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Well, here we go again. What follows is hopefully the last time I will bore AALBC, recalling life as I knew it growing up black in a small interracial midwestern town where "negros" were a tiny minority, confined to their own little community. Bear with me while I take a different approach to revisiting my early years, focusing on the setting that was the back drop for life as I remember it beginning when I was about 5 which would have been 77 years ago. Obviously, everybody had a childhood, a way station in their life's journey which embodied the joys and woes that came with the territory of growing up. To me, what makes anybody's childhood unique is the era in which it occurred. The zeitgeist of it! My generation is an "endangered species; we are dying out and our voices will soon be stilled. Once this happens, the world will have lost the last of the Great Depression survivors who, as youngsters, did without and made do, not knowing we were poor, existing in an America that had fallen on hard times. I am aware that my early days that included doing the fun things most kids do, are not that special. What is special, however, is the era during which they took place; a richly historical chapter in the American saga when, among other extraordinary things, for over 12 years Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the only president we ever knew. First of all, in my little world, white people were just “them”. If blacks weren’t intrusive or belligerent, white townspeople were reasonably tolerant and receptive to those of us who didn’t go where we didn’t “belong”. For a long time, voluntary segregation was our subtle way of dealing with this. We attended their big, top-notch high school and patronized their public businesses and utilized their facilities and even made friends with some of them, but we never crossed racial lines, and during the course of this co-existence, our way of became like a carbon copy of theirs. Back then, life was "spartan". Things like home phones, refrigerators and stoves with pilot lights were luxuries. If you needed to make a call, you'd go to the pay phone located in the corner drug store, inserted your nickel in the slot and waited for an operator to say: "number please". If you needed to light an eye of your 4-legged enamel stove, you struck a big kitchen match, turned the gas knob and did so. Whoosh! Monday was wash day and our mothers did laundry in an a washing machine equipped with an agitator and an attachment with revolving rollers that would wring clothes out before you hung them outside on a line to dry. The many who couldn't afford one of these, used a rippled scrub board and a bar of lye soap to get the job done, squeezing the water of garments by hand. No automatic dishwashers, either, or aluminum sinks with stopper/strainers. Dishes were done in a big oval pan filled with the hot water you heated up in a teakettle on your stove. An old rag served as a wiper, and soap was sprinkled out from a box of Ivory soap chips. What we couldn't do for ourselves, there was a brigade of men who provided the services essential to our daily lives. There was the Milkman who would deposit quarts of fresh milk on your door step in the predawn hours, milk whose cream had risen to the top making it necessary to shake the bottles up to distribute it. Then there was the Ice Man who, for a small fee, would use his prongs to pick up either a 25 or 50 pound block of ice off the back of his truck, sling it over his shoulder and deliver it to your back door for deposit into the "ice box" which kept your food cold and fresh. (You got your ice "cubes" by using an ice pick to hack off chunks of this big block.) There were the Garbage Men, who drove horse drawn wagons swarming with flies, up and down alleys, picking up what was set out. There was the smudgy-faced coal man who provided fuel for the furnace that heated your home, emptying his sacks of black lumps into the coal bins that were located in the basement of every house. There was the Mail Man who delivered letters twice a day, and was permitted to ride free on the street cars that lumbered up and down the main streets. No supermarkets were around, just a Jewish grocer down the block who extended credit to your parents if they were short on cash. We’d hear about the Dog Catcher but our big mutt roamed free, barking at stray cats, and growling at other unleashed mongrels when he wasn’t gnawing on a bone or woofing down dinner table leftovers. A big treat for us was going to Saturday afternoon matinees where for the admission of 10 cents, we got to enjoy double features of the latest movies starring the likes of Clark Gable or Shirley Temple, films which are now the oldies running on the TCM cable channel. "Extra added attractions" were Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse or Popeye cartoons, newsreels, and exciting weekly serials depicting the cliff-hanging adventures of Flash Gordon and Ming the Merciless. A dime also got you a Super Man or Wonder Woman comic book. Evenings were when we listened to the radio, regularly rooting for boxer Joe Louis to knock out his latest opponent. Other nights we laughed at comedy shows like Amos 'n Andy, or were transfixed by the dramatizations of detective mysteries like Sam Spade, and spooky stories with such titles as "The Shadow". Live broadcasts of big bands appearing at famous night clubs could also be tuned in, playing the swing music we danced the "jitterbug" to at social functions. And speaking of good times, morals were stricter back then. Single couples didn't shack up together, and getting pregnant without being married was a stigma. The only people that used drugs were jazz musicians who smoked "reefer". It was during this period that a world war broke out and galvanized the country, drafting millions of our older brothers to go fight and die all over Europe, and on islands in the Pacific and the Sahara desert in Africa. Meanwhile, on the home front, shortages caused by the war were dealt with by rationing such things as meat, can goods, sugar, shoes and gas. Eager to do their part for the war effort, kids took time out from shooting marbles and cutting out paper dolls, to collect scrap metal to be hauled off and reprocessed into what it took to turn out planes and tanks in the factories staffed by a workforce of women replacing the men who'd gone off to war. It was a time when every block had an Air Raid Warden who wore a white helmet and was in charge during practice blackouts which ended when howling sirens would give the all-clear signal that permitted street lights, and house lamps to be turned back on, leaving us secure in the knowledge that enemy planes would not be dropping bombs on us. It was also common to see dug up vacant lots converted into what, for some reason, were known as “victory gardens” where vegetables were grown - presumably to help win the war. Finally, after four grueling years and tens of thousands of casualties, the Nazis and the Japs were defeated, forced into surrender by the dropping of 2 devastating atomic bombs and the threat of more. In celebration, cities and towns all over the USA welcomed their conquering heroes home with parades. Our 4-hour one proceeded down our main street, a panorama of marching bands, color guards and floats from all over the area paying tribute to the brave sons, fathers, and brothers who made it home alive. It was a stirring spectacle I've never forgotten. Once this costly war ended, the economy rebounded, creating a boom in construction and manufacturing as new products flooded the market. A synthetic called plastic began competing with metal, wood and glass, a material called polyester was as popular as cotton and linen, cleaning aids called “detergents” instantly dissolved grease and grime, medicines called “antibiotics" miraculously cured infections, frozen meat and vegetable were soon competing with fresh and canned products, ball point pens made ink ones obsolete. The war plants went back to making automobiles, and bright-hued streamlined cars began to roll off Detroit's assembly lines. Most exciting of all, TELEVISION appeared on the scene, and our world would never again be the same! (The reports of "flying saucers" later dubbed UFOs that began to mysteriously appear in the skies was another reason for this.) No longer children, as teenagers, we bid "good bye" to the preceding decades and said "hello" to the nascent 1950s that would explode into the tumultuous 1960s. The period of unrest and protest that followed brought about reform and progress and most of all a change in America’s lifestyle as the days of innocence and simplicity morphed into an era of arrogance and sophistication. Time marched on, children were born, houses bought, and middle-age set in. Before we knew it, the torch had been passed and the Baby Boomer generation came into its own. Recently, a lifelong friend and I were recalling how much history we had witnessed, during the terms of 13 different presidents, - all of the black "firsts" that had made us proud, like the one that saw Jackie Robinson become the first negro to play in major league baseball. Then there was the pall cast by the ongoing Communism threat that sustained the 20-year cold war with Russia which gave rise to the Korean conflict and later the Viet Nam fiasco. The rash of assassinations that robbed us of so many of our “best and brightest“. The monumental Civil Rights Struggle and the fatuous Women's Lib movement. The counter-revolution waged by black power militants and hippie flower children. The Cuban missile crisis that almost triggered a nuclear war. The formation of NASA and the exploration of outer space, and the advent of the computerized electronic age that eventually spawned the Internet and it spin-offs, and last but not least, the dawn of a New Millennium that brought the agony of the 911 terrorist attack, and the thrill of an African American man being elected President! During the course of discussing the many famous alumni of our high school, including people like martyred Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton, and Glenn "Doc" Rivers, former NBA star and now coach of the LA Clippers, and one of America's richest black women, Shelia (Crump) Johnson, divorced wife of BET's Robert Johnson, my friend brought up our class mate Eugene Cernan. He was who, after earning an engineering degree from Purdue University, eventually became an Astronaut. For a whole semester Gene sat near us in study hall, and little did we know that years later in 1968, this tall lanky white guy who'd stroll by with a nod, would be the last man to walk on the moon. Small world. But it was ours. Yes, my life could be considered ordinary by some but it was also different, unique unto itself. And now I am left to wonder if, in the present, I will witness yet another first in American history. A woman president. Or an election result that for the great American Empire could be the beginning of the end…

