I spent some of my childhood years out in the countryside of Middle Tennessee. Not in a regular-size little town, where there are several churches and grocery stores and banks and gas stations and a few schools. I lived in a community of farmers.
There were only seven one-of-each buildings in town. One grocery store, one gas station, one church, one bank, the Grange Hall, a drugstore and a metal-sided building that had been shuttered for years.
Every so often, they’d talk about maybe cleaning up the metal building, “git the ‘lectric cut back on” and turn it into a dance hall and serve beer. Anything else you wanted to drink, you could bring it with you. There would be something to do on the weekends and make a little money.
Any time they started getting serious about the project, Preacher Man, Sister Swann and the rest of the “holier-than-thou” ladies of the congregation would shoot the dance hall idea down. Ms. Swann was actually a teacher by day. When the last school bell rang, she turned into Sister Swann, a crusader for the Lord.
Ms. Swann was sweet on Preacher Man. Whether he was sweet on her was debatable. But she had a lot going for her. She played the organ at all church services, kept up with Preacher Man’s mail and bank deposits, and everyone agreed that Ms. Swann’s pies, hands down, were the highlight at all the church socials.
Every day but Sunday, Mr. Jenkins and a half-dozen other men sat around a potbelly stove in the back of Whiteside Drug Store and talked politics and sports, swapped knives, told war stories and fishing lies and repeated jokes to one another.
They were the little town’s self-appointed leaders. Once every few months, one of them would bring back up the dance hall project. All of them gave it a thumbs-up, and they’d start conceptualizing.
Somehow, Ms. Swann or one of her church sisters would catch wind of it and another emergency meeting would be called at the church right after school let out.
Preacher Man had no choice but to attend. He lived in the back of the church. If he didn’t show up, Ms. Swann came to fetch him. With that many of the good ladies of the church all upset about the proposed dance hall project, Preacher Man was forced to, once again, go have a reckoning with Mr. Jenkins and the boys.
I was there once, when Preacher Man appealed to them to forget about the dance hall. He told them that some of the guys would mess around and get drunk, start arguing over a gal and end up pulling a pistol. He said, “Fellers, somebody’s liable to get kilt.”
Like all the other times, the good ole boys reluctantly agreed with the pastor and went back to playing checkers.
Much to his adoring congregation’s delight, Preacher Man had, once again, saved the community from the devil. And, once again, he could expect to receive a slew of invitations to come to their homes for fabulous home-cooked meals.
The old-timers used to say, “They ain’t nothin’ bad you can say about Herbert.” Herbert was a black man who worked in the back room of Whiteside’s.
He made sure there was a box of saltines, a slab of baloney, cans of sardines, peanut butter and cucumber butter pickles available and a selection of soft drinks buried in the ice chest. Herbert made part of his living selling the drinks for a dime and cracker sandwiches with a pickle for 20 cents.
Throughout the day, he emptied ashtrays, shined shoes for a quarter and made sure the old-timers were comfortable. To say he was a concierge would be a stretch. But at the end of the day, as they headed out, the men dropped change into a fish bowl with Herbert’s name on it that sat up by the cash register.
They respected him as much as those times allowed them to. It was the 1950s. Shamefully, black people were treated like second-class citizens. It was a sad thing to watch happen.
When you’re 9 years old, before prejudice spills all over you and your heart is still pure, you see surprisingly better than adults how wrong certain things are. Witnessing someone you care for being mistreated simply because of the color of their skin is nauseating.
Mr. Whiteside and Herbert had grown up at the same time. They hadn’t been friends, but they saw each other around. It was hard not to in that little, not-much-to-it town. Everyone knew each other, whether they were white or black.
Their paths crossed again when they came back home from the war. Herbert went to work on Mr. Whiteside’s father’s farm. He never complained about all the work that was put on him, yet he was paid less than half of what the white men made for doing much less.
Mr. Whiteside used to tell the story about how his father slipped and severely broke his leg. Herbert heard him hollering for help and came running. He slung the old man on his back and carried him up to the house and then knelt at the old man’s bedside and prayed for his pain to go away.
Herbert had been long gone from the little place he grew up. After a few years of working for the Whiteside family, he moved up North and started making good money at an automobile plant just outside of Detroit. He found a place to live a few blocks away and walked to work.
He ended up marrying a woman who already had a couple of kids. Things percolated right along for a while. Then he came home one day, and she and her kids were gone. So was his shoebox of cash, his car, most of the furniture, even some of his clothes. She left him a note that stated they were through.
Herbert told me that he got down on his knees and prayed for God’s help. Not too long later, he said that he received a letter from Mr. Whiteside stating that his father had passed on and had left Herbert a house and some land. Just like that, he jumped on the bus and came home.
At the end of telling me this story, Herbert looked at me, grinned real big, threw his head back, snapped his fingers and said, “Saved by Jesus.”
He moved his mother from her sister’s house to his new abode. Her name was Iris. She had sisters named Magnolia, Violet and Rose. Herbert wasn’t her only child. He was just the only one still living. His siblings died all around the same time from some kind of virus. Herbert wasn’t born yet. There was never a mention of his father.
Herbert was good with his hands. Without much more than a hammer, nails, a handsaw and rural determination, he made his house livable. In the beginning, there was no running water, no electricity and it wasn’t much to look at.
He went to work for Mr. Whiteside doing whatever needed to be done.
Herbert and his mama lived past the second bridge a little ways out of town. Far enough out, that they were in that part of the countryside where people got rid of their no-longer-wanted cats and dogs. Unfortunately, it was common practice back then.
They’d open up their car doors, kinda look around, then just push their no-longer-wanted pets out into the unfamiliar darkness.
I believe God has a big heart for our pets, especially dogs and cats. After all, he created them for us to love and be loved by. I can’t imagine that the Almighty would allow anyone as heartless as you have to be to dump a helpless animal on the roadside to step one foot into heaven.
One after another, cats and dogs found their way to Herbert’s house. He and his mother took care of them till they found the animals happy homes.
Herbert felt that all the discarded cats and dogs were guided to his front door by the Almighty. He bopped his head, snapped his fingers and said that the animals were “Saved by Jesus.”
Sometimes, after they closed for the day, Mr. Whiteside and Herbert would sit in the back, have a brew and talk about their lives, just chew the fat. Over the years, the two had gotten pretty close. Herbert brought up the dance hall idea.
Mr. Whiteside told him that even if Preacher Man and them had given the dance hall a green light, he doubted that the good ole boys would have lifted a finger to open it up.
Herbert threw out an idea that he had for the empty metal building, and Mr. Whiteside backed it.
They opened up a temporary home for unwanted and abandoned dogs and cats. Herbert painted a sign and hung it above the front door. It read, “Saved by Jesus.” Snap.
Bill Stamps’ books, “Miz Lena” and “Southern Folks,” are available on Amazon. For signed copies, email bill_stamps@aol.com.