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@TroyYes, I met my maternal grandfather once during a visit to Nashville when I was about 6 years old. All I remember was that he looked like an old white man, blue eyes and all. I found out later that as a young man he had also been an excellent carpenter. I don't think he kept in touch with the people who once owned him. At a certain age, his half siblings moreorless disowned him and went about their lives as did he. He also reported in a slave narrative he dictated to people who went all over recording these recollections during the Depression, that after the civil war, the KKK had once descended upon Franklin, Tennessee, where he lived, and he and his posse ran them off and they never returned. My paternal grandfather lived with us for a while during World War 2. He was a dapper ol widower who liked gin and had an eye for the ladies. One thing I remember about him was that he always bragged about being able to read and write. My Dad always referred to his ex- slave grandmother as Granmammy and described her as being black as tar. Both of my grandfathers died before I reached my teens, and of course I wish now i had questioned them more about their past. My maternal grandmother, who I never knew, taught school for a while, something women could do back then if they had at least 2 years of high school. I learned that she set up a little room in our basement when she came to live with my mother and taught my older brother before he entered grade school providing him with what have been equivalent to kindergarten. Never knew my paternal grandmother either who died when she was young and my father would talk about him and his younger half-sister crying and running behind the cart carrying her wooden casket to be buried as soon as possible because she wasn't embalmed and the blood was running out of her nose and ears. Recounting this would always make him very sad. From the one picture I saw of her she looked very much like the half native American that she was. My Dad's father and mother weren't married and his father left town and went north to seek his fortune. After his mother's death, my dad went to live with an aunt who totally neglected him and when word got back to my grandfather, he came back to Kansas, and kidnapped my father, taking him back to Chicago with him. My Daddy loved "runnin on the road" which was how people referred to pullman porter work, but I understand my mother was glad when he lost this job because he was away from home so much. (This was all before my time, back during the 20s) My daddy also mentioned how on layovers he'd always go and visit the local tourist attractions in whatever town he was in and that was a great education for him who never got past 8th grade. BTW, I am named for an aunt named Consuelo who, herself, was named for Consuelo Vanderbilt, a famous rich debutante who was like the Jackie Kennedy of her day. From the way my mother described her reclusive sister, I think now that she was probably autistic but back then, they didn't have a name for her condition. (This was probably the case with many people in those days who were thought of as just being a little "off".) I don't think my mother ever met Madam C. J. Walker. She just attended the beauty college named after her. As for the meaning of the word, "toddlin", I would guess that it means fun loving and naughty. The song "Chicago" made famous by Frank Sinatra refers to Chicago as "a toddlin' town", and the line following this phrase is "the town that Billy Sunday could not shut down". Billy Sunday was a famous evangelist on a mission to reform sinners and abolish dens of iniquity.

@Troy As a matter of fact, I do have stories from my parents. Yes, they did live through all the events you mentioned. My Daddy joined the Army during world war one, but never saw combat because the America's participation in this war only lasted a year and it was over 3 months after he joined. My mother' father was born a slave in Franklin, Tennessee, and in a slave narrative he recalls how as a child while still in slavery he played with his master's children who were also his half-siblings. He later became a deputy sheriff in this town. My father's grandmother was also born a slave but that's all I know about her. His mother was half native American. Both of my parents came north in 1914 during the first wave of the Great Migration and settled in Chicago. My mother once worked as an elevator girl in a vaudeville theater in Chicago called the Rialto. My father also worked as a waiter in what is now Chicago's Auditorium theater but way back then was a hotel. My father also worked as a Pullman porter on the B&O Railroad and had very interesting stories to tell about how while he and his fellow porters were smiling and nodding and answering to the name "George" which was they were all called after George Pullman who invented railroad sleeping cars, they also were small time bootleg whiskey runners. (He and his partners-in-crime were fired when they eventually got caught.) My mother never said anything about women gaining the right to vote. (I have read that the Women's suffrage movement had nerve enough to discriminate against black women.) They both raved about Chicago indeed being a toddlin town and how much fun they would have at rent parties where they would play whist, and drink bath tub hooch, and the dance halls where they'd do the 2-step and the black bottom to Dixie land jazz. My mother also attended a 6-week course in hair dressing at Madam C. J. Walker's college. For years she used the comb and curling iron she was required to purchase for this class to do me and my sisters' hair. As for what they would think of today's world, they would probably feel pretty much the same way that I do. My daddy loved Malcom X and my mother admired Martin Luther King, and they both would be disappointed as to how the black race is back to square one and would side with young people who have little regard for the national anthem or pledge of allegiance. My Daddy was the first person i ever heard say that America was "home of the free white man and the brave black nigga". @Pioneer1 The city of Cairo, Illinois, which is at the very tip of that part of the state that extends deeper into the south than the state of West Virginia, was at one time, very southern in its culture, and could've been described as maintaining slavery. A woman I know from there swears that as child in the 1940s blacks were forced to work in cotton fields for no pay and get off the sidewalk to let white people pass.

I was motivated, in part, to write this chronicle by the exchanges I would have with my kids while picking their brains about what was going out there in the mix. When I'd answer their questions about how things were back in my day, they were amused and amazed by what I would tell them; especially my millennial grand children. So the idea of putting my recollections into writing has been ruminating inside of my head for a while, my intent being that they would be what I labeled a "time capsule" for those curious about the content of the life led by some black people during a pivotal time in our history. And, fortunately, AALBC has provided me with a forum to do this. So thank you Troy, and thank you Chris and Pioneer for your positive input. Anyway, once I started composing this narrative, the memories just flooded back, and every time I thought I was done, I would remember something else. (And I'm still revising and editing my post.)Talking with a couple of the few friends I have left who are my age, also triggered my recall. This account turned out to be a little longer than I anticipated, but it's not as long as it could've been had I not realized that some of what I was describing was too recent. As to what I think the technology and modern conveniences of today have robbed people of, it is their depth. We are all manifestation of our experiences and impressions, and the more things are done for us, the less immersed we become in the ingenuity and challenge it takes to do things for ourselves. In the process, too many of us become one-dimensional. We may have more leisure time, but does it bore us, or does it inspire us to get in touch with ourselves? TV has become our window to the world, the Internet our cyber sphere, social media our alter ego, and life has become different. Better in some ways, but definitely worse in other ones because we are too controlled by and dependent on outside forces. IMO