Growing up Colored

Chapter 5 ? Weekend Warriors!

	Photo/Coutesy Earlene Brown Ellsworth with Stanley, Marcia and Bajean relaxing outside with the chicken coup in the background..

"Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and file' gumbo
'Cause tonight I?m gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-o
Son of a gun, we?ll have big fun on the bayou"

"Sing it again Daddy, Sing it again!" We pleaded with our father to sing. "Huh? You wanna hear again?", he asked "Yeah, daddy, sing it one more time", we were all yelling by then. Dad started the song from the top again...
"Good-bye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we?ll have big fun on the bayou "
(Cue up the sound of children's laughter, applause and screams of delight)

	Photo/Coutesy Stan Brown Chess Grand Master Ellsworth Brown sits in deep thought deciding his next move.

On Saturday's we'd go to Warrenton to pick-up the week's orders that had arrived at the Sears and Roebuck. That's Fridays in Culpeper, VA and Saturdays in Warrenton. Dad would go to both the A&P and Safeway using a long list and sometimes a coupon or two, but mostly he stuck with the deals he already knew existed from years of experience. The weekly shopping routine had been honed into a science, with our parents working as a team to get it all out of the way as quickly and efficiently as possible. If it had been an Olympic event, our parents would have at least won the bronze medal.

	Photo/Coutesy The Daisy Museum Daisy Rider Rider Carbine was the most popular model, although, I can't remember exactly which model we had..

I still can't figure out how we escaped major injury while we were growing up. There were so many pitfalls that we walked in to and then out of most times unscathed. I remember the time the whole gang of boys decided to go squirrel hunting. It was early on a Saturday morning and the guys had just arrived from 'over on the Ridge' to get started. There was Frank, Buster, Herman, Donald, Almond, Raymond, me and several others. We spent the better part of the day traipsing around through the woods searching for game, we didn't find a thing. The last time we went hunting, we had a skinned squirrel hanging from our clothes line waiting to be cooked. The older kids never went hunting without making sure what they bagged was eaten, this was not just for sport. We all had our Daisy B B guns, some were the pump action, some had the Red Rider Carbine. I just know that the pump guns were far more powerful than the carbines.

As I stated earlier, we had been out in the woods all day long and we were getting fidgety, we were looking for something, anything to shoot at. Finally someone said, "Let's play war!" "Yeah, let's play" We all agreed that war was the thing to do. Now I had heard about these legendary war games and still saw the after effects of one really huge battle. Sonny Davis still had a crater directly between his eyes after one such episode, when he got shot between the eyes they decided it was time to quit. And Donnie showed me the damage done to his finger when he was shot while aiming his gun, that shot in the hand probably saved his eyeball. But this time I was in on the action and Buster chose a team and Raymond chose the other, being Raymond's tag-along brother meant that he was obligated to pick me for his team. The teams were devied up and final rules and regulations were put in place. "Shoot for the legs or the coat, no shooting above the chest", we all had our Navy pea coats on and I knew from prior experience that a BB meant absolutely nothing hitting you with your pea coat on. Raymond and I used to take turns, turning our backs to one another and shooting each other in the back with the guns and never felt a thing. So I knew that as long as I got shot any where on my coat, I was safe. "If you see a squirrel, the game is over, we go after the squirrel", Buster made sure everyone knew what we were really out there to do. Our groups split up and we went off to a distance where we couldn't see their team and could barely hear one another. We were defense, Buster's team was offense. We hid and set up a perimeter to protect our fort. Softly we could hear them trudging toward us in the leaves. I lay on the ground still as a field mouse waiting to see the whites of their eyes. Suddenly out of the darkness a form came into view, it was Buster, he was bent forward keeping low so as not to be easily spotted. But I had my sights set directly on Buster's chest. Suddenly, he noticed me on the ground, he turned, picked up his rifle and aimed it directly at my head and just as we were both about to fire our weapons, someone yelled out "SQUIRREL!!!" - "SQUIRREL! STOP THE WAR! Almond has a squirrel up in that tree", we all jumped up and ran to where the yelling was coming from. I breathed a big sigh of relief and stood back and watched as everyone lifted their guns and aimed at the poor little creature, they all shot, they all missed. The squirrel must have decided that it was time to high tail it out of there and took off to the ground, that's when it became a foot race, man against squirrel. As Almond chased the animal he must have gotten a brainstorm because he took his Daisy Red Rider Carbine and picked it up by the stock and started swinging it tryinng to clober the squirrel. As the squirrel zig-zagged through the woods Almond stayed right on his tail. The squirrel jumped onto a young elm tree and clung to it about eye level high and that's when Almond reared back and swung as hard as he could at the thing. But by then the little squirrelly was gone and all that remained was the elm tree. Almond wrapped the entire barrel of the gun around that tree. The instant he did this, he realized that maybe this hadn't been such a good idea, he immediately fell to his knees and started crying. And try as hard as they might, they couldn't put Red Rider Dumpty back together again. Almond cried all the way home that day. But we were very lucky, maybe even blessed, that no one was hurt in all that melee. We went home, tired, worn out and ready to face another day and with a really good story to tell.

	Photo/Coutesy The Daisy Museum If you read the previous Chapter, then use this photo to picture Johnny A..

Looking back, I have come to appreciate how well organized our upbringing was. We received 3 square meals a day and always a snack immediately after school (usually peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk). Sometimes we had a delicious 'Nuco' sandwich. Nuco was what we knew as fake butter, because for many years we got our butter from Mr. Bowen up the road, but then daddy started buying margarine, but we didn't call it that, we called it by it's brand name. There was bologna and cheese or Spam sandwiches for lunch, there was no cafeteria, so we had to brown bag it to school everyday. Almost every Sunday we'd have Steak and eggs and fried potatoes piled with onions for breakfast or toast and chipped beef gravy, that heavy gravy that sticks to your ribs. Sunday dinner was normally fried chicken and potato salad, cabbage, spinach, kale or some other green vegetable from the garden. But the best meal of all wasn't really a meal at all. On Saturday nights we were sometimes treated to a sneak preview of Sunday dinner with fried chicken and potato salad, this would be the only time we did not sit at the kitchen or dinner table to eat. On Saturday nights we could bring our plates into the living room and watch Jackie Gleason or Gunsmoke while we ate our late supper.