Midnight Train To Georgia

15 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

"Midnight Train To Georgia" (1973), Amtrak, Burger King, Chevy Impala, Clover Donuts, Collins Family, Extended Family, Fucious Collins, Gladys Knights and The Pips, Harrison Georgia, Horses, Imogene Collins, Krispy Kreme Donuts, Mckinley Collins, Pigs, Respite, Rural Georgia, Sow, Steam Locomotive, Trip, Vacation, Whopper

Forty years ago this week, my father took me and my brother Darren on the biggest trip of our growing up years. Especially since I was just five and Darren was only seven. We went to see our extended Collins clan in Georgia, spread between Atlanta and Harrison, the latter a small town of ex-farms in the east central portion of the state. Macon is the nearest city, with Augusta about ninety minutes away.

It was paid for courtesy of my Mom, who likely did it to give herself a vacation from Jimme’s weekly drinking, days-on-end-abandonment, followed by verbal abuse and threats. And the occasional physical fight, as the month before, after a July 4th party Mom threw, my father came in late, became jealous, and went after her with a meat cutting knife, only to end up stabbed in the torso and leg. All with the Mount Vernon police coming over to 425 South Sixth, and, upon finding Jimme in the stairwell suffering from his wounds, began laughing hysterically (more on that at a later date). I’m sure that Mom needed a break from Darren and me as well.

We went down to the city via Metro-North, took the Shuttle (in all likelihood) to Penn Station, and then the Amtrak to Atlanta. I don’t remember much of the trip itself. It was an overnight affair, and Mom had bought us overnight tickets, enabling us to sleep on cots or small beds, I guess. I do remember us pulling out of Washington, DC and seeing the Capitol from a distance after crossing into Virginia.

Known as the 750, it was donated to the Atlanta Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in 1962, and operated through the 1980s (likely the train that scared me in 1975), August 15, 2015. (http://www.steamlocomotive.com/nc-ga/sa750.jpg).

Then, after seemingly endless forests and nothing to do but sleep or watch my father sleep, we pulled into Atlanta sometime the next morning. After getting off the Amtrak and watching it depart, an old smokestack steam pulled in, blowing its whistle as loud as anything I’d ever heard. I practically jumped out of my skin, prompting some White guy who worked on the tracks to tell me, “That’s okay, that’s just ol’ [?] blowin’ off steam.” I didn’t much like the White guy, either.

Our Uncle McKinley and one of our older cousins picked us up from the train station, drove us around West Atlanta, and then down to the family farm in Harrison. Along the way, we stopped at my cousin’s job at Burger King for Whoppers. Except they got me the Whopper Jr, which didn’t make me too happy. But then I got to ride in the front of my uncle’s ’73 green Chevy Impala, with all of its chrome and tan leather seats.

A nice, juicy sow, August 15, 2015. (http://www.platnershowpigs.com/OldSite/Sow8.jpg0.

We got there late in the afternoon, but mostly what I remember was the smell of the rural area. I’d never been to a farm before, much less one that was still somewhat in operation. The next couple of days were the most memorable part of the Georgia visit for me. The first morning on the farm, I woke up, washed up, and stumbling into the dining area and kitchen, which seemed so vast. Wood paneling, rich dark colors and the strong smell of Maxwell House coffee were what penetrated my five-year-old mind that morning. I remember sitting on my grandfather Fucious’ lap while he asked me a few questions. Then he gave me this syrupy yet somewhat crisp and doughy glazed donut to eat. My grandfather was eating one of his own, to go with his strong and sugarless cup of coffee. It wasn’t as good as the Clover Donuts donuts I’d eaten, but this first experience with Krispy Kreme was pretty good. Darren had a jelly donut, with the jelly all around the corners of his mouth.

They tried to take us horseback riding, my grandmother Imogene and my Aunts Christene and Charity. It worked fine for Darren, but for me, not so much. The whinnying of the horse scared me, and when they lifted me up to put me on the saddle, I started to cry. My grandmother hugged me, and told me that it would be okay. Then, they grabbed one of the sows and let me ride on her for what was probably ten minutes, taking a couple of pictures and laughing at the same time.

A beat-up version of the 1975 Chevy Impala my uncle McKinley bought in August 1975, August 15, 2015. (http://www.dvap.com).

A couple of nights later, I remember waking up in the middle of the night. There had been an accident involving my father, my cousin and my Uncle McKinley, and the green Impala was no more. Despite not wearing their seat belts, all three came out of the accident more or less unscathed. The next to last day of our time on the Collins family farm, my uncle drove up in a ’75 Chevy Impala, cream-colored and even more impressive.

It was a good trip, meeting my country-strange family, and the longest trip I’d go on until ’92, when I went to DC to visit a former high school classmate. it was also a welcome break from the constant fighting between Mom and Jimme.

My son, thankfully, has been going on trips since before his first birthday, although the flight he’ll take next week will be on his own, with his aunt meeting him at the destination gate.

Teaching Migration, In Song

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, music, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Upper East Side, Upper West Side, Work, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" (1968), "Living For The City" (1973), African American History, Africana Studies, Arrested Development, Black Boy (1945), Black History, Black Migration, Bruce Springsteen, Cities, Gil Scott-Heron, Gladys Knights and The Pips, Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson, James Grossman, Joblessness, John Mellencamp, Kate Bush, Land of Hope (1989), Marvin Gaye, Mary Patillo, Migration, Nas, Nicholas Lemann, Nina Simone, Otis Redding, Peter Gabriel, Poverty, Richard Wright, Stevie Wonder, Teaching and Learning, The Promised Land (1991), The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), Tracy Chapman, Tupac, Urban America, urban blight

Stevie Wonder and Wonderlove, live performance of “Living For The City,” circa 1974. (http://youtube.com).

