Monday, October 30, 2017

Remembering Alice




From left: Bud, Tommy, Ruby and Judy Dryden
circa 1954, the year before Alice's death.

Yesterday I wrote a post about Alice Scott, the only black person who lived in the white part of Auxvasse, Missouri, my hometown, when I was a boy. Alice was our next-door neighbor. Nearly 1,000 people have already read my post and more than a dozen have left comments on Facebook. (If you missed it, click http://thomasdryden.blogspot.com/2017/10/an-auxvasse-story-alice-scott.html)

Alice died when I was three so I barely remember her, but I’ve always felt like I knew her because of the countless stories my mother and older siblings, Jerry and Judy, told me about her. To write yesterday’s post, I relied on notes I jotted down years ago as my mother, who had a memory like a steel trap and could remember every detail Alice ever told her, related the story of Alice’s life as Alice had told it to her. I always intended to write about Alice and I’m glad I finally did because her story is one that needs to be told, especially in times like these.

Judy, nine years older than I, remembers Alice well and loved her dearly. She was 13 when Alice died. After reading yesterday’s post, Judy sent me an email. I wrote back that I’d like to publish it as a follow-up because it’s a loving tribute that Alice deserves from one of the few people who remember her.

Judy says Alice was "the sweetest, kindest, most considerate person" she ever knew. I can say the same about my sister whose sense of justice and dedication to racial equality has never wavered. A card-carrying member of the NAACP, Judy has, for almost as long as I remember, attended marches, sit-ins and meetings to show her support for Civil Rights. I’ve always joked that she is embarrassed she was born white because, whenever there’s a racial incident, and such incidents are occurring with increasingly alarming frequency in Missouri where she lives, she comes down on the side of African-Americans.

Having read her email about growing up with Alice a constant presence in her young life, I now better understand her commitment. If you enjoyed reading about Alice, I believe you’ll find Judy's account fascinating. 


Tom:

Your post about Alice brings up all kinds of memories.  

Barring none, Alice was the sweetest, kindest, most considerate person I have ever known.  She also was the best cook.  She entertained lavishly and could make the daintiest appetizers! They were so good that, when I was a child, I would heap my plate high and be full before the entree was presented.  Alice made the food for almost all the bridal and baby showers in Auxvasse and hosted them in her home.

Although she could not read and write, she could cook anything without a recipe. To get one of her recipes, it was necessary to watch her make something and to guess the amounts of the ingredients that she used.  She had no measuring cups or spoons and just seemed to know how much of something to use.

Alice had friends from everywhere and mom used to read her mail to her. When I was five years old, she received a package from California containing a jar of olives.  Stores in Auxvasse did not sell them.  She offered me one and I thought it was delectable.  When Alice went uptown that day, she returned to find her olives gone and I had a tummy ache.  It is the only thing that I ever remember stealing and I won't forget what mom told me about it.

Alice's house and ours were interchangeable as far as I was concerned. I would go over and sleep in her bed.  She always kept me on Saturday night while Mom worked at the store. Frequently we would go uptown and she would send me into the tavern to buy us hamburgers, which we ate outside because Alice was not allowed in the tavern and everybody knew that a "lady" would not go to the tavern anyway.  From there, we went to the movies. (Believe it or not Auxvasse, in the 1940s, had a movie theater.) We always got popcorn and sat in the colored section.  

For a short time Auxvasse even had a drive-in theater. It was across the street from Alice's back yard so that we could sit there and watch.  It showed mostly Laurel & Hardy and Roy Rogers & Dale Evans movies. There were many (WWII) war scenes. Then came the cartoons, which I loved, followed by trailers of movies to come. Then the lion roared and the MGM symbol would appear.  

I was always amazed by what Alice was not allowed to do. She had never driven a car so she had to take the Greyhound to go from Auxvasse to Mexico or Fulton, the two largest towns that were close. Alice was always relegated to the back of the bus and it didn't make sense that she could not sit with me.

