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| Mr. Walt with his youngest daughter. |
My grandfather was an automobile naysayer. He was born in
1893, and much preferred the reliability of his own two legs to a 4-wheeled
automobile. We called him Grandpa, and everyone else called him Mr. Walt.
When a white family decides they like your land, and they
determine that they are especially fond of the timber on your land, and you are
a black man, you may lose your land. After Mr. Walt and his brothers "lost" the land their father worked so hard to acquire, he relocated to New Orleans with his bride for a fresh start. Their odds
at survival in New Orleans were fortified by the fact that his bride did not
bear any children. Whatever means they managed to come by off
the farm and in the city were plenty, because there were only two mouths to feed. They weren’t
blessed with babies, but they looked good: nice clothes, dignified shoes, and
clean hands on Sundays.