If I ever had the chance to teach a course specifically on the history of Black migration in America, I already know what books I’d use. Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns (2010); Nicholas Lemann’s The Promised Land (1991); James Grossman’s Land of Hope (1989); Mary Patillo’s Black Picket Fences (1999); even Richard Wright’s Black Boy (1945) and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). All have moved beyond the statistics of some seven or eight million Blacks moving from the rural Jim Crow South to America’s cities, North, Midwest, West and South for the first three-quarters of the twentieth century.

Falsas Promesas Broken Promises, taken by John Fekner, Charlotte Street Stencils, South Bronx, New York. 1980. (Liftarn via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via CC-SA-3.0.

But that wouldn’t be near enough to communicate the range of emotions, the psychological states and the pressures that these people faced in leaving their homes for the not-so-bright lights of America’s big cities, not to mention what they faced in the days and years after they arrived. I should know. I’m the nearly forty-five year-old son of a mother originally from Bradley, Arkansas (population 500) and a father from Harrison, Georgia. They moved to New York City in the ’60s (specifically, the Tremont section of the Bronx), then to the South Side of Mount Vernon, New York (just outside the Bronx), hooked up, and sired me and my older brother Darren between December 1967 and January 1970.

That short summary is hardly the story, though. For me — like with so many other things in my life — music tells the story, emotions and psychology beyond what words on a page alone can approximate, but not fully duplicate. Music communicates the stories, emotions and psychology of those who migrated and stayed (or didn’t) in cities across the US better than Census data or a hypothesis on proletarianization. I wanted music from my own lifetime (or at least, within a few years of it) — not just folk songs or Blind Willie Johnson or Duke Ellington — music that fit my family’s transition from migration to our current times of racism and urban poverty.

Easily the top two songs on my list to play in class would be:

Trade ad for Otis Redding’s single “Try a Little Tenderness,” January 7, 1967. (Viniciusmc via Wikipedia/Billboard Magazine, page 7). In public domain).

1. Otis Redding, “(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay,” (1968), released after Redding’s death in a plane crash in Madison, Wisconsin; and

2. Stevie Wonder, “Living For The City,” (1973).

Both songs run the full emotional and psychological gamut. From hopefulness to oblivion, from delusion to despair, from rage and anger to resignation. The melancholy of Redding’s “It’s two thousand miles I roamed/Just to make this dock my home” (in reference to the distance from Georgia to San Francisco Bay) juxtaposed with Wonder’s bitterness and anger:

“His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty
He spends his life walkin’ the streets of New York City
He’s almost dead from breathin’ in air pollution
He tried to vote but to him there’s no solution…”

It communicates so much beyond the lyrics and liner notes, a reminder for those of us who find America and its cities unforgiving today just how relentless it must’ve been for our parents and uncles and aunts and grandparents forty or more years ago.

There are other songs that I’d put on this playlist. Some are directly related to Black migration, some try to bridge the gap between the abundance of music on “the ghetto” and urban poverty and chaos and the lack of music from my own lifetime on migration.

3. Gladys Knight and the Pips, “Midnight Train to Georgia” (1973).
4. Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues” (1971).
5. Gil Scott-Heron, “95 South (All of The Places We’ve Been)” (1977).
6. Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car” (1987).
7. Nas (featuring Olu Dara, his father), “Bridging the Gap” (2004).

Pruitt–Igoe public housing projects, St. Louis, Missouri, circa 1967. This late-1950s “urban renewal” project was built, but failed and was razed in the 1970s. (Cadastral via Wikipedia/US Geological Survey). In public domain.

That most of these songs come from the period between 1967 and 1974 isn’t an accident. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement, combined with the Black Power Movement and the “Black is Beautiful” campaign, the beginning of the White backlash against civil rights — including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination — and the Anti-War Movement was in full swing. It was a good time to take a look at the present and recent past to reconnect with hopes and dreams in the midst of the nightmare of urban poverty.

After ’73 was the beginning of the dance and disco era, as well as a focus on the urban, on crime, on drugs, on poverty — but not in a “let’s try to solve it” kind of way. This was where rap, hip-hop, some R&B and early forms of what we now call neo-soul picked up, with little reflection on this once prominent past.

Still, there would be some honorable mentions for this migration course, music that could evoke some aspect of the Black migration, of the hope that took a downward turn, of the poverty and joblessness that have permeated America, Black and White and Brown, since the ’70s.

8. Arrested Development, “Tennessee” (1992).
9. Tina and Ike Turner (and Credence Clearwater Revival), “Proud Mary” (1970).
10. Nina Simone, “The Backlash Blues” (1967).
11. NWA, “Straight Outta Compton” (1989).
12. Tupac, “Cradle 2 the Grave” (1994).
13. John Mellencamp, “Pink Houses” (1983).
14. Bruce Springsteen, “Born In The U.S.A..” (1984). [the song’s release was thirty years ago this month, by the way]
15. Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, “Don’t Give Up” (1986)

Nina Simone performs at a concert in 1964. (http://npr.org, via Hulton Archive/Stringer/Getty Images).

Through music, I’d hope to have a course and discussion about Black migration that reaches beyond the words origin and destination, that migration has merely been a physical manifestation of a difficult and seemingly unending cultural and spiritual journey in the US. That Black migration can also easily include the parallel journeys of those of the African or Afro-Caribbean diaspora, not to mention those from Latin America.

For me, though, a course like this would be a personal foray into all the things that have made me who I’ve been for nearly four and a half decades — a person better than the sum of America’s parts and racist, sexist, homophobic and evangelical assumptions.