The Gordons of Tallahassee
by
LaVerne Gordon Goodridge
with
Sarah Gordon Weathersby
© 2008 by LaVerne Gordon Goodridge
All rights reserved.
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
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FOREWORD
Family stories are easily lost, especially in these times when children leave home and move far and wide from the place where it all began. Family reunions are times when the old stories may be repeated, but the young ones often don’t listen. Some stories are never retold because of embarrassment or feelings of shame, and the failure to recognize that regardless of how dour our circumstances may have been, that was where we came from. Even our mixed heritage should be a source of our strength.
My siblings and I often heard the stories of our grandmother, Mattie. My sister LaVerne, as the oldest had the foresight to write down the story as told by our Mother before she died in 1958. LaVerne gave us all a typed copy that in my case was read and filed in a drawer of assorted family documents.
LaVerne went further in writing her own story of growing up as the first child of Robert and Georgia Gordon. She worked on it nearly fifty years as she remembered bits and pieces of all the places they lived and the churches Daddy served in his ministry through Georgia, Florida, West Virginia, and Virginia.
As the years passed, LaVerne developed decreasing patience with her computer, and declining memory of the names of people and places, until I took it upon myself to intervene. I hijacked her manuscript with the intention of crafting it into a story to be passed on to our progeny.
I found, however, the story needed no crafting, but it was missing the ending; I hadn’t been born yet. I called on my brothers to fill in the gaps to get us to Petersburg where I was born. Their tales of growing up as four brothers who followed their big sister, tales of adventure and mischief, were their story, not LaVerne’s. I wanted to keep LaVerne’s voice. No one else could have told of the “halcyon period” of our parents. No one else could express Mother’s motives for marrying “that yellow man.”
And so begins the Saga of the Gordons of Tallahassee.
S.G.W
Georgia’s Story
Crying Holy unto the Lord,
Crying Holy unto the Lord,
I've been introduced to the Father and the Son
And I ain't no stranger now.
A plaintive voice rose from the packed gallery. It began as a barely audible hum. It gradually rose and finally broke loose spilling as a flood unleash ing all of the broken dreams, and sorrows, and despair, and lost hope and probably an unconscious realization that the end was near.
In the spring of 1930 the little people who thought of the “Crash” as a headline were reluctantly realizing that the creeping economic sickness would soon envelope them and they were searching for reassurance in worship and the familiar revival. The church was the only refuge in this “vast, evil city” that was faintly reminiscent of the life these people left in the small towns and on the farms of Georgia and Florida, so the two-week revival, now coming to its climax had been a rousing emotional, success if not a financial one.
Bethel AME Church was filled to capacity with its cooks, maids, wash-women, boarding house keepers, ditch diggers, stevedores, porters, bellhops, and a smattering of the “upper class”-- the secretaries and executives of the insurance company, the news paper people and a few teachers. The women resplendent in their Sunday-go-to -meeting cocktail party finery and the men in unaccustomed suits, white shirts and ties fanned continuously to ease the heat of this very warm April Sunday that portended another hot, sticky Jacksonville summer.
As the strains of “Crying Holy” filtered softly and mournfully through the almost emotionally spent church of worshippers, the new members slowly filed for ward and took their places across the front of the church facing the congrega tion to be welcomed through the Right Hand of Fellowship. Before the choir could begin to sing, this voice broke forth touching the souls of a passionate people. Bethel was not usually a shouting church so a sea of black, brown and tan faces turned indignantly and looked in wondering silence toward the gallery and my mother, Mattie Clayton.
Mama rose from her seat to the wide-eyed amazement of her sister Fanny and as if propelled by the unseen, she went down the steps to the vestibule, entered the church and walked toward the pulpit still singing. The affected reserve of the congregation, already penetrated, faded and the secret sorrows and apprehensions of each found expression in joining her in song.
It was a few months later when I was with Mama during her final illness that I heard the story. She was still a little bewildered by her behavior even after all of these weeks.
“I shouted, Hon,” she said, “I don't know what on earth came over me,” I was as astonished as Mama and Aunt Fanny had been. Now, if it had been Aunt Fan ny none of us would have given it a second thought. To Aunt Fanny the principle enjoyment of the church service was to get happy and shout.
