You know that you are old when your landmarks disappear. It happens to most who grew up in Urban America but I remember the old Detroit of my youth about sixty years ago.That was before the rust belt and most grown people who wanted to work had jobs. The automobile business was booming and a lot of Black people owned their own homes and businesses.

I remember Harris Elementary on Pulford Street which I attended from kindergarten through seventh grade. 3424 Ellery is no longer with us except in old photographs taken in its’ heyday. I remember my first encounter with childhood politics in the person of Mamie Adams and elderly White/Black woman whose Chippendale table sits at almost one hundred years old in my entrance foyer. Looking White she never denied her Black roots and her son Billy who always tried and succeeded by getting a job as a White cab driver.

Billy was also an alcoholic but apparently the cab company didn’t know it. Checker Cabs didn’t pick up Black folks then and Black men didn’t drive them, but Billy did. I heard he would pass to go to White bars and consort with White women he couldn’t bring home because he was crippled by a mother and grandmother who wouldn’t be deceived. I guess that is why he drank and became a drunk. There weren’t many Black folks on drugs in the early fifties in Detroit.

I remember how happy we Black kids were in my class that we were going to have a Black teacher at our school. She taught Art but her hair was a light sandy brown and straight and here eyes were gray. Her name was Mrs. Harris and she told us she was Colored anyway so we loved this White/Black Colored woman. Our custodian was Brown/Black and a college educated janitor which made me think in fourth grade that maybe college was over rated. What did I know about affirmative action and discriminative employment practices.

I remember classes filled with Italians, Poles, and maybe seven or eight Black kids if we were lucky and everyone smiling when we were told the story of Little Black Sambo. This was a fairy tale about Black people who lived in the jungle and people running around in circles or at least tigers, maybe it wasn’t such a tale at all. I remember a neighbor whom we kids called Sourpuss, crossing guards called Safety Boys and hall monitors called Service Girls at Harris Elementary School. I can still see my blue arm band with the lone white star that spelled privilege, responsibility, duty, and sometimes flunky when assigned a chore you didn’t want. We stood in the stairwells just before the bell rang for admission and exit from school with our pads in hand to report miscreants.This was for many of us our first taste of the power that accompanies authority and for many an addiction that lasted a life time.

Who could forget putting your teeth under the pillow without a fairy story but getting a dime anyway cause Auntie believed in ghosts but not fairies. I remember H’s for honors and checks for lack of self control in elementary because free vocal expression was considered a nuisance when I asked my why’s. Junior High in a then predominately white neighborhood Barbour Intermediate, in the late forties was a daily gauntlet running experience for Black boys who when defending themselves against White students and adults were the only ones arrested for fighting.

The police Squad frequently on the scene was known as the Big Four cruiser and was commanded by a southern White man called Chew Tobacco who practiced spitting on Black youth in old Detroit in 1948. I remembered old Eastern High School now long destroyed and my first encounter with anti-Semitism as well as hating swimming class because the chlorine made my straightened hair red and kinky. Once I skipped class for two periods to go canoeing on Belle Isle Park lagoon and bringing a friend who had no money and hating them for being so cheap when we were supposed to be sharing expenses.

Skipping class was not limited to regular school as I remember skipping class at the Peoples’ Baptist Church and staying at the corner confectionary playing records . Somehow I determined early on that hell was not a place you go to but a place you found yourself in. Childhood for me ended at the age of thirteen and virginity’s value enlarged. Virginity is more than special when it has been forcefully taken from you and like the birth of your only child it is a pain remembered forever.

I remember high school graduation and my prayer of thanksgiving for being away from home and going to a Historically Black College. That one year of special nurturing on an equal basis strengthened me for a lifetime. Two years later I married the only man I truly loved other than my dad and brother and wished sometime he lacked understanding and that his eyes would not convey his need to be loved so tenderly. Next came parenthood and a child who spurned our attempts at creating a better life who never understood her fathers’ pains from childhood poverty.

I remember free Angela meetings, the RNA (Republic of New Africa), Shrine of the Black Madonna and New Calvary Baptist church memberships, as well as, forays at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church so immersed was I in religion. I remember the nation of Islam, Malcolm’s brother Will with whom I worked in corporate America and my father-in-law changing his name to Hassan but only for Nation members.

My Auntie whom I refer to as my mom because mama died when I was six days old, learned fashion and style from early movies. She knew that she was beautiful and her queenly airs seemed natural. Accepting her Blackness all of her life she thought we, my husband and I during the 60’s and 70’s were Black crazy.  Mom thought wigs were meant to be straight, stylish, and curly and abhorred our large and wooly heads. It would be better to be a rabbit than a fool she chided. We responded , “Oreo”, at least I’m sweet she said. In later years it was she who became political as we became comfortable and smug with good paying jobs and upscale living.

I remember neighborhood boys who excelled in their chosen disciplines, a writer actor named Woody King Jr. who moved to New York and founded The New Federal Theater and Ron Milner a Tony award winning playwright. Joe Altobelli who became a professional ballplayer and later manager of a Major League Baseball Team. “Suitcase” Simpson who once had lunch at our house when I was a child, and David Mann who made it to a Minor League baseball team.

I remember a jazz guitar player neighbor named Grant Green, and in Arkansas a Blues man named King, Albert that is. A man called John Gammon and an Arkansas Farm. I remember Butter Beans and Susie, Moms Mabley, Caledonia Young, a 65 year old Shake Dancer, the fore runners of Pole Dancers who wore a few clothes, and Wilson Picket and David Ruffin before their fame.

I remember Jokers, Shakers, Ougaloos, and Scalders, and hoping they never all showed up at the Arcadia Roller Rink at the same time. There were house parties, card parties, boat rides and such. I remember everything and yet don’t remember much. I am present , the past is gone but I still look to the future to correct life’s wrongs. My daughter now has a daughter who will be seventeen in June. She is a junior in high school, attends our local community college, and has a job. We are so proud of both of them.. I thank God for my family, friends, all with whom my life positively intersects. Youngun listen I’m trying to build a legacy so that when someone thinks of me in times to come a pleasant smile will cross their faces and I can accept a job well done.

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©2008 M. Bennett Hooper