August's Bits & Pieces

"Obama doesn't realize I need a missile launcher to protect my family...Obama was born in the darkest depths of mordor...Obama won't let gays vote..." That's why I'm Voting Tea Party! 


22.1% of women and 7.4% of men in the US report victimization by an intimate partner
Look to End Abuse Permanently (LEAP)


Yes Means Yes Blog!


"Illegal alien felons" on killing sprees, gay porn, banning bottled water, "San Francisco is out of control." Abel Maldonado, you're crazy!

Pakistan’s Floods: A Crisis of Empathy, Amnesty International

Meg Whitman: Putting the A in Absentee

Corky

A character sketch by Trevor Scott Barton 


Author's Note: The setting of my story is a small farm in Clarendon County, S.C. from 1947 until 1954. The narrator is Carter, a nine-year-old African American boy who lives on that farm with his brother Carver, a five-year-old genius with an inquiring mind and a photographic memory. The action centers on a lawsuit filed by an old farmer in Clarendon County, Levi Pearson, against the county board of education on behalf of African American children for a school bus to help them get to school. That lawsuit became Briggs v. Elliott which became Brown v. Board of Education which became a cornerstone of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. In my story you will meet Carter, Carver, their Momma and Poppa, Corky (the thirty-something year old town drunk who is brilliant and articulate when sober and stupid and unintelligible when drunk and whose Mother was secretary to Governor Strom Thurmond), Junior (the sixty-something year old giant of a man who has the mind and heart of a little child), and Lillian (based on the person Lillian Smith who was arguably the clearest voice from the white folks during that moment in time). You will also find guest appearances from Larry Doby, Septima Clark, Mojeska Simkins, Strom Thurmond, J. Waties Waring, Thurgood Marshall, and Flannery O'Connor...


“Hey li’l brothers,” Corky slurred as we stepped off the sidewalk to let him pass by on his bicycle.  A broken headlight dangled from two frayed wires, the once fiery red frame was faded by rain and sun and tarnished by rust and seasons, and spokes were missing from the wobbly wheels.  He smelled of old liquor, new sweat, and days without bath or change of clothes.  A lens on his glasses was cracked but he didn’t seem to notice.

“What’s happ’nin brother?”  He stopped and leaned unsteadily on one leg to greet the minister of the little Baptist mission for white folks across the railroad tracks.  He leaned too far and crashed to the ground with a thud and a moan. The bemused minister untangled him from the thicket of arms, legs and metal, lifted him  onto his feet, and brushed the red chalky dust and tiny jagged rocks from his shirt, pants, and skin.

“Corky, are you okay?  What in the world…?”

“No…nope…yep…yes, I’m okay.  Hey, where’re you off to?

“I’m goin’ to the noon Holy Week Service in town.  It’s at the First Baptist Church today.  Let’s park your bike.  You can come with me.“

“Well hell.  You Baptists go to church all the time.  Even on a Thursday.  You all must need it more than other folks do!”

“The services are for ev’rybody…Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians…ev’rybody.  I reckon we all need it!  Come on.  It’ll do us both good.

Hello there, boys.  I almost didn’t see you.  Come here.  Close your eyes.  Hold out your hands.”

We said hello to the minister, careful not to look him in the eyes as Momma and Poppa taught us to do with white folks.  He wore a blue shirt, ‘Dickies’ pants like the ones Poppa wore in the fields, and tattered black shoes.  This must have been his uniform because it was what he was wearing every time we saw him. His bespectacled eyes were circled by perfectly round lenses in wire frames that hooked around his ears and made him look more like a college professor than a new minister just out of minister training school and just starting ministering in our town.  We came to him, closed our eyes, held out our hands and felt the small, barrel shapes of the chewing gum they sold in big barrels at the counter of the S & H Green Stamp store on Main Street.  It was a store we couldn’t enter but that we knew well from the detailed stories of all the things inside by our white friends whose families were welcome to shop there.
“Thank you, sir!”

“You’re welcome.  Now you boys run on to where you’re going and do what you need to be doing.  Blow some bubbles along the way!”

The minister put his arm around Corky’s shoulders and they started up the road toward Main Street.  As they lumbered along side by side the midday sun sat high in the sky and cast their shadows straight down behind them.  A minister and the town drunk going to church together!  It was a sight to see.  We were finished with the chore Poppa gave us to do so there was time before we had to be home for lunch.

“Carver, I’ve never seen a drunk person go into a church before.  What ‘cha ‘spect’ll happ’n?  You reckon he’ll get struck by light’nin’?”

“I don’t know but I figure som’pin’ll happ’n.”

Carver was only five years old but he knew the scientific method like a seasoned scientist.  At home on the farm he was always leading me through the steps of his way of thinking.  We found that it helped us to think this way about people and events because it helped us work our way through our place and position in the world and ways of white folks.

“Well, we did the first step in the method.  We asked a question.”

“Let’s follow behind ‘em and see what happens.”


Finish reading here!