A Curious Boy

Being a kid in an adult world is strange.

Growing up in the 1950s, well ya had to be there to understand how different life was back then.

That being said…

I came across a box of photographs in my desk drawer the other day. If truth be told it was part of what little I inherited from my Mom several years ago after she passed.

One faded black n’ white photograph stood out in particular, it showed a toddler with his back turned to the camera facing a brick-and-wood suburban home in Virginia.

That was me at age three, taken in Alexandria, Virginia in 1958.

I was a precocious child back then, horribly spoiled, and indulged in being the firstborn to my mother. 

While we lived in that house, we had several housekeepers who were black, and they too, just like my mother did, doted on me.

Jeanie was one of my favorites and she could make a mean tuna fish sandwich. She told me Her secret ingredient to making tuna salad was chopped pickles – which  I gotta tell ya was pure crack to a hungry child seeking novelty in his bland diet.

Since this was the 50s, I was a free-range kid and often my Mother had to track me down as I was prone to wander about the neighborhood until sundown.

One extremely humid afternoon, before the skeeters started getting bad, I was out exploring an unfamiliar part of our neighborhood when I ran into a skinny black kid sitting on his front step.

Kid: “Hey boy, you lost or somethin’?”

Me: “Umm, maybe.”

Kid: “Ma!! There’s a little white boy out front who’s lost.”

Woman: (opening a screen door) “Why Hello there chile, you lost? Where’s yo Mama?”

Me: “Home.”

Woman: “Where’s yo home chile?”

Me: “Up da road,” I said pointing in a vague direction.

Woman: “Do you want me to see if I can find her?”

Me: “No. I’m alwight.”

Woman: Well, honey what is it you want?”

What did I want? Oh, I don’t know…A puppy, a pony, or maybe a new set of Tinker Toys would have been nice. Heck, I could think of a million things I wanted, but as I gazed up into her smiling face I remembered the box my Mom used when she made our traditional Sunday pancake breakfast. To my young mind, the face on the box and the black woman’s were almost identical.

Me: “Pancakes!”

Woman: “What? You want me to make you pancakes?”

Me: “Uh-huh. I’m hungry.”

Kid: “Ha! The white boy wants you to cook for him Ma.”

Woman: “Shush now Jerome. If I make you pancakes will you help me find your Mama, chile?”

Me: “Sure!”

I can still remember sitting at their wooden table munching on a delicious flapjack as “Jerome,” grinning like a Cheshire Cat, watched me eat while his mother made some neighborhood phone calls.

My summoned mother eventually showed up to take me home. Mortified, she stammered an apology before carrying me off as I shrieked a belated “Thank You” over my Mom’s shoulder to my amused hosts.

Mom switched pancake mixes after that

and I was sentenced to play in the backyard from then on end.