Hi Cynique, Of course I'm one of those people that really enjoy reading these retrospectives. In fact, if you don't mind, I'll create a separate page for this article (linked from your AALBC.com page). I'm also planning (I know finally), to publish a book next year called the The Best of AALBC.com. I would like to use this piece there too. I often think about how much things have changed in the last 25 years. I teach a web design class and I'm often struck, as I lecture, how much technology has advanced in that brief period. I really can't image how things have changed in the time scale you've described. But, it is interesting that much of what you described from your youth in terms of the creature comforts of home life are things that I recall. In south life seemed even more spartan. One of my aunts had an outhouse into the late 60's. I believe the changes are accelerating as time progresses. For example, our family only changed our home telephone once my entire childhood, upgrading from a rotary to a push button model. Today many families "upgrade" all their portable phones every couple of years. Dishwashers, washing machines, computers, and more have saved us all a lot of physical energy and given us a lot more time. It is not clear to me that society is any better with the extra time and energy. It seems like the additional time and energy we have is wasted. Can you imagine the media of your day using any of their resources to spread "news" based upon children joking about Althea Gibson's hair? It is almost a cliche to say, we have access to more information, but are less wise, less knowledgeable. What do you think?

I absolutely love hearing (reading actually) stories like this. I always love to get my information "first hand" from those who actually witnessed historical events instead of getting them out of books or movies or from biased historians. What I used to when I was younger but no longer find suprising now after hearing it from so many people over 60 was how segregated Illinois, Michgan, Ohio, and other northern communities were back then. We were taught in school that segregation and Jim Crow only existed in the South, but up North everyone lived together. But Black folks who lived in major Northern cities prior to the 50s routinely tell the same stories of segregation and open racism that may not have been as STRUCTURED as that of the South but definately existed defacto. Something tells me that actual SLAVERY probably existed in Northern states as well and if we could have talked to Black folks who lived up Northern during that time they would have told us different from what we read in history books. It's funny..... Everytime someone mentions ice men carrying ice to people's homes I think of those old Laurel and Hardy clips where they'd deliver a block of ice to a house on a hill so far up from the street that the ice block has melted into a mere ice cube by the time they get to the front porch.....lol. "Laurel and Hardy" still goes down as one of my favorite shows both past and present.

You took a life and condensed it into a one page post. That's impressive, but this is definitely information that is currently the foundation of multiple books that get optioned into film. The idea of a "woman" Forrest Gump film being done would be interesting. Maybe Ava or Oprah will browse AALBC and decide to contact you to do that... wishful thinking.