Bad Luck < Reaganomics

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.

 

My grandmother arrived in Louisiana from Arkansas. As soon as she figured out which way was west, she made slow steady progress right up to the Pacific Ocean. They say she met my grandfather in church one day. We don't know what happened to the childless bride, but I suspect she contacted a practitioner of the dark arts in the city of New Orleans to avenge her 25 year marriage, and some kind of bad luck may have followed my grandfather and his new bride right into California. Or, perhaps a sociologist would say the family was victim to still more racism and Reaganomics.

 

The rail was hiring. My grandfather could read and labor. So he got a job. Racism, the rail, and my grandmother's ambition moved our story out of the south; they settled in Santa Monica California in the late 1940's.

 

My grandfather and grandmother brought to Santa Monica old life-ways. Customs and habits like planting vegetables and edibles on your property; a garden in your side yard, chickens in the backyard, children in the front yard. Honey and vinegar tonics for the gaseous over-eater, and for the hung-over. For my grandfather, a steadfast suspicion of the automobile remained; he continued to walk everywhere. Aunty says the beautiful music stopped in Santa Monica, but they were given other blessings. Property ownership was restored to the family, education was easily attainable, and there were extras too—new upholstered furniture, for instance, plus two hospital births, and soda pop and birthday cake for every child, every year.

 

And a camera. 

Somebody's fat baby and an upholstered chair.

 

Each time a child was added to the family, a picture was taken. The infant would be allowed to fill out a bit and get nice and chubby. The chubbier the better. And then the newest piece of upholstered furniture was dragged outside and placed in the front yard in front of the house, a home that boasted a real address, glass windows, a cement step to the front door, and you can see how well they are doin' for themselves in California cause that house has electricity and plumbing. The upholstered furniture was placed outside into good light, in front of the house, and the new chubby baby was plopped down among the upholstered cushions and snap, a photo of our prosperity. Each new baby, for a few generations, would be photographed this way.

 

And the same care was used to document the loving gesture and luxury of a 3-layer birthday cake for each child, every year. Plenty of money and sugar to go 'round. And a fine dress or suit and bow tie for the birthday baby too. And once, a whole six pack of bottled pop, documented-- just cause we could. Life was good out west.

 

Mr. Walt walked everywhere in Santa Monica. He had a very serious mistrust of the automobile. He considered them a novelty and a danger. And flashy. He preferred legs: a mule’s legs, a horse’s legs, ladies legs, his legs.

 

Once, Mr. Walt’s brother Joe tried to teach him how to drive. But Joe was flashin' off and acting like One Foolish Negro (this is where cousin Derrick sighs and says, “Not another Negro Story…”). He flipped the whole car over while trying to teach Mr. Walt how to drive.

 

“Joe…?’

 

“Yeah…?”

 

“You dead yet?”

 

“No….”

 

“…Well, you gonna be.”

 

Then the government decided that highway 10 needed to run right up to the Pacific and officials determined that my grandparents' home was in the way. After his house was paved over by a freeway, he became deeply committed to not driving anywhere. Who knows whose yard you’d be trespassing against?