issa’ free country.”

“We want to make it a free country, folks,” Sheriff Ringo exclaimed as he replaced his hat, “did anybody recognize anybody?”

“No, sheriff the men were all wearing hoods and bed sheets, however I recognized the car; it was a new Buick sedan, I have seen one similar to it around town, there may be more than one, it is either black or dark blue, the men in the car didn’t get out but I could see that they were wearing hoods also.” Mr. Gottleib hesitated and Sheriff Bill interrupted, “Do you know who drives a car like that?”

“Sheriff, we all know one person with a Buick sedan, I don’t have to name names, but I will if have to.”

Sheriff Ringo turned to the milling crowd and said, ”Alright folks, let's break I up, nothing more is going to happen,” at least not tonight he said silently to himself. “Mr. Gottlieb, can we go into your house?” “Yes” he replied and continued, “Alonzo, would you and Marcella join us?” “Yes, that would be a good idea,” sheriff Ringo added wishing that he had included Mr. and Mrs. Mangiano , “Let’s all go inside… you folks break it up or I’ll have Deputy Cochrane write you up for disturbance.”

“Mr. Gottlieb, you made an insinuation a few minutes ago, about the Buick sedan.”

“We all know….” Gottlieb interjected but was cut off by the Sheriff, “just a minute now, if we start accusing folks without proof, well, did any of you folks see a license tag on the Buick ?” “No, buta we alla know who drives such a car.” Mangiano said as he walked to the broken window and started picking up shards of glass.

“Don’t trouble yourself with that Alonzo, and be careful that you don’t get cut, Sadie and I will clean that up later.” Asa Gottlieb stated as he pulled the curtains closed.

“Mr. Mangiano, you know that I’m going to have to make a report of you firing your shotgun, here in the city limits, and if anyone makes a complaint about getting shot, I’ll have to bring you up on charges…but I don’t think anyone in the group of visitors will say anything…it’s a shame that you didn’t get the tag number off of the Buick or the truck, do you think that any of your shots hit either of the vehicles?” Ringo said as he paced around the living room of the Gottlieb home.

“I’ma donna know if I hit the car or truck, but I’ma hearda one of them cry out that he wasa hit, I’ma loaded with a birdshots, and hesa lucky, if I’ma loaded with buckshots hesa been hurta lotsa more.” Alonzo Mangiano shared and concluded by making the sign of the cross which was immediately followed by his wife.

No report of the wounded man was made, the investigation continued but slowly died of lack of proof about the Buick, and no further incidents of ‘Cross Burning’, or overt racial or ethnic slurs, but just a simmering, festering undercurrent of hate among those who wore the white robes.

It was the hottest summer in recent Alabama history; we lived on a dirt road at the end of time and space. It was so hot that our old hound dog left and went to live down by Mile Long Creek, where it was just a little bit cooler.

“Let Us Gather”