Why did she do it? - My poor Mama. I thought it inconceivable that my Mama who was so mild mannered, who had borne everybody's troubles, who got even less, at least it seemed so, could have projected herself out of obscurity while in a church so far from her home in the red hills of Georgia.
Why, I have asked myself over and over again in these years since her death, did she live? Why did she who always somehow provided a refuge for others, never, after years of hope and planning and hard work have a refuge to call her own?
Even after death she is a constant solace and inspiration to me. I have dreamed of her often, though with diminishing frequency, through these years es pecially in my moments of despair, and they have been many. Often, I have awakened from a dream of her, sobbing as if my heart would break and saying, “My poor Mama, my poor Mama.”
If I can find a reason for her all too short sojourn on this earth, it must be from those people whose lives she touched for she was surely one of those chosen to “Feed My Sheep.”
Mama didn't remember her own mother, Maria Chandler Hamilton. She died when Mama was very small leaving eleven children. Her twin babies survived her only a few months. In those days of precarious child birth, a strong virile man often outlasted one or two wives. So it was with Grandpa Hamilton, It wasn't long af ter Grandma's death that he married Miss Laura and brought her home to tend his house and mother his brood. Miss Laura was a “big red woman” just as Grandma had been.
Grandpa was a farmer as were his sons after him. His rows of cotton stretched as far as the eye could see. This was his major crop. In the spring they made a blanket of pink blossoms which turned a tired green in the hot Georgia summer sun and then to snowy white as the pecan trees outlining the fields began to show prom ise of a fruitful autumn.
To Grandpa and his older children that snowy expanse meant long backbreaking hours of plowing, hoeing, fighting the insects and picking. The land had yet to be worn out and the harvests were plentiful.
A few years ago I went back to Sparta and found the old farm almost completely claimed by the red clay, eroded and producing scraggly weeds, a mute reproach to poor farming technique and years of neglect. The big rambling house was still standing beneath the chinaberry trees, unpainted and weather beaten. The long porch which separated the kitchen from the house was crumbling. Grandpa's third wife, then nearing ninety had been taken to the city by her grandchildren, who had long since realized the futility of trying to wrest an existence from the clay.
In 1888, this ghost ridden house which now groaned and complained when the wind whistled through her aching joints, was young, vibrant and alive, loving, and pleased to add Miss Laura's three children to her ample but now overflowing bosom.
Miss Laura wasn't by nature an affectionate woman and regarded her new charges as a necessary inconvenience. She was, however, efficient and soon had the house showing a woman’s presence again. They all quickly made adjustments as there was always work to do -- clothes and dishes to wash, water to carry from the well, wood to cut, meals to prepare, cows to milk, chickens and stock to feed, eggs to gather, butter to churn, clothes to sew, night glasses to empty, lamp shades to clean, wicks to trim, fences to mend, meat to smoke, vegetables and fruit to pick and can and all of the endless work in the fields. So every able bodied child and adult was expected to do his share either in the field or at the house. When cotton picking time came, feeding the extra hands became a tremendous undertaking. Miss Laura solved it by having them eat in shifts without washing the plates. Being among the younger chil dren, Mama was always in the second shift.
“Why ain't you eating Mattie?”
“Don't want it.”
“Why don't you want it?” Very indignantly. “Ain’t it good enough for you?”
“My plate ain’t clean.”
Very angrily, “You scornful devil, if you don't eat that you don't get anything.”
This set the pattern of Mama's life for years to come. The quiet defiance of this little girl seemed a threat to Miss Laura's control of her household and she determined from that moment to break her spirit. So began Mama's years of loneliness.
Mama's older sister Willie, to whom she clung during these difficult days, fed her when Miss Laura wasn't looking and pleaded with her to try to pretend to do as Miss Laura said. But that quiet; honest strength that was to be her bulwark in the long night that was her life would not be assuaged. Willie was killed by light ening when Mama was seven.
One night Grandpa noticed how subdued and listless Mama had become and asked why.
“I’m hungry.”
“Hungry?” he roared. “Much something t'eat there is round here and you hungry. What you talking bout chile? Laura!! What Mattie talking bout? She say she hungry.”
“Mattie had her supper but she wouldn't eat it. All I can do is fix it,” she said angrily.
