The Grand Generation Transcript
- No, no, I definitely would not wanna be 35 again. I would lose all the benefit of all these years in between that I have acquired. But don't put me back to 35. Oh, no, no, no. Let me be in my age that I am now.
- I'm 88, I will be 89 the 15th of this November coming.
- And I'm gonna shove 100, I can tell you that now.
- Now I'm going to do my best to live 135 anyhow.
- I am 102 in eight months.
- I'm the father of 13 children. 13 children and 89 grandchildren, and the last account I had of them, was 58 great-grandchildren.
- In my days, was different. My days, I was raised by grandpa and grandma, like I say and we didn't have electricity in our valleys. But we did have huge, big fireplaces, kerosene lamps. If we run out kerosene, grandma used to have bundles of great candles, we used candles.
- There were pumps on the corner where we'd go and pump the water, which would be spring water, cool spring water. There was the ice man. We'd get on the back of his cart and take the slivers of ice.
- See, I come up in a different era, you know. See, I come along in the sailboat era and life, it's changed now. It's all mechanized, see? And, but when my younger day, it was nothing but sail. You got there by sail or you didn't get there, see?
- The boss called me over and said, "This is a modern bakery. We have water coming here. You don't have to go to the well." And he put his head up and pulled the string and behold, he lit a lamp, a little bulb, and we have electric!
- You know, it must have been, I was born in 19 and six, it must have been 19 and 12. I was about six, you know, and the teacher says, the teacher said, "Oh, a car will come by here today." I had heard about 'em, you know, but I hadn't really seen one. And she took us all outside and we lined up on each side of the road and here comes this car.
- I know they'd put up a 60 gallon barrel of pickled beans, 60 gallon barrel of kraut, 60 gallon barrel of pickled corn, and string beans on threads. Green beans, hang 'em up, and let 'em dry, and they call 'em shuck beans, some did, and some called 'em leather britches. And that's the way that we lived.
- My grandfather and those older captains used to make the statement, "Them that know nothing, fear nothing." Now let me tell you what they meant by that. That brings the matter of experiencing, if you've never been on the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac River, or any of those bodies of waters in a 50-mile gale, you don't have the foggiest idea what it's like out there. Well, I do, because I've been out there. I compare a professional waterman the equivalent of a lawyer or a doctor, as far as education goes, although it's different, but you can't be both. I'd hate to think that I would be aboard a boat, a sailboat, especially, with a lawyer, a doctor to the wheel especially in a gale of wind My son-in-law, right today, it amazes him. I take him and my daughter out and one day I told them, I said, "This is going to be the best drag that we make." And sure enough, I pull it was in. But Alice says, "Daddy, how do you know that?" Well, there's your word experience comes in again. See those crabs know where to go, when they molt or shed, and they get in. They don't go on a ball bottom like this, they gotta be grass, because when they're soft, they're vulnerable. And they get in that grass and hide so their enemies can't find them. And of course, I know where they go and all the good crabbers do, so we know where to go get 'em. You don't get that much of it in your youth, you only get that in latter years when you're out, see? So you gotta have it.
- I love to make it, I love to do it. Braid a chally, I love to make a bread, I love to make a cake. My hands just flew into the process. And that became like a second nature to do it. When I was working, I had a different, a certain schedule. Monday, Apple Nest, Tuesday, struedel, Wednesday, this, Thursday, bupkis. But at the end of Sunday evening, I was happy because by Monday it went back to Apple Nest. I accomplished what I wanted, therefore I was happy. Her. Moses was the first one that formulated the form of retirement. He said the Levis could work up to the age of 50. At 50, he told them they should retire from hard work, but not from work. They became sort of supervisors on the others who came up. Old age has its work, to be young. The only weight that old age has is to keep on working and to be young.
- I said, "A man's not old when his hair turns gray. A man's not old when his teeth decays. But he's well on his weight towards eternal sleep when his mind makes appointments that his body can't keep." True.
