AS A CHILD I WAS SOMEWHAT aware of the differences between colored life and white life but it was not so much based on race, I thought is was just the way it was. I lived in the ghetto and white children lived in the suburbs. I'd seen the way they lived when a gang of us would take our shovels and ride the bus to the suburbs to shovel snow for a quarter a yard. Beautiful houses and yards and white kids who didn't have to shovel, just watched us from their windows do the work. The differences were magnified when we saw television and especially the commercials where white women dressed in bright clothes just to mop the beautiful floors in their beautiful homes, or stand at the door and wave goodbye to their men going off to work in suits and ties and wide brimmed felt hats. I thought the most beautiful houses in the world were those houses we shoveled snow from the 200 feet driveways in Shaker Heights. The houses, mansions, were huge white siding mansions with black Shutters on the windows; maybe one hundred windows, or so it seemed. The roofs were black asphalt shingles which set the house off even more than the dozens of trees, mostly pine, around the property. The lawns were so big you could play Hide the paddle, or It and never be found just hiding behind those massive trees. The grass, yes grass, in the yards looked like it had been carpeted with each blade the same height. In the winter the grass would be so white and pure looking you would think it was painted by Thomas Kinkade.
When I Was Little I Used to Be Colored
The Story of Life in a Real VillageBy Carl A. Benson Sr.AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Carl A. Benson Sr.
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4772-8541-1Chapter One
In The Beginning
WHEN I WAS LITTLE I USED TO BE COLORED. I know that because when I talk about my childhood with other Black people, guess what, it's similar to their childhood. So similar you'd think we were all related. But we could have been raised in Cleveland or Los Angeles and the experiences are nearly the same. I guess poor people have poor ways where ever they live. And why not, it was our only exposure at the time. When we were colored.
I knew we were colored because the old folks used to refer to ourselves as "colored". My grandmother would talk about "the colored man over there or the colored lady with the blue hat, or colored people ought to do this or that". Once in a while she would talk about the "colored only" signs in the south. But my grandmother was not fazed or intimidated by any of that stuff. She would drag us "chilren" on a streetcar or bus without paying a fare and tell us to "gwon sit down". Even after the protests of the drivers Mama would just ignore them and pay one fare for herself and sit down next to us.
As a child, being colored didn't feel bad or different, it was what we were. And as long as we could have a scoop of orange sherbet in a cup once in a while, or a piece of candy occasionally, or a piece of sweet potato pie, being colored wasn't bad.
Cleveland was always grey. The sky never looked blue to me even when it was. I guess it was because in the part of town where we lived there were factories and steel mills near by and they kept the sky filled with smoke or other pollutants. When I went to visit my aunt on E. 31st street I could see the open flames from the coke mills burning 24 hours it seems.
Cleveland was like looking at an old black and white news reel every day. Our house was grey, all the cars were grey, the trees in our neighborhood were grey, and the children were grey. At least, that's the way it looked to me when I was a little boy. But as I grew older and ventured out to other neighborhoods, or to the once a year pilgrimage to the Cleveland Zoo, or Geauga Lake to the Weatherhead Annual Picnic for its workers, I would see that other parts of Cleveland were not grey like our neighborhood. But our neighborhood was a special place; a place where we could run around free from terror, or drugs, gangs or other outside influences that could cause a kid to develop bad habits.
Back in the forties and fifties we had a neighborhood. Just like Richard Pryor's drunk character said, it was a "neighborhood not a residential district." The cobblestone streets were laid out in numerical order. Ours happened to be E. 65th Street. Each street was separated by an alley, which served not only as a place to park your car, but for recreational purposes. We often played in the alley, and, the numbers people used it to play their illegal gambling games. Every now and then the police would raid a game and people would scatter like roaches in a cabinet when you turned a light on.
The houses were primarily wooden siding with front porches and back porches. Occasionally you would see a brick house, usually a two family house with a family upstairs and one downstairs. On our block there was a vacant lot halfway down the block which lent itself to a friendly softball game often.
To our detriment as kids, all of the neighbors knew all of the kids, and our parents. And often, a neighbor's call would precede your arrival at home where a parent would be waiting with a belt to "whup" you for something the neighbor had reported. Parents were grateful for the neighborhood lookouts and there was never a hint of litigation or threat of a fist fight for a neighbor dragging you home to report on your behavior. It often acted as a deterrent to us because we knew which neighbors would tell on us and we avoided doing anything questionable in those areas. You try this today and not only would you get sued, you will probably have to fight your way back home.
On the whole, the properties were pretty well maintained, even though most of them were not owned by the occupants. Some yards were fenced in and sported grass and shrubbery. Some yards had no grass and were usually where kids lived or played regularly. Our yard had no grass for as long as I can remember and was the gathering place for most of the neighborhood kids. Our yard was the ideal place to play. We had a big tree in the front yard, no grass so we could shoot marbles or play "chubby" there (Root a Peg or Mumbly Peg to some).There was a telephone pole on the side of the driveway which was perfect for Hide the Paddle. I can still hear the song we sang while leaning against the pole waiting for everyone to hide. It went "Last night and the night before, twenty-four robbers at my door. I got up to let them in, hit 'em in the head with a rolling pin. Ready or not here I come". Then, the count to ten. We would scatter and by the time the caller got to ten, there were no children in sight. There were so many hiding places in our two or three house area of play; you could never find all of the players. They were constantly running back to the pole before the caller could hit them with a paddle, or stick.
Chapter Two
PICTURE: THIS IS EAST 65TH STREET in Cleveland, Ohio where I was raised. This is our "village". The light post on the right is where we played Hide and Go Seek, Hide the Paddle, and It. Right in the middle of the street next to the post is where I had a fight with a kid from the next block over, and where he stuck me in the eye with a broken broom handle. We played stick ball, Set-Back and held track meets here. We also raised a PhD in Chemistry, several school teachers, an NCAA track hurdles champion, A Post Master of the Cleveland Branch of the U.S. Post Office, and me of course. If you look to the right sidewalk you can hear Mr. Bradley coming home on Saturday night, a little tipsy, singing, "It's a long way to Tipperary".
Our neighborhood was very colorful; we had very interesting families and characters up and down the block. All the way at the end of the street at the opposite direction as the picture shows was my best friend Nate. He lived by the gully at the end of the block that went down to the railroads tracks. The gully was an urban legend in itself having had the reputation that a killer lurked there. A story went around that a human head had been found there by children taking the shortcut through there on the way to school. We never knew who those children were incidentally but that never stopped us boys from using the shortcut while secretly looking for heads on the path down the gully.
The gully had a more useful purpose also. The coal trains that passed through there often dropped lumps of coal along the tracks and we would go down there and gather a bushel basket full to burn in our pot belly stoves in the winter. The trains would also drop pieces of iron or steel from the mills and we gathered them up for sale to the junk man.
Further up from the gully was a family I'll call the Harkins. It is said that Aaron Neville has the world's most beautiful voice, but the world never heard Eugene Harkins sing unfortunately. Eugene would lead all of the songs while we do wopped on the corner of 65th and Woodland. Still to this day I have never heard a more beautiful version of The Irish Lullaby sung by any professional, anywhere. Not even the Irish.
One of the most unique characteristics of our...
