When we were boys, my brother and I had the run of Cypress Street in North Little Rock, Arkansas on our
Summer visits down home. We ate like kings and fished almost daily between stints of wrestling and throwing rocks at wasps nests and some, mean-as-hell, blue jays.
Early mornings broke thru a small window above the kitchen sink. It was always lined with the hard-skinned, green tomatoes from Madear’s garden below. Every morning, sipping cooled black coffee from Daddy S.L.’s saucer and crunching bites of beautifully browned toast, coated with runny egg and grits, there was little else to satisfy our boyhood needs.
I am certain that the early morning dew of Arkansas is medicinal. We never remembered our shoes and wore threadbare pajamas when walking Daddy S.L. to his blue and silver station wagon, but we were sorely protected from the 5:45a.m. chill. I think now that his smooth, baritone chuckle was our warmth as we skittered back into the kitchen to argue over the last sip of cold coffee and bites of breakfast left on his plate. We would be curled asleep beneath the small, press board and vinyl table within minutes of his leaving…every morning.
He returned home at 3:30pm and walked in giant steps thru the curled up grandkids watching the black and white half hour of Lone Ranger and a local BOZO The Clown Show. We made it a good luck charm to touch the dirt dusted leg of his work pants as he swiped by. In the kitchen MaDear hard fried them palm-sized perch and boiled hot dogs and beans for the kid’s dinner. We heard them kiss.
Other afternoons he stuck his head thru the door and called for us to “come run with me”. On those afternoons we headed down to the ballpark at Whitmore Circle to watch men play baseball. The best part of those “runs” were the Mexican tamale cart vendors who surely over delivered on those one dollar, corn husk wrapped bundles. But, the best thing ever about those “runs” was a singing ball player, they called, “Big Cole”.
From the dugout Big Cole ran thru, what I imagined were, old songs; rifts of blues and names of women and men who had done him wrong. He was older than the players and rarely made it to the plate. I recall him swatting a slow lobbed ball over the Pitcher’s outstretched glove just once. He couldn’t “run slow”, the men teased Big Cole, and he slung the bat and settled back into the dugout. After awhile he began to hum, then riff on the idea of finding a woman who could “wait til the bottle run dry”. “What He say, Daddy?” my bug-eyed query brought chuckles from the grown ups.
Again, Big Cole riffed on about Birmingham not being a ham at all! We oughta see the one up dat gals draws! And me, “What He say, Daddy? What HE SAY?” Soon, recounting stories of thunderous home runs were overshadowed by the salty tongue of Big Cole and a few others trying to jump into the rowdy workman’s calling.
Driving home, Daddy S.L. said that Big Cole was a “Caller” for the Gandy men who worked to straighten the tracks. The heavy loads of trees being harvested from deep in the woods would damage the rail lines and could warp the creosoled drenched ties. He said the “Gandy Dancers” and work crews from the Penitentiary “throwed” them back in line. Big Cole sang to the men and got everybody on the same rhythm to make the job easier.
Daddy S.L. said that Big Cole hung around places and picked up stories to use in his songs. Later, in July, he drove me to the Little Rock Stock Yards and we parked near the junction where myriad train tracks snaked and fingered alongside the warehouses for delivery. We left the car windows down and a warm breeze had me nodding.
I awoke to a shadowy clanking of iron rods and deep laughter. A White man suddenly shouted, “Gwine up to de quarter head”, and men moved in unison toward a curved section of tracks. I sat up and leaned out the station wagon’s window just as the White man made a jerking arm motion and yelled out to the men.
On the hot breeze a long moan built quickly to a wailing, then nasally passage in Big Cole’s, familiar cadence.
“Aahhh! Aaa-Ooohhh-Oh-Ohh-Oh
Aahh—Two lil’ gals was court’n Me
One was blind & One caint see
My Grandma put a switch to me
When I come home wit a kiss on me
Ol boys pull t’gether
Ol boys pull t’hether—HUH!
At “HUH!” the men shuttered, stomped, whipped their iron rods in a hard, short burst and I saw the track jut to the left.
He did it twice more before the White man gestured with his hand and the men halted. On the wind, that carried dry and hot back to the station wagon window, was laughter. Behind the guffaws came a question. “You couldn’t hide dem gal’s kisses, Cole?!”
Daddy S.L. shook his head, chuckled and started up the family car.
This story first appeared in the blog, Three Days In The City. All copyrights reserved.
Jas. Mardis is an awarded Poet, Radio Commentator, Editor and Fabric Artist. He is a 2014 Inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame.
There are two leather pyrography works featured on this piece and features a lace-cut work tablecloth and quilted, star pattern patchwork. The images on this piece features two characters from a familiar migration story. The man has fled the South for a chance at Harlem, New York and Adam Clayton Powell’s upward Negro progress. His letter home has announced a new longshoreman’s job and Harlem apartment room is read over a wagon wheel mailbox
by his spouse. It tells of Father Divine and his religious movement to feed, house and train migrants and Harlem-ites, alike. Get here, Now! The Statue of Liberty skirts the bottom of the piece as an anchoring symbol of the promises awaiting all who would dare to hope on the backbone of a new place. Beside her is a tenement building with rows of metal trash cans lining a street paved with gold. On the other side is a recreated advertisement of Adam Clayton Powell’s “8,000 Mile Cross Country Tour: The Negro On the Home Front” from The People’s Voice Newspaper.
