Tempest Fugit! Time flies and does it ever. Fifty years ago I was preparing to walk across the stage at Presser Hall, Berea College, Berea, Kentucky in recognition of completing requirements for my B.A. degree. Was I prepared for the next 50 years? Absolutely NOT. In my youthful naïve mindset, I failed to recognize exactly what the word "commencement" meant. Receiving my degree was a huge milestone in many ways. My father with his seventh grade education and backed by a keen motherwit had acquired the skills and knowledge that today would be called a journeyman electrician. He was largely self educated and in his time and in his way he was successful. My mother had taught winters and gone to school during the summers...supported by her husband's focused efforts and her parent's support to get that coveted "County Education" degree from Ohio University. Along the way...she had raised two children to adulthood and sent BOTH off to earn their college degrees...my brother from Tuskegee Institute and my sister from Storer College in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. She had also given birth to a third late in life child...ME ...before losing the battle to cancer when I was a toddler. When I walked across that stage...I did not truly realize how remarkable my journey had been.
My maternal grandfather had been born in 1868 just after the end of the Civil War. My paternal grandfather had been born in 1861...before the end of slavery. Because of the traditions of Appalachian men...especially black Appalachian men....I was "sheltered" from that knowledge....a knowledge I had to fight to acquire after the death of both grandfathers and my father.....knowledge I had to ferret out as the nearly middle age adult parent of half grown children! The journey I began that January Sunday afternoon fifty years ago would be challenging....frustrating...and filled with twists and turns I could not and would not see or understand for many, many years. Perhaps I thought that graduation was a terminal point along the journey to be educated.....little did I know....that Sunday was only the beginning....of a long journey to the future.
Early in life...my mindset for learning was shaped by the adult family members around me. If I had to paraphrase the learning style I grew up with...it would be "keep your eyes and ears open..mostly keep your mouth shut and analyze what you see and hear." That advice shaped the beginning of my news writing career...at fifteen. The local newspaper decided to print a page in the Sunday paper especially for teenagers. They announced the page, they asked for volunteer writers, and I applied...and was accepted. Did I have a clue what I was going to write about? No...but I liked to write so I began. The first article was totally rewritten by my editor...and I was devastated. After my hurt feelings had toned down..I sat down with my original article....looked at the published piece and started picking apart my errors. Never again would I be edited beyond recognition...ever. I wrote for that paper for three years...reports on school news, opinion pieces, miscellaneous news and hardly a month went by that something I had written did NOT appear in print. By the time I graduated from high school...I knew I wanted to be a writer.
My stepmother blew her stack...telling my father that he shouldn't encourage my useless daydreams. I had learned early on to keep my writing well hidden from her. She would sneak in my bedroom at night...read my mail, read my journal...and talk about me (negatively) to anyone who would listen. My mother's brother brought home (to my grandparent's house) the solution to THAT problem. He bought a desk and a used typewriter and told me to get busy....and keep my writing in the desk. Loudly he proclaimed that the desk and the typewriter were HIS and no one was to bother it! My stepmother did NOT nose around his desk. Needless to say...my mother's family has ALWAYS encouraged my writing.
It was senior year in high school and time for college applications and the dreaded college essay. Conflict time (Armageddon style) erupted in my father's house. My stepmother was going to oversee my college application. She swore to my father that my writing was terrible and nothing...and I do mean nothing I wrote was acceptable (to her). I was a nervous wreck until the day I finally spilled my frustrations to my grandfather. His solution....get another application...fill it out and send it in...and the acceptance letter came two weeks later.
Wish I could say...my stepmother's incessant meddling ended. It did not..if anything she was more focused and determined to interfere....even to the point of declaring a major for me that was diametrically opposed to my personal interests. By this point...all I wanted to do was get out of the house and away from her. By the beginning of my sophomore college year,,,my father had figured out that something was seriously wrong and at that point...he emancipated my decision making and my declared major was changed to English...I secured a job at the local newspaper and my nerves settled down.