“My plate was dirty,” said Mama, tearfully.
Grandpa was a stern and loving father but remote because the problems of having three sets of children in the same house confused him so he solved them by avoiding them. He was too grateful to Miss Laura to risk offending her. After all it was a chore toting enough water for the needs of the house from the well and there were many people to feed, and what's a little dirt? Everybody has to eat a peck before he dies. But he did admonish Miss Laura to see that his children were well fed and repeatedly insisted that they all be sent to school.
At that, Miss Laura, sensing a victory but just to make sure, burst into tears and said she was doing the best she could. With so many children and one on the way she didn't see how she could do any better. The tears did their job well and Grandpa gathered his children around him and told them what a wonderful person Miss Laura was, and that they should do all they could to help her. The next day when Grandpa went to the field, Mama got a beating. From that day she kept her troubles to herself.
There was never a shortage of food on the farm but there was often a serious shortage of money for the necessities that couldn't be grown. However, Miss Laura was a very enterprising woman so during the slack farm seasons, she and the girls sewed piece work at home for a factory in town. Mama and Aunt Sally had to learn to sew when they were very young and fortunately so for Mama. When she was still a little girl in school, Miss Laura cut out her dresses and gave them to her to complete. Mama spent many agonizing hours trying often unsuccessfully to fit the pieces together in the right place. She eventually became quite competent after being humiliated in school by her meager, shoddy and ill fitting wardrobe to such an extent she stopped going in the fifth grade. Miss Laura insisted on the others going to school as Grandpa had requested, but she made no effort to encourage Mama to continue.
Aunt Sally and Uncle Buddy got along with Miss Laura just fine. They both knew how to snatch the most from life without regard for the consequences and they both knew how to temper their relationship with people with enough deceit and flattery to make the giver glad he gave, even though he knew he was being taken.
Uncle Buddy's methods with Miss Laura were even a bit more devious. He, very early, was a miniature replica of the man he was to become. He had a way with the ladies and a devil-may-care philosophy. He hid, not too well, his ra scality behind his highly infectious smile. Miss Laura's affection for this virile youth was hardly maternal and he spent long hours in her room, routed occasionally when Grandpa returned unexpectedly early from his lodge meeting.
When Buddy decided to marry Julia, a refined and well bred black (in the true sense) girl of good family, Miss Laura became very upset and raved as a woman betrayed by her lover. She said she would see Buddy George in hell before she would see him married to that “black devil.” Buddy George married as he wished, but his life went on unaltered.
As she grew older and understood what was going on, Mama viewed this behavior with silent disgust, and the relationship between the wife and the oldest daughter at home became more strained. As the days, weeks and years passed, the unbeara ble became the usual and the senses became dulled and life went on.
Uncle Steve's free and reckless spirits wouldn't be bridled and he left home one spring day while in his middle teens to live with a woman in town. Steve was too straightforward to get along with Miss Laura and this was his way of escaping an intolerable situation. Even though he was very young, the family made only feeble attempts to break up this unhealthy alliance, as his going helped to ease the tension that developed as the boys grew older. Steve knew well his sister's plight and thought of her with growing concern as the summer wore into fall. He knew she could get the little soup tomatoes, carrots and other vegetables from the garden as long as the weather remained warm, but with the frost would come that agonizing constant hunger relieved only when Miss Laura was in a charitable mood. He timed his first trip home after hog killing when the smoke house was full. Miss Laura kept all of the farm keys on a chain at her waist, and refused to re linquish them to this farm boy playing Robin Hood very convincingly. He grabbed the axe and waved it menacingly and knocked the door down as she stood wringing her hands and screaming at him hysterically. After that he came periodically and took out enough to last Mama for days and cooked it for her; he wasn't afraid of Miss Laura. Mama always got a beating when he left but she always looked for ward to his forays with grateful anticipation for it meant a full stomach for several days. She kept her food in a bag and took it with her to the fields, tossing it ahead of her as she chopped cotton. Often she had to brush the ants away before she could eat.
When the misery became acute between Steve’s visits, Mama sometimes visited her Grandmother, who lived in a shack in the white folk’s yard. There she got the love, attention and food she craved but that didn't last long for the old lady was even then, dying of cancer.