March 3, 2012
[With apologies for editing as this is being done somehat remotely.]
Selber Brothers took up an entire corner in the middle of downtown Shreveport in the 1950s. It was one of two or three emporiums of the sort owned by Jews; another was Rubensteins and there was a very big toy store owned by the Wiseman family. Their son, Carl, was the only Jewish kid I knew growing up, and that was because Carl, who went to a private school somewhere, was my competitor for a while for the affections of Nanine Carney. He and I would share her attention almost every weekend, it seemed. Nanine went to a Catholic girls school and on Saturdays wore her hair in a ponytail at the side of her head. I had never seen anything like that and I'll bet the nuns didn't let her get away with it during the week.
The history of the Jews in the South is a pretty complicated tale and I invite you take a look at it some time. Suffice it for the moment, though, to just say that working class Christian kids in Shreveport had almost no opportunity to know any Jewish kids. In fact, my Dad had to explain to me that the Selber brothers were Jews; except for bible school, Jews had never entered my world view. Dad used to take me with him on Saturdays when I was just a boy and we would walk around town and he would tell me things I needed to know, like about the Selber brothers. Or we would get in the car and drive over to the Corner Bar, near the glass plant, and he would let me sit at the bar with him while he talked with friends and made a bet or bought a punch ticket.
This was true throughout my childhood, wherever we lived; Dad would take me out on a Saturday, or come home after work and pick me up, to a bar or a cafe, somewhere where men hung out and talked sports and cars and had a beer and shot pool. Once he came home from work when I was in sixth grade and told me to hop in the car, that there was someone he wanted me to meet. We sped, really, to the Corner Bar. Inside, Dad walked right past the bar and steered me to a table in the back where some men and a woman were sitting. One of the men had long sideburns and, as it was late in the day, his stubble was showing very dark, as dark as his hair. He was dressed entirely in black and had a bolo tie around his neck, closed by what must have been a pure silver slide fashioned as a longhorn steer head.
"Mr. LaRue, this is my son, Chris."
My father had a sort of deferential politeness about him when he felt he was outclassed, and this was one of those times, for the man in the bolo tie was none other than "Lash" LaRue, whip-wielding star of many a Saturday matinee western. His only competitor in the whip-lash western business was a pudgy, bland character Monogram Studios called "Whip" Wilson and believe me, that was no contest. I was awe-struck and tongue-tied and have no memory of anything I might have said or done, except that we sat there for a while and the talk just went on around me as such talk always did. All I can remember otherwise is that woman at the table was Lash's sister, who owned the beauty parlor next door to the bar and it was she he had come to town to visit.
Few of my outings with my dad were as exciting as that but they were solidly informative. One Saturday we made two stops I can still see very clearly. The first was to the Subway Pool Hall downtown where Dad wanted to place a bet on a horserace. You entered the Subway down a flight of stairs from the sidewalk, not unlike entering a subway station in New York, and the door gave way to a big room full of pooltables and a bar along one wall. At the end of that bar was a door and, just as in the movies, when you went through it you were suddenly confronted by rows of men at desks with telephones and ticker-tape printers and across one whole wall was a huge tote-board with all the day's races posted. For some reason I remember that my dad wore a baseball cap and a gabardine jacket that zipped up. Ever since that day my "imaginary" has contained that image of a working man on his day off gone to place a bet, have a beer, touch a wider world; baseball cap, jacket, everything.
Our second stop that day was Selber Brothers; Dad was going to buy me a shirt, a dress shirt, for reasons I cannot remember. But it was not the shirt I remember, it was the sight of a black man, a young man, in cotton chino slacks and a striped sport shirt waiting for an elevator. Most of you will not recall the South in the early 1950s. In that South black folks still stepped off the sidewalk for whites to pass, went to the back doors of restaurants to place an order, and one never saw a black man or woman in the exercise of any authority or initiative, unless one went to the funeral of someone who had "done" for your family. We went to separate schools, churches, doctors, sat apart on trolleys, in theaters, never even in the same room in restuarants.
