Remember When

I finally made up my mind.  I’m going to write the story I’ve been putting off for years now.  I’ve continually put it off because I’m feeling intimidated.  I see this as a sweeping epic covering three generations of a family, a tale of greed, jealousy, and deception.

 I’ve always enjoyed novels with black characters set in bygone eras:  the handful of titles I’ve read by Beverly Jenkins, Harlem by Len Riley, Clara’s Promise by Shirley Hailstock, Rhythms by Donna Hill, Black Gold by Anita Bunkley, and Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine by the late Bebe Moore Campbell.  It’s both enlightening and educational to learn about life in earlier times.  My late father always wanted me to write a history of the Griffin family (I reminded him that Roots has already been done, not to mention that his side of the family was pretty boring; the most exciting thing that happened was probably my great-grandmother’s 1922 Harlem funeral, which I have a copy of the bill for.  With six white horses pulling the carriage holding the casket, flowers, even buglers, it sounds like it was straight out of Imitation of Life.)

 But just because I’ve read and enjoyed historical books by other authors, I wasn’t ready to try my hand at writing one, even after completing a 118,000-word behemoth of my own, albeit a contemporary one.  After 14 novels, I know enough about writing to know that skilled authors make it look easy, but it’s not.  I found the idea of all that research daunting, and still do.

I’ve decided to start the saga in 1940 New York, a time I am not at all familiar with, not being born until many – well, make that some – years later.  But my mother and aunt, now 89 and 91 years old, respectively, were in their early 20s heyday at that time; and my uncle, 86, is another great source of information (he can talk about the powerful Hurricane of 1938 that caused massive damage in Eastern Long Island and the Connecticut seashore along Long Island Sound like it was last week.)  My godmother, aged 90, has already shared with me her memories of her father’s restaurant in Harlem and life on Sugar Hill in the 1930s.

That’s one reason I decided I’d better stop putting this off.  Authenticity will be challenging, but I’ve got four minds totaling about 350 years at my disposal to answer questions like when their households upgraded from the old-fashioned icebox to a modern refrigerator, or when they bought their first television set.

 My first memories aren’t clear until the early 1960s.  I don’t even remember the Kennedy assassination (John F., that is).  In hindsight, this is probably because the adults around me weren’t crying.  Instead they were worried about what effect a native of Texas – not a particularly friendly state to Negroes, as we were then called, at least in polite company – in the White House would mean for colored folks.  But while I will need assistance with life in America in the 1940s and 1950s, I recall more about the 1960s than I think I do.

 Those old orange-and-blue police cars cruising the streets of Yonkers, New York.  The seven channels we had in New York (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13), and getting up to change the channel manually.  Seeing that symbol and hearing that hum when a network was off the air late at night.  The Late Show theme music with a clock ticking out the beat.  Chiller Theater on Saturday nights.  The original Jeopardy! with Art Fleming as host.  Being out with my mother on Friday night when she purchased a record called Where Did Our Love Go? by a new girl group called the Supremes.  My siblings playing their records on a portable player in the back seat of our station wagon during long car trips.  Falling asleep in the back of the car and drooling all over the cover of my sister’s brand new album, The Temptin’ Temptations.  My father grumbling about how our “little” records (45s) were damaging the needle of our stereo.  When seeing a black person on TV was a big deal.  Vacationing with family in Westhampton Beach, Long Island, not knowing that those white kids we played with on the beach at Dune Deck were children of the rich and famous.  My parents, aunts and uncles dancing to Harry Belafonte calypso recordings.  Palisades Amusement Park.

Having to go to bed before The Beverly Hillbillies came on at 9:30.  Rolling up car windows manually.  The Big Blackout of 1965.  Seeing women like the lady at the Harlem restaurant who desperately needed a depilatory – her mustache was thicker than my father’s.  Having my hair pressed because the relaxer hadn’t been invented yet.  Heating up food either in the oven or with the plate atop a pot of steaming water.  My Great-Aunt BeBe’s messy basement apartment in the city, with scraps of material everywhere (she was a professional seamstress).  Pulling at my mother’s sleeve and exclaiming, “Look, Mommy, she has blue hair!” when my mother stopped to talk to a friend she met on the street, while an embarrassed Mom tried her best to get me to shut up (This, my earliest memory, pre-dated the Kennedy assassination by a good two years. 

Even after 45+ years, my mother and I still laugh about this . . . and the lady with the blue hair rinse so popular at that time now has stunningly beautiful white hair.)  The happy surprise of my siblings and me when our family’s first color TV was delivered (our parents, who’d deliberately gone out, wanted us to be surprised.)  The double feature and the cartoon at movie theaters.  Having to call your friend back if nobody answered the phone.  Those eternal Easter Sunday church services and all that shifting of positions – sitting, standing, kneeling – they do in the Episcopal Church (as an adult I changed to A.M.E. and go on Palm Sunday, when services are shorter than Easter).  The liquor flowing freely at holiday gatherings at our house, and me asking my aunt repeatedly one Christmas, “But why can’t she walk?” when my petite grandmother drank more than she could hold.  And I remember doing my work without a computer.

 Yeah.  I’m gonna do it.  It will no doubt be pushed aside as more pressing stories (the ones under contract) require my attention, and who knows how long it will take to complete it, but I will complete it and hopefully one day get it published.  While it will be mostly my own imagination mixed in with a few interesting pieces of family folklore rather than the fictionalized account my father wanted, it’ll be a labor of love, not only for him, but for all the people who lived during a time when life was a lot tougher than it is now. 

Bettye Griffin’s (If These Walls Could Talk) 14^th novel, Once Upon A Project, will be released by Dafina Books in May 2008.  Visit her self-titled web site and her blog, www.chew-the-fat-with-Bettye.blogspot.com .