Studying the craft of writing at the university level was challenging in many respects. There are many formats to learn (and unlearn). Because I had learned (informally) newspaper writing (the five W's (who, what, where, when. why or how) my writing instructors who were focused on academic writing were determined to break what they considered to be "bad writing habits." What were those so called "bad habits?" Primarily I had to learn the difference between formal and informal language, i.e. no trite phrasing (find another way to convey the idea). Those words and phrases were considered unacceptable probably because of overuse in daily speech
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| A) | A blushing bride, A fool and his money, Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Acid test, Add insult to injury, Age before beauty, All in all, All is not gold that glitters, All things being equal, All work and no play, Apple pie order, As luck would have it, At one fell swoop |
| B) | Barking up the wrong tree, Best laid plans, Better late than never, Better mind your ps and qs, Beyond the pale, Blood is thicker than water, Blow off steam, Born with a silver spoon, Breathe a sigh of relief, Bright and early, Bring home the bacon, Budding genius, Busy as a bee, Butterflies in (my) stomach |
| C) | Caught red-handed, Checkered career, Cherchez la femme, Chip off the old block, Clear as mud, Cold feet, Cold sweat, Cool as a cucumber |
| D) | Dead as a doornail, Dead give away, Deaf as a post, Depths, Die is cast, Dog days, Draw the line, Drink and be merry, Drunk as a skunk, Dull thud |
| E) | Ear to the ground, Eat, Eat (my) hat |
| F) | Face the music, Far cry, Feather in (his/her) cap, Few and far between, Fill the bill, Fine and dandy, First and foremost, Fish out of water, Flesh and blood, Fly off the handle, Fond farewell, Fresh as a daisy |
| G) | Gentle as a lamb, Get the upper hand, Get up on the wrong side of the bed, Gild the lily, God's country, Grain of salt, Green as grass, Green with envy |
| H) | Hale and hardy, Hand to mouth, Happy as a lark, Hard row to hoe, Head over heels, Heart of gold, High on the hog, Hungry as a bear |
| I) | If truth be told, In the final analysis, In the long run, It goes without saying, It is the last straw, It stands to reason |
| L) | Last but not least, Lean over backward, Leave in the lurch, Left-handed compliment, Let thew cat out of the bag, Like a bolt out of the blue, Limp as a rag, Little did I think, Lock |
| M) | Mad as a wet hen, Mad dash, Make ends meet, Make hay when the sun shines, Make no bones, Meets the eye, Method in his/her madness, Moot question, More easily said than done |
| N) | Naked truth, Necessary evil, Never a dull moment, Nipped in the bud, Not to be sneezed at |
| O) | Of despair, On the ball, Open and shut, Opportunity knocks, Out of sight out of mind, Over a barrel |
| P) | Pay the piper, Pretty as a picture, Pull his/her leg, Pull the wool over my eyes, Pure as the driven snow, Put a bug in your ear, Put on the dog, Put the best foot forward |
| R) | Rack my brains, Raining cats and dogs, Read someone the riot act, Red as a beet, Right down (my) alley, Ring true, Rub someone the wrong way |
| S) | Sad but true, Save it for a rainy day, Self made man, Sell like hot cakes, Seventh heaven, Sick and tired, Sight to behold, Sing like a bird, Snare and a delusion, Sow wild oats, Start the ball rolling, Steal thunder from someone, Stir up a hornet nest, Stock and barrel, Strong as an ox, Stubborn as a mule, Stuffed shirt |
| T) | Terra firma, The bitter end, The jog is up, Throw the book at, Tit for tat, Too funny for words, Turn over a new leaf |
| W) | Waiting with bated breath, Wee small hours, Without further ado, Wolf in sheep clothing |
| Y) | You can say that again, Your guess is as good as mine "
This internet based list (from an unknown source) provides a less than definitive selection of language that my generation of writers were carefully admonished from using. Since I often hear similar language from today's television newscasters...I suspect the rules for acceptable usage have changed (in the last half century)? Even if change has occurred in acceptable language....my emotional acceptance has not altered and I cringe at the abundance of "trite" language usage in the media. In that respect my original formal writing instructors were highly successful but they were even more successful in grooming my reluctance to share my creative efforts.
Was that destruction intentional? In retrospect, I must say no that I doubt they thought that far ahead...it was simply that their vision for my future direction in life and mine were NOT the same. The majority of my instructors were single unmarried women who for their generation had chosen the difficult path of career over the personal traditional path of marriage and family! After all, I came of age about the birth time of the so-called "women's liberation" movement. The role of women in American culture and society influences all of my gender but that is a topic for another day. I am a woman largely raised by the men of my family and my attitudes and opinions did NOT fit the social norms of the early mid 20th Century! Still don't ! The storm of many conflicts lay ahead and truly....I had no clue.