We did shop in the same stores, but black patrons were waited on last. Once I had a job for a very short time in a luggage store downtown. The stock was expensive but not outrageous. One day a black woman came in and I waited on her. She didn't buy anything and when she left, my boss came over to me visibly angry. I thought he was upset because I had not made a sale but that was not what was on his mind. What bothered him was that I had addressed the customer as "Ma'am," as in "Can I help you, Ma'am?" He told me that if I ever called a "nigra" woman by anything but her first name, if I knew it, or nothing at all, he would fire me on the spot. "Ma'am" was reserved for white women and white women only. I quit.
In Selber's that day, even as young as I was, I knew that this young black man was out of place. There was nothing about him to signal that he was shopping, he looked comfortable, he looked as though he intended to ride that elevator, which was something i had never seen before. And he was dressed better than most anybody in the store. Dad saw me staring and said to me, quietly, "That's Mr. Aaron's son." Mr. Aaron was Aaron Selber, the principal owner of the store and the young black man was his illegitimate son.
That was my introduction to the complexities of race in Shreveport. Over the years, my father was a gentle and astute guide to me through the various narratives of race and identity in the South. In this case, I learned that young Mr. Selber was Mr. Aaron's yard child. Yard children, in Shreveport, were the mulatto children of white fathers who were allowed to come to their father's house and play with their half-siblings, but they were not allowed inside the house; they had to stay outside, in the yard, and go home when it got dark. If one's father was well-to-do, like Mr. Aaron, then one could get sent off to school up north, have a summer job in the store or the law office or the accoountung firm. If your father was a working stiff, then you might get Christmas gifts but probably not a birthday card. I suppose there is a good chance that Scobie was my grandfather's son, a son he could not abandon in the yard.
There's so much more to say about my father and race and class, but we left him in the men's department at Selber's. And that story was not about me at age 10 looking for a shirt and discovering race but about him at 41 and that shantung silk suit, not to mention the shoes.
[With apologies for editing as this is being done somehat remotely.]
Selber Brothers took up an entire corner in the middle of downtown Shreveport in the 1950s. It was one of two or three emporiums of the sort owned by Jews; another was Rubensteins and there was a very big toy store owned by the Wiseman family. Their son, Carl, was the only Jewish kid I knew growing up, and that was because Carl, who went to a private school somewhere, was my competitor for a while for the affections of Nanine Carney. He and I would share her attention almost every weekend, it seemed. Nanine went to a Catholic girls school and on Saturdays wore her hair in a ponytail at the side of her head. I had never seen anything like that and I'll bet the nuns didn't let her get away with it during the week.
The history of the Jews in the South is a pretty complicated tale and I invite you take a look at it some time. Suffice it for the moment, though, to just say that working class Christian kids in Shreveport had almost no opportunity to know any Jewish kids. In fact, my Dad had to explain to me that the Selber brothers were Jews; except for bible school, Jews had never entered my world view. Dad used to take me with him on Saturdays when I was just a boy and we would walk around town and he would tell me things I needed to know, like about the Selber brothers. Or we would get in the car and drive over to the Corner Bar, near the glass plant, and he would let me sit at the bar with him while he talked with friends and made a bet or bought a punch ticket.
This was true throughout my childhood, wherever we lived; Dad would take me out on a Saturday, or come home after work and pick me up, to a bar or a cafe, somewhere where men hung out and talked sports and cars and had a beer and shot pool. Once he came home from work when I was in sixth grade and told me to hop in the car, that there was someone he wanted me to meet. We sped, really, to the Corner Bar. Inside, Dad walked right past the bar and steered me to a table in the back where some men and a woman were sitting. One of the men had long sideburns and, as it was late in the day, his stubble was showing very dark, as dark as his hair. He was dressed entirely in black and had a bolo tie around his neck, closed by what must have been a pure silver slide fashioned as a longhorn steer head.
"Mr. LaRue, this is my son, Chris."