- Well, just the other day my daughter asked me, "Mama, how do you feel?" Or, "Do you feel old?" She said, "When I see you sit on the side, I think maybe you feel old." I said, "Oh no, I don't feel old. I'm the age of whoever I talk to. Don't worry about that." If it's a little girl, 12 years old, I'm her age and I enjoy every moment. And if it's a little young girl, 16, I enjoy her because I'm her age, I remember when I was 16. If she tells me about a boyfriend, I know about that too. If I'm with a 24-year old mother with young babies, I know exactly what she's talking about. And if I'm with 77-year old folks, I know what they're talking about, too. That's one of the nice things about being old. You're the age of whoever you're with.
- I don't feel myself old. I keep myself in pretty good shape. The raspy throat is, that's a little touch of something that once I go to my mountain, it'll be clear and my voice will be strong as a bear. Yeah, I'm a very strong man. And I walk and I work hard and I, young boys don't compete with me. Yeah.
- And this night we're up in the lanes in Salisbury, Maryland, bowling, and I noticed in the next lane to me, this old gentleman was a-bowling, he was a whiz, boy. And he was doing some good that I made it my business to go over and asked him how old he was. He told me he was 69. So I goes over to the boys I was bowling. I said, "Look at that old guy over there bowling!" I was six years older than he was, see, and I never even thought of that. And I don't, I don't! I tell you, I don't, 75, I don't think I'm 75. I don't feel like it. I have too much fun to be an old man.
- You take an old man, not me, I'm not old. You take any man, I have trouble, too, sometimes. You see that button on the shirt under the collar? A size 15 and a half shirt, the button's supposed to fit. Try to get that button through when you have arthritis in your fingers and the button knows that you can't button it and you have to put your tie in there and you just can't, because the tie, the button doesn't wanna go through, it knows about it. The innate object, the button knows that it's working and it's its job to make it harder for you. So you don't look at the button. The way to button your button on top is to ignore it. Say to yourself, "Button, go away, I'm not gonna look at you." Look some other place and then try it and you see how fast you can button your button. I've tried it and it works.
- Back when I were working in the mines before we got a union, they was working us 16 and 18 hours a day. I was working... I was working 50 cents a day. Then finally got up there to $1, $1 a day. After I stayed in and got in the mines and went out there, Mother Jones, was still worked then. And nowadays, 18 hours for $2.80. $2.80. And when John L. Lewis come out and did get the union through, now this day and time, they're getting 100 from a $100 to $200 a day. ♪ Now I'm older worse system ♪ ♪ I got sand in my hair ♪ ♪ Both lungs were blown down ♪ ♪ I'm breathin' bad air ♪ ♪ And they send me to the doctor ♪ ♪ And I hear them say ♪ ♪ Both lungs are broke down ♪ ♪ He's seen his best days ♪ They then they come tell me, said, "Where did you work?" I said, "Back in the coal mine." They said, "You don't ever work no more in the coal mines and we can't work. Go back to the coal mines and tell 'em you want compensation." ♪ I went back to the coal mine ♪ ♪ And the boss man did say ♪ ♪ Our company don't want you ♪ ♪ Compensation won't pay ♪ ♪ Company doctor has told us ♪ ♪ Told us it would get you this way ♪ That's when they failed to pay it and I come into Washington for the picket line again, the Senators up there in the state and I got it made a law for people to get it. I hope everybody that had it out, everybody gets it now. ♪ They fought it two years ♪ ♪ Down in a coal mine ♪ If you wonders, I went too, that's why I'm living. I was here for a purpose. I'm still here for a purpose.
- The poem that I want to read now is one that was written during the time that Black people didn't have the opportunities for education or other cultural pursuits. And you will see by it the bitterness that existed in the souls of men during that period. The poem is called "At the Closed Gate of Justice". I would prefer changing the word negro to Black, but it would spoil the smooth running of the poem. "To be a negro in a day like this demands rare patience. Patience that can wait in utter darkness. There the path to miss, a knock unheeded at the iron gate, to be a negro in a day like this. To be a negro in a day like this, I'll ask, 'Lord God, what evil have we done?' Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst. But I pass by the glorious gold, unwon, merely a negro in a day like this." ♪ Lest our feet ♪ ♪ Stray from the prison-- ♪
- May I say this. I had worked with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters for 13 years before we had a convention whereby I was elected the International Secretary Treasurer. I bring that out to show you that you have to put forth great effort for anything that we do. Nothing is easy. ♪ Shadowed beneath Thy hand ♪ ♪ May we forever stand ♪
- I feel that everybody has a purpose in life. Whether they carry that purpose or not, there is a purpose for every life. And I think that there is a purpose for my life and I will live until that purpose is fulfilled.
