Flying to Atlanta

Granddaddy, Darlene and Wes

Every summer when I was a boy, my family made a trek to my Mom's birth home.  

Most times, we drove.  By the time we stopped for meals --- this was an era before fast food had become staples, and my dad preferred dining at sit-down restaurants where truckers stopped, believing they knew the best places to stop for a tasty meal with fast service --- and hotels with pools, so Darlene and I could swim at the end of a long day of driving, it took about four or five days generally.

Once, when I was a teenager, we made it in about fifty hours of solid driving, but that was the exception.

Mom

At least a couple of times we went by train without my Dad.

The first time I remember I was probably three years old, and we happened to meet up with Dorothy Gallahair, who was taking her three children to Georgia on a similar voyage without her husband, who like my dad stayed behind to work.  In New Orleans, Dorothy convinced Mom to take advantage of a short layover to get some delicious donuts at a place she knew near the station.  

Those donuts were actually beignets, the treat for which we now always visit the Café Du Monde on rare occasions when in N'Awlins.  When we took Emma to Disneyland a few years ago, it was beignets her Uncle Jay bought her at New Orleans Square that saved a disappointing day and brought her to a happy state of mind, so beignets are apparently a family tradition destined to live on.

Two of Dorothy's children, Martin and Michelle, later became close friends who were regulars at our after school and weekend pick-up sports games in the street or at Boos School.   The prototype tomboy Michelle, who adapted her name to Mitch, was the best athlete among us, until puberty gave the boys a boost of testosterone that made us naturally stronger.  She probably played tackle football without equipment with the boys a few games too many, because leg injuries later slowed her down when she converted to Bobby Sox Softball, where she undoubtedly otherwise would have been a major star with all the tools.

Aunt Ann and Mom

On another of those train trips, when I must have been about nine, I remember my sister getting our grandmother to pack us some leftover country-fried steak and chicken so we could eat what she called "cowboy style" on the train.  Darlene had watched enviously as an African-American family ate a picnic of fried foods on the way there and wanted us to have our own feast on the trip back.  It was as delicious as imagined, because Grandmother was a terrific cook, as was our mother.

In any case, flying wasn't considered a serious option back in the 1960's when gas prices were cheap and commercial air travel was still a relatively new phenomenon for average folks.

In 2019, however, flying seemed the logical way to cross the country for us when we decided we should visit my Aunt Ann in February after she confronted some serious medical conditions.

Wes and Aunt Ann

Aunt Ann said she was in no condition to entertain visitors at that point and asked us to delay until May, which we did, and I'm happy to report that she has indeed recovered with vitality.

It would have been possible to fly to Montgomery Regional Airport, but we found it considerably easier and less expensive to fly roundtrip to Atlanta on Delta Airlines, arriving at night, and then get a rental car and airport area hotel.

Our seats on Delta seemed to have more legroom than on American Airlines, and the fact that they had a great selection of free movies we could view on our personal seatback monitors rather than watching on our smartphones confirmed this to be a good choice.

I selected 2019's Academy Award Winning movie, "Green Book," not knowing too much about it other than it beat out "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "A Star Is Born," which were excellent.

With lots of heart and big dollops of humor, it proved to be the perfect movie to watch flying to Atlanta.  I don't want to drop any spoilers --- including which actor plays the working-class driver, which came as a total shock to me when they ran the credits at the end, as I am a fan of his other acting work, too --- but I'll embed the trailer below.

It was a good reminder of how things were in this country sixty or so years ago, not so much in a universal sense but anecdotally in a way that's relatable.

Great Granddad David Ledbetter and My Cousin Ronald

Where I grew up in Westminster, there weren't any African-Americans (and only a few Asian-Americans, for that matter), but in 1965, the Watts Riots on our TV screens made it clear that not far down the road there were indeed other areas, and they could be hotbeds of unrest.

In Alabama, on the other hand, there seemed to be almost as many black folks as whites, though for the most part we only passed by their ramshackle houses and noted them in the yards.

And lest you think my grandparents lived in palatial luxury on a plantation, keep in mind that the Civil War pretty much devastated any old wealth that might have been.  No, the house in which my mother was literally born was not a mansion.

It didn't have indoor plumbing, unless you count a hand pump for well water by the kitchen sink.  We would take baths in a wash tub on the porch, using water heated on the wood stove on which meals were cooked.  There was an outhouse that was moved to different spots occasionally, and "a pot to pee in" available to avoid going out in the dark yard at night.

Granddaddy and his Children

As I recall, there were about a half-dozen lightbulbs, strung together by exposed wire.  Walking over the plank flooring in the living room made dishes rattle in the kitchen cupboard.  No, it wasn't modern, but it was always clean and usually smelled delicious, like farm-grown meals, desserts --- Aunt Ann told me that after rationing of sugar in World War II, Granddaddy always bought giant bags of sugar so they would never do without again --- or coffee that was heated on the stove top.

Sometimes, a few black people would come to the farm to trade with Granddaddy or buy some stuffed animals or kiln-fired ceramics that my grandmother made after she found a bit of free time when her kids all left home and a few prepared foods most of us take for granted took away some of the burden of preparing meals from scratch.

Wes and Cousin Angie in her Modern Kitchen

Generally, however, the family farm and the houses where my cousins lived were pretty isolated, so we mostly just kept among ourselves.  I didn't have too much actual interaction with African-Americans --- or anyone outside the family except the Treadwells who lived across the street from the farm --- when we'd go there.

In California schools and on TV, however, I regularly heard that people in the deep south were terribly cruel to "colored people," as used to be the politically correct term, as indicated by the well-regarded NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).  That cruelty didn't  fit with what I saw firsthand.

Were there occasionally some unnecessary disparaging remarks?  Yes, there were, but that was true in California as much as in Alabama.

Something I appreciated in "Green Book" was the ability to capture that nuance rather than using a sledge hammer.  I don't think it is too much of a spoiler to say that an underlying theme of the movie is that once we become truly acquainted with people of different backgrounds, we often find mutual respect.

I know that when I began working nights as a custodian with African-Americans including Ronnie, a young man four days younger than me who lived in Compton, we soon became close friends through sharing the differences of the cultures in which we had been raised.

When Ron and I got together years later, we found his son had become an accountant, which is what I had been studying in college, and my son had become a musical director for movies, a subject that Ronnie talked about passionately when we took breaks while working on that crew together.

Cousin Steve, Brooks & Darlene, Angie & Steve, Wes and Aunt Ann

Unlike in our vacations a half decade ago, on this trip to Alabama, my family went out to several restaurants this trip where we enjoyed great Southern treats like catfish and hush puppies, country fried steak and pulled pork sandwiches. We encountered many African-Americans, and my cousins were as likely to say "yes, ma'am" or hold a door open for them as for anyone.

Are there still virulent racists and KKK members in the South?

According to TV, yes there are, but they don't seem any more prevalent than Skinheads would be in the West or Northeast.

In a tip of the hat to television, let me say that because of TV in our living rooms, along with movies and social media, the differences between cultures has shrunk appreciably in recent decades, making fuller assimilation easier.