My father had a sort of deferential politeness about him when he felt he was outclassed, and this was one of those times, for the man in the bolo tie was none other than "Lash" LaRue, whip-wielding star of many a Saturday matinee western. His only competitor in the whip-lash western business was a pudgy, bland character Monogram Studios called "Whip" Wilson and believe me, that was no contest. I was awe-struck and tongue-tied and have no memory of anything I might have said or done, except that we sat there for a while and the talk just went on around me as such talk always did. All I can remember otherwise is that woman at the table was Lash's sister, who owned the beauty parlor next door to the bar and it was she he had come to town to visit.
Few of my outings with my dad were as exciting as that but they were solidly informative. One Saturday we made two stops I can still see very clearly. The first was to the Subway Pool Hall downtown where Dad wanted to place a bet on a horserace. You entered the Subway down a flight of stairs from the sidewalk, not unlike entering a subway station in New York, and the door gave way to a big room full of pooltables and a bar along one wall. At the end of that bar was a door and, just as in the movies, when you went through it you were suddenly confronted by rows of men at desks with telephones and ticker-tape printers and across one whole wall was a huge tote-board with all the day's races posted. For some reason I remember that my dad wore a baseball cap and a gabardine jacket that zipped up. Ever since that day my "imaginary" has contained that image of a working man on his day off gone to place a bet, have a beer, touch a wider world; baseball cap, jacket, everything.
Our second stop that day was Selber Brothers; Dad was going to buy me a shirt, a dress shirt, for reasons I cannot remember. But it was not the shirt I remember, it was the sight of a black man, a young man, in cotton chino slacks and a striped sport shirt waiting for an elevator. Most of you will not recall the South in the early 1950s. In that South black folks still stepped off the sidewalk for whites to pass, went to the back doors of restaurants to place an order, and one never saw a black man or woman in the exercise of any authority or initiative, unless one went to the funeral of someone who had "done" for your family. We went to separate schools, churches, doctors, sat apart on trolleys, in theaters, never even in the same room in restuarants.
We did shop in the same stores, but black patrons were waited on last. Once I had a job for a very short time in a luggage store downtown. The stock was expensive but not outrageous. One day a black woman came in and I waited on her. She didn't buy anything and when she left, my boss came over to me visibly angry. I thought he was upset because I had not made a sale but that was not what was on his mind. What bothered him was that I had addressed the customer as "Ma'am," as in "Can I help you, Ma'am?" He told me that if I ever called a "nigra" woman by anything but her first name, if I knew it, or nothing at all, he would fire me on the spot. "Ma'am" was reserved for white women and white women only. I quit.
In Selber's that day, even as young as I was, I knew that this young black man was out of place. There was nothing about him to signal that he was shopping, he looked comfortable, he looked as though he intended to ride that elevator, which was something i had never seen before. And he was dressed better than most anybody in the store. Dad saw me staring and said to me, quietly, "That's Mr. Aaron's son." Mr. Aaron was Aaron Selber, the principal owner of the store and the young black man was his illegitimate son.
That was my introduction to the complexities of race in Shreveport. Over the years, my father was a gentle and astute guide to me through the various narratives of race and identity in the South. In this case, I learned that young Mr. Selber was Mr. Aaron's yard child. Yard children, in Shreveport, were the mulatto children of white fathers who were allowed to come to their father's house and play with their half-siblings, but they were not allowed inside the house; they had to stay outside, in the yard, and go home when it got dark. If one's father was well-to-do, like Mr. Aaron, then one could get sent off to school up north, have a summer job in the store or the law office or the accoountung firm. If your father was a working stiff, then you might get Christmas gifts but probably not a birthday card. I suppose there is a good chance that Scobie was my grandfather's son, a son he could not abandon in the yard.
There's so much more to say about my father and race and class, but we left him in the men's department at Selber's. And that story was not about me at age 10 looking for a shirt and discovering race but about him at 41 and that shantung silk suit, not to mention the shoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment