YESTERDAY'S MEMORIES of a Bygone Time

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

An Elephant Childhood Memory

It's really funny what odd little bits and pieces of the past linger with us over the years. One of my memories from my grandmother's home in Chicago is of a little china creamer. I can see it in my head as if I had used it just yesterday. It was a squat little pitcher, with a short trunk as a pouring spout and the tail became the handle. His bulging sides became the bowl of the creamer, and I remember that the details of his head were outlined in pastel pinks and blues.

It wouldn't do for Grandmother to pour milk into my glass from the milk bottle. No, she would put the milk in the little pitcher, and I would oh so happily pour the milk into my glass or on my cereal through that wonderful spout. I even remember just drinking straight from the elephant's trunk. Why it turned ordinary milk into such a treat, only a child could completely understand. But it was special to me, turning the mundane into magic.

Grandmother and Granddaddy moved from Chicago to Birmingham, where we lived, when I was 14. I was busy adjusting to High School, and, for the time being, relics of my childhood were not on my mind. So, there are several things from their Chicago home that were left behind that I wish now I had had the good sense to ask for. That little elephant would be at the top of my list.

I've looked at many little elephant pitchers at Estate Sales, hoping to one day find MY elephant, but so far I've been disappointed by each one. What made him different from others I've seen is hard to put into words, but I know I'll recognize this childhood friend of mine when I see him.

Labels: Birmingham, Chicago, childhood memories, elephant creamer, Estate Sales, Grandparents, vintage

posted by Dirty Butter 6:04 AM

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Historic High School Memories Part I

I went to Phillips High School in downtown Birmingham. When I started there the schools were still segregated, and, because the school was downtown, any white student in the city could go there. Since Mama and Daddy both worked downtown, and it was a College Prep High School, it was a logical place for me to go.

Daddy dropped me off in the mornings, and I rode the bus home in the afternoons. It was a huge school, and there were about 600 in our class. Coming from a little grammar school, where I had been with the same 30 or so friends for eight years, made this quite an adjustment. Only two other girls from there had gone to Phillips, too, so I was thrown into a strange place with a lot of strangers. I did make new friends, though, and settled in fairly quickly to what I expected to be four years of dating, partying, and, oh yeah, studying.

I never expected to be locked in the auditorium, along with 2,000 other students, while a "Colored" man, the Reverand Shuttlesworth, was being beaten with chains on the sidewalk, for trying to enroll his children. I never expected to have Daddy driving me to and from school and slowing down, but not stopping at traffic lights and stop signs, because demonstrators were throwing rocks at passing cars. I never expected to be ushered out to the nearby park, with everyone else, day after day, as bomb threat after bomb threat was called into the school.

You see, I went to Phillips during the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, a school less than a mile from where hoses and dogs were being used against demonstrators, and only a few blocks from the bus station where there had been such a horrible confrontation.

Labels: Birmingham, Civil Rights Movement, High School Memories, Integration, nostalgia, Segregation

posted by Dirty Butter 4:17 PM

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