- With the older you get, the more you'll refer to this reminiscent. You will, I mean, it takes you back, you know? And seems all the things that's in, you've done recently, don't appeal to you as much as the things you did as a youngster, see, and you'll do a lot of reminiscing. That's me and that's my old fishing bunkey. Now, that's five channel bass we caught this evening and we had a ball, I'm telling you. There's no words that I could sit here and tell you what could describe the pleasure and the thrill we got out of this evening. Well, after I left Smith Island, I sorta got away from it, then me and my old fishing bunkey used to go over. And if we got over there on a low tide and the winds coming over that marsh would bring that aroma to us. And man, when I smell that now, I can really get that urge to do what we did then.
- My husband died 19 years ago. It took me a couple of years to get myself together. I decided I needed something to get me out of the depression I was in. So what I had, I thought about trips, I thought about everything. I thought no other thing I had rather do than anything in the world is relive my life again. I would just, if I could just recapture one moment of that, or part of it, or any part of it. So I went to bed and I thought about it on my pillow and I said, "I know what I'll do. I will start to stitching." The first thing I think I made was maybe this one, how me and my husband on the bluebird of happiness, when we first married, looking, searching for the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, like all young married people do, way to get rich, you know? But when I found that rainbow pot of gold, it was full of children, not money. So, but when I go into my house and my pictures I hang on the walls and there and it is like walking into an album. You know, all my pictures are hanging there. I never sell one of 'em, you know? And so I love it is just like, it's permanent, you know, there they are. Each memory is there and I relive it just like it happened. You know, it makes you happy, makes you real happy.
- I learned this from my grandmother when I was about five, six years old. In the winter month, we used to get together, all the different families, neighbors, round up all the children around these huge fireplaces that they used to have in these adobe, huge adobe houses. And we listened to their stories, their music. No televisions, remember? And the way our grandpas and grandmas, that generation, used to teach us was with their history, their tales, their stories, their music. And that's why I know it, it's still in my heart, in my mind. I never forget it because you learn it since I was five, six years of age. And I know it, you know. But there's many other things that I did here that were sealed in the graves of my grandpas and grandmas.
- I tell ya, I don't worry about that. He says, "Your days is his numbered and your footsteps is marked out. I'll call and you arrange." And when that day comes, that I'm higher than the number on your head and your footsteps is marked out, when you make that last footstep, I don't care where you're at, if you're out here going downstairs, or getting outta your bed, you're going. Then you're leaving here.
- Well, I'm not going to die.
- And one said, not long ago, "Mama lived such a good life, you know, she's happy all the time." I said, "Yes, I am happy all the time." And I said, "But if I live to be real old and and die and you all say, 'Oh, mama, leave such a good life, I know she's ready to go.'" I said, "Don't say I was ready to go, because I will not be ready to go."
- Because I don't think I'll know death. I only know two things. I know the present, how to live. I'm not worried about death. And the present, how to live, does not include that. Okay, so why should you worry about that? Yes, she's getting old and failing. Failing every day. You can see the way she's ailing. She ain't long to stay. And some day while tears are streaming, Mammy'll fall asleep a-dreaming of the light she see'd a gleaming of the King's highway. I think that it depicts the flow of my life. And while others don't like to hear me say it, it reminds me that the end of my life must come. This man asked me, "What was it like in your day?" Well, you know, so often when a younger person will talk to an older person, especially a very old person, they seem to have it in the back of their minds that these old people are still back in those days. And I wanted to let this person know that I wasn't living back there, that I was trying my best to keep up each day at a time. And that each day that came along, each day is my day, is my day to perform the best I can. And I consider it that way. And if tomorrow comes, tomorrow'll be my day.