No one ever told me that as a black woman...that I was a less than equal student! I remember sitting in a sociology class listening to a discussion about social class (the American caste system). To my amazement and astonishment....I heard the professor talking about...people without ambition, people who did not value education, people who did not start businesses or own property, people who did not have "traditional" values for living. I was a "well raised" Appalachian child so even though I understood perfectly who and what he meant as he discussed "lower class" people....I did NOT cuss him out (I hadn't reached the point where I would cuss openly.) Later I would ask the professor just how I fit into this "class" scenario only to be told that "as a Negro...I was "lower class." That professorial comment absolved me of all responsibility of listening to any other comment that particular teacher made. My family had carefully taught that us we were no better and no worse that any other human being.....black, white, pink, purple, polka dotted, or transparent! I knew very well that my father, a retired lineman for a major utility company had studied and learned his trade to the point where the company had often called on him to train other linemen.....and there were more then a few men he had trained. My grandmother and my mother both taught in one room schools. In fact my mother taught all winter and went to Ohio University in the summer to work on her teaching degree! (This was not unusual in the first half of the 20th Century.) Two of my uncles had also taught and my youngest uncle (complete with an M.A. from the University of Pittsburg) was a school principal! (He was also a man who had been denied his master's degree from the University of Cincinnati because "Why did a black man need a master's degree?) Did the professor in question realize how prejudicial his comments had been? I doubt he cared or even thought that far....but of the comments made to me...... all his comments proved would have been his irrelevance. Those comments could have been crushing but as a family we have always had a stronger sense of who we were and where we were going and all he succeeded in doing was making me more determined to follow......the pathway I had chosen.
Graduate school found me in a land grant university and sitting in a class taught by a pontificating psychology professor. For three or four weeks...I listened to him discuss the psychology of urban black students until one afternoon...I looked at this New York born, blonde, blue-eyed wealthy man of Jewish descent and asked the question (not so politely) "How in the hell could he presume to tell me (the only black person in the class) what a black high school student thought or felt when he came from a totally different background?" I slammed my books into my book bag, cleared my desk and walked out without a backward glance...because of course, he was so flustered that he had NO answer. Consequently, I refused to return to his class until he negotiated a bargain with me, If I showed up for his final exam (at the end of the second semester of his class) my grade for both semesters would be "A". My grandmother didn't raise any fools...I showed up.
My first year teaching taught me another set of lessons....sadly also related to my brown skin. The principal of the big city school was a tall, very light skinned black man. I didn't think twice about his complexion...my family has been of mixed heritage for generations and frankly our family reunions reflect the inclusiveness of our blood. It was near the end of class and I looked up as the principal stomped into my classroom. He demanded that I come down to his office immediately (didn't ask...demanded). I know I looked at him like he was crazy. My youngest uncle was a principal and had been for many years...so I was NOT impressed by his title but I was infuriated by this man's tone. I caught him just outside the classroom door. "Mr. Evans....how dare you approach me so disrespectfully in front of a full class of students! I will NOT put up with this level of disrespect from them and I certainly will NOT put up with it from you! If I choose to come to your office....it will be after school and after I have finished with my class!" I stomped back into my classroom and slammed the door. My students were quiet and I continued the lesson. Sadly enough...the older teacher in the next classroom had to tell why the confrontation had happened...I had never heard the phrase "color struck" before...but then, why would I? My four foot eleven grandmother had carefully "schooled" her family to respect one another and she backed up her lessons with a strong and uncompromising left backhand. The lecture following her backhand was NOT fun.
Shock would best describe my reaction to Mrs. Murphy's explanation of "color struck". In the 21st Century (I hope) the phrase is closer to meaningless than it was in 1966. I hope but I am not sure. What she described to me was quite bluntly "black on black" prejudice. Historically...the back room comments (based on the same crazy concept) was the "paper bag test." If your skin was any darker than a brown grocery bag...you would be relegated to the fringes of society! The darker you were....the further out you were placed. I am sure that my mouth was hanging open in shock because I had never heard such nonsense! How could I? My family (both maternal and paternal) is well mixed up with all of our ancestral traits and believe me our ancestry spans many ethnic groups and many complexion shades. Publicly...I heard Mrs. Murphy's explanation, privately, I labeled the explanation as so much B.S. and I do NOT mean bachelor of science degree. Life lived would teach me that Mrs. Murphy's explanation held more truth than I wanted to accept.
Prejudice and bigotry are unfortunately interwoven into the fabric of our society. I grew up in a family that was NOT tolerant of intolerance and in my naivete....I expected the rest of the world to share those values. What life has taught me is that an open mind, an open heart and open eyes are the best existing weapon against prejudice and bigotry. Do people change? Yes! Why and how people change depends on their exposure to individuals of different viewpoints in combination with a willingness to communicate. Communication is a two way street and it is a street many people can not or will not travel. Communication requires one to be mentally flexible enough to analyze other peoples' actions and reactions.
Black describes my culture... Appalachian describes my culture.....and I am BOTH. Some of my ancestors were obviously stolen from Africa ( and very soon I am going to do the DNA test to find out WHERE in Africa), Other ancestors fled Europe (Ireland and England) for the freedom to practice their chosen religion (a Catholic family and a Quaker family). Then there were the ancestors who were watching from the forests when the rest arrived! Two historic family names are Norman French in origin, another is either French or Dutch in origin. That DNA test will help determine those origins also.
An elder once told me that life is like a blank chalkboard. Each person who passes through your life writes upon that chalkboard. Some marks stay, some marks fade but all marks contribute to the person one becomes.
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