By Norman Cain, December 3, 2020 — Each year beginning at my birth and lasting until I was 16 years old, I spent time at my maternal grandparents’ farm in South Carolina. I encountered extended stays during the summers after school was recessed until September between the ages of 9 and 16. At ages 16 and 17 when I was a junior and senior in high school, I spent summers as a worker at the Joseph and Betty Harlan Camp in the Pocono Mountains. I also spent the summers of 1961 at the camp. I had missed two summers in South Carolina. So, I made a visit there during the Christmas vacation period of 1961. I spent the next two summers working in the industrial town of Middletown, Connecticut, where members of both the parochial, the patriarchal, and matriarchal sides of my family resided.
During the earlier part of the summer of 1964, I was in summer school at the college I attended. When the summer session there was over, instead of returning to Philadelphia, I decided would visit South Carolina, where I had not been save the Christmas visit for six years. Homesickness for, as I called it, my summer home, had overwhelmed me. I took an evening bus from Beaufort, West Virginia to Florence, South Carolina, where I arrived at 12 p.m.
By 1:30 p.m., I was at my destination, 20 miles from Florence, South Carolina at Pamplico, South Carolina. After having debarked from the local bus, I pulled my rural steamer truck across the highway and onto the pavement where several good old boys sat on two ancient white-only benches; benches that had been the seats where the good old boys and the white sections of town for as long as I could remember. One of the benches’ occupants demanded in a concerned Southern-based dialect, “Boy, who are you?” Having been partially raised in the South, I knew how to conduct myself without sacrificing my manhood. I responded, “I am the grandson of Lexington and Virginia Cusack,” and a smile appeared on the face of the questioner.
“Uncle Bubba? I’m Junior!” he proclaimed. Although the questioner evidently had an odd sense of respect for my grandparents, Southern protocol dictated that African American seniors be addressed as “Uncle” and “Aunt.” At that time, a black man who was a mechanic and relative of my grandmother approached the bench, recognized me, and extended a warm greeting. The good old boy told him that I was Uncle Bubba and Aunt Ginia’s grandson, and promptly told him to take me to my grandmother; that my grandfather had died ten years earlier.
“I can’t do that now. I got a car I’m working on,” was his reply. The good old boy’s anger exploded.
“You black n-word,” spewed like a dragon flame from his mouth. “I said take this boy to see his grandmother.” Without hesitation, my distant relative put me in his truck and began the journey that he had been ordered to take. When we crossed the tracks into the black section of town, he stopped at Aunt Sully’s* restaurant—an institution I wrote about previously in the Best Day blog—where I was greeted with love. My chauffeur pretended that taking me into the country to see my grandmother was his idea. I was only able to spend less than 24 hours with my grandmother because my parents told them to put me on the earliest train or bus to Philadelphia.
Ten years later, after having visited South Carolina once during that period, I again became homesick for my Southern home, so I left Philadelphia for South Carolina. This time, I was able to spend a wonderful month and a half with my grandmother. Each morning during the week, I would ride into town with her. She would go to the senior center and I would hang out. Generally, I would not ride back with her on the bus — I would hang out in the town and walk back to the farm later. One evening, I decided to take a shortcut that I had remembered taking in my youth. When I reached that bit of land where my shortcut was to begin, a white man approached me and bluntly asked, “Boy, what are you doing on my land? There’s your road.”
I replied, “When I was a child I would visit my grandparents, Lexington Cusack and Virginia Cusack, and I would take this shortcut.”
“Uncle Bubba and Aunt Ginia?” was his reply, a smile embraced his face. He told me the exact route of the shortcut. Perhaps if I had not mentioned the names of my respected grandparents, I would have found myself on the chain gang. The morays* of the South were peculiar. There is a distinct line of demarcation between the races. Luckily, I was aware of that line and have hopes of its permanent disappearance.
That was an experience I knew what to say and how to say because this was in ’60 and I could have been in a great deal of trouble. This was during the period when I was in West Virginia, I was heavily involved for years in the Civil Rights Movement. The thing was that there is a peculiar line and at a certain age white and black kids did not play together anymore, and blacks and whites would not, in the car, one race would be in the back and the other would be up front. But then, I can remember large farmers who actually had plantations would come and sit with my grandfather, and when his barn was burning down when he was chewing tobacco, before you knew it, people from miles around got there faster than them from the urban fire department, white and black putting that fire out. So, in some kind of way it was peculiar. People, in a sense, of different races had that kind of respect, but there was always that line of demarcation.
Part Two
This may have been the second time when I went and I got there on a Sunday and I walked to town and I went to what had used to be a striving juke joint, but the town was almost a ghost town at the time. When I went in that Sunday, I noticed all of these guys, they were drinking and whatnot, I was a drinker at the time so I asked for a beer and they said that they didn’t serve beer. These were young fellas, and everybody else was drinking beer. At first, I asked for some alcohol and they said that they didn’t have it. So I asked for a soda and they said that they didn’t serve soda, so evidently they were being smart. And one guy got smart with me and of course, I was young at the time, about 33, and I told him we could settle this like men if he came outside.
But at that particular [place], they knew who my lineage was, who my people was, because I told them. Because everybody knew everybody there. So when they were just about ready to go outside, two guys came in, older guys, and they probably had not seen me for at least 12 to 13 years and they recognized who I was and evidently, these guys had the utmost of respect, and they grabbed me and hugged me, and after that, I became friends with the guys who were giving me a hard way to go.
So what happens is when you get into a Southern situation like that, folk will be able to look at your physical features and know what family you belong to. So that has always been an interesting facet of my thought because here in Philadelphia, and I’m avid with my genealogy, I know that I have relatives, and they might be right in my area but I do not know who they are, because once you get into an urban area, after a couple of generations there’s a stretch. There’s a big stretch. But once you’re in that Southern area, most townspeople know your history — they can just look at you and they will know. So I’m very interested in that.