Alice worked incredibly hard and most people who knew her respected her for her graciousness, hospitality and intelligence. I had such a profound admiration for her.  She always had the best garden in town, both flowers and vegetables, and she canned and shared bouquets with the church and all of the people she knew who were ill or in mourning.

On the other side of our house lived another neighbor, an old maid named Miss Lou Henderson, who took in a boarder, a Mr. Wayne. Mom said that Alice and Miss Lou were total opposites.  Alice always thought about how she could make any situation better.  Miss Lou always thought about how she could exploit a situation for herself.  

Miss Lou would come by at least once a day to borrow a cup of something or other.  She asked for all our old clothes and leftovers.  Mom subscribed to some magazines and two daily papers.  Miss Lou would come over each morning requesting them.  Dad worked incredibly hard and woke up each morning before 6 am.  The only day he tried to take off was Sunday when he didn't have to be at the store by 7 a.m. Mom always wanted him to not set an alarm and to try to sleep until 8 on Sunday mornings.  It never failed that Miss Lou came over at 6:15 to get the paper and to get change for a dollar so she would have a coin to drop in the Sunday school collection basket.  

Miss Lou was a very religious Presbyterian and was appalled that my parents had not yet picked a church for our family so she took it upon herself to take me to her Sunday school and church and taught me the catechism. She discussed the fire and brimstone that she believed was at the core of Christianity.

Alice, on the other hand, attended the same church regularly and nearly always "boarded" the preacher free of charge.  She was the first to take a meal to the bereaved or to nurse someone who was ill.  She spoke positively of everyone and never complained.  Miss Lou did not treat Alice with respect.

The earliest tragedy that I can remember was when Alice got breast cancer and could not be treated locally. The nearest oncologist was in Jefferson City and his name was Dr. Sugarbaker.  He was a bigger-than-life doctor who became world renowned for his research and surgical skills. (For more about his family, read Fugitive Spring by poet and author Deborah Digges, his daughter.)

Doctor Sugarbaker was glad to have Alice as a patient.  He removed her breast and she lived 11 years after that. It was unheard of at that time for cancer patients to live that long.

Later in her life the cancer recurred and I would ride along when mom drove Alice to Jefferson City. Alice was not allowed in the restaurants and I would be sent in to get sandwiches for us to eat in the car or at a picnic table alongside the highway.  Dr. Sugarbaker continued to treat her.  He and his wife had nine children and occasionally on Sunday he would drive with his wife and children all the way from Jefferson City to visit Alice.  She would always have cake and lemonade for them and usually sent them back with one of her delicious pies or cakes.

Many people in Auxvasse didn't get to know Alice and some said disparaging things about her because of her color. It made me angry and I didn't and still don't understand it.  I remember thinking that, from what Miss Lou told me that Jesus said in the Bible, if Alice didn't go to heaven, there was no chance for the rest of us.

I could continue forever about the joy and the poignancy of Alice's life, her last days in the nursing home and death, but it saddens me.  

I'll always remember sitting with her on her "stoop" in the backyard while she was picking out hickory nuts or walnuts or snapping green beans and listening to her tell stories.

It is as close to heaven as I've ever been.

Sunday, October 29, 2017

An Auxvasse story: Alice Scott


I grew up in Auxvasse, Mo., population 507 as of the 1950 census, and was born in November of the following year. Next month I’ll turn 66.

Over the years I’ve written dozens of stories about Auxvasse and I could easily write dozens more. In fact, I could and should and someday just may write a book about growing up in a place whose residents even today don't know whether they're Midwestern or Southern. While central Missouri is geographically the former, it is sociologically very much the latter.

Auxvasse is in Callaway County, one of four counties comprising an area known as Little Dixie. The area was settled in the 1820s by tobacco farmers from Virginia and North Carolina. Thanks to the Missouri Compromise of 1819, perhaps the most ill-advised bill ever passed by Congress, Missouri was a slave state so many of the farmers brought slaves with them.

