The little tyke here is me. I look like the kind of kid that would be found playing around the rubble of a bombed building in Europe in WWII picking valuables off corpses.
The lady beside me is Ruby, a neighbor. My family and I lived in the Clay Homes and Ruby lived across the street behind a neighborhood store her husband Pete owned.
Pete was 25 years older than Ruby. Pete was also a proud member of the KKK.
Ruby was Pete’s second wife. Pete’s first wife died. He had one daughter from his first marriage and he and Ruby had two daughters. The first wife’s daughter had a son named Tommy that I ran around with from that point until he parted for the Navy after graduation.
Although Tommy lives in town we have not ran into each other since he departed for the Navy in 1960. When his mother-in-law died I went to the funeral hoping to see him and his wife Linda and maybe talk old times. But that very day, before the funeral he and Linda had a blow-up of a fight and they both wanted a divorce. Neither went to the funeral.
Life just keeps rolling along.
8 comments:
So Linda didn't go to her own mothers funeral? Or am I confoozled ;)
Carolyn,
No you are correct. Linda said it would be embarrassing to attend - after her and Tommy had the knock-down drag out fight. My first thought was maybe Linda was sporting a new black eye.
When I was growing up, my neighbors were proud KKKers. We lived in an all white (trash) neighborhood. I remember when ONE time a black family moved in...their house burned to the ground one night. mysteriously.
Bird,
Do you have an alibi for that night?
I don't know when you are leaving for your Thanksgiving trip but have a nice safe trip.
Fascinating. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago near an extremely wealthy and closed suburb called Kennilworth. The first (and last) black family moved into Kennilworth in the 1970s and a cross was burned on their lawn. The first Jewish family moved in some time in the 1990s. No one burned a cross, but they sure were shunned.
The irony is that one of the community leaders was caught in the early 1990s basically raping his legal clients. He was a prominent divorce attorney and would threaten to drop women's cases and make sure other lawyers would not take them unless the woman had sex with him.
Better to have WASPy rapists in your town, it seems, than Jews and blacks.
Suzanne,
Have you heard of the famous Leo Frank hanging in Marietta back in the early 1900s? He was Jewish and owner of a pencil factory where Mary Phagan worked. Mary was 13 years old and was raped and murdered. Leo Frank was convicted of the crime and was sent to prison.... a lot of prominant people in Marietta organized a carcade to the prison, forced themselves in, carried Leo back to Marietta and hung him. Later, it was proven he was innocent.
A bunch of books have been written on the subject.
I was 8, Ed so I'm probably cleared from the umbrella of suspicision. I think the fire starte from the cross burning in their front yard...
Jr. and I are leaving around lunchtime today.
Bird,
Enjoy, be careful, and make the most out of your trip.
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