Growing up in rural Missouri, seeing on the map that my home state was smack-dab in the center of the country, I thought of myself as a Midwesterner. Once I left for northern cities, I was surprised to learn that people I met assumed I was a Southerner, not only because of where I was from but because of my accent, which I immediately made a conscious effort to lose but lapse back into when I've had a couple of drinks. I still don't know what the hell I am. At this point it doesn't matter but it would be nice to know for sure. But I digress.

When I was a boy, Auxvasse was split almost in two by the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio railroad tracks. White folks lived east of the tracks. African-American residents lived west of the tracks. 

I'm telling you all this because it's germane to the story you are about to read.

Alice Scott was our next-door neighbor. She died in 1955 when I was three, so I don’t remember a whole lot about her. I recall sitting with her as she was working in her garden and handing her clothespins as she was hanging laundry on her clothesline. My most vivid memory of Alice is going to visit her in the hospital shortly before she died, a white-haired old lady in a wheelchair.

Most of what I know about Alice I learned from my mother. Mom had a photographic memory and, up to the day she died at 102, could describe in astonishing detail events and people from fifty, sixty, even ninety years ago, and the tales she had heard them tell. While I take pride in my ability to remember things friends say they have forgotten, I certainly didn't inherit the kind of memory mom had. That’s why I want to write down the story of Alice now, before time takes it away from me, because it’s a tale that needs to be told.

Like most whites in Auxvasse, my family lived on the east side of the tracks. So did Alice, the only black person in the white part of town.

Alice thought she was born in the 1870s – she was never sure how old she was so it might have been the late 1860s – near McCredie, a small farming community south of Auxvasse. Her mother had almost certainly been a slave. She never knew her father..

One day when Alice was about four her mother was walking down a country road with her six or seven children when a Doctor Tate rode up and swooped Alice up onto his horse.

“Can I have this one?” he asked Alice’s mother.

Alice’s mother said yes. Unmarried and dirt poor as she was, that would be one less mouth for her to feed. So off the doctor rode with Alice, leaving her family – she never saw them again – in the dust.

That night, the doctor’s wife – the “old missus” Alice called her – placed Alice, who was crying for her mama, on a pallet next to her bed and held her hand.

For the next 60 or so years, Alice waited on the Tates hand and foot. She cleaned their house, hoed their garden, washed their clothes, cooked their meals and, on Sunday, attended their church where she always sat in the back row by herself – she wouldn’t dare sit with white folks who wouldn’t have allowed her to anyway. Alice never socialized with other black people. Working and living in the Tate household, she never had the chance to meet any.

One by one the Tates died off until only Miss Sally, who never married, was left. Sally sold the farm, bought a house on the east side of Auxvasse, and moved there with Alice.

When Miss Sally died, she willed the house to the Auxvasse Presbyterian Church, which she had joined and Alice attended, sitting alone in the back row as she always had, but directed that Alice should be allowed to live in it until her death. To support herself, Alice, who had never learned to read or write, took in laundry, dressed chickens, baked cakes and, on Sundays, made dinner for the Presbyterian preacher, a young man just out of seminary named Joe Mullen.

In 1955, when Alice died of cancer, Joe Mullen, by now a prominent figure in the church, returned to Auxvasse to preach her funeral.

Church elders had planned to bury Alice in the town’s black cemetery but, not wanting to anger Joe, who knew as well as they did that Alice had never been exposed to her own people and wouldn’t have felt comfortable spending eternity in that unfamiliar turf, buried her in the white cemetery instead. It seemed like the Christian thing to do. At the time, Alice was the only black person in the cemetery. I don't know if that is still the case today. Her gravestone, shown above, lists only the date of her death.

For years afterward, my mother made Alice’s orange cake recipe every Christmas. It was dense like a fruitcake, with a gooey orange glaze that, to my unsophisticated palette, tasted bitter. Mom never served it without retelling the story of Alice. As a boy, I thought it was just about the saddest story I had ever heard.

Sixty-some years later, it still is.


Wednesday, October 18, 2017

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