Up from the Fields
By John H. Bailey IIAbbott Press
Copyright © 2012 John H. Bailey II
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4582-0404-2Contents
Preface.............................................................ixAcknowledgements....................................................xiChapter 1: The Mississippi Delta....................................1Chapter 2: Texas By Sunlight........................................10Chapter 3: A Year Of Change.........................................18Chapter 4: From Boys To Men.........................................27Chapter 5: TET Offensive And The War Thereafter.....................48Chapter 6: Challenge In Action......................................63Chapter 7: Fixed Wing Aviator.......................................95Chapter 8: Brotherhood of Men.......................................106Chapter 9: Mississippi My Way.......................................114Chapter 10: "I Touch The Future; I Teach"...........................130Chapter 11: The Military Forces of Texas............................146Chapter 12: People Who Made A Difference............................155Challenge...........................................................162More About the Author...............................................164Organizations.......................................................167
Chapter One
The Mississippi Delta
It was a Monday morning, the quiet seemed unusual, the fields were wet with morning dew for as far as the eyes could see and in the Mississippi Delta, with its flat terrain that seemed to be forever. From one direction we heard a not too familiar sound, from the other the sound of my father's straw boss's truck. He stopped, got out of the truck, and the two men started talking. At a distance I discovered that the other sound was an airplane, as usual I got terribly excited because you just didn't see many airplanes in the vicinity of Drew Mississippi.
Drew was like no other place on earth. To us it was our own little epicenter with earthquakes taking place each Friday through Saturday, when the masses of Sunflower County emerged on the little delta town giving it a carnival like atmosphere. Drew Mississippi was known for it's nearby prison named Parchman. In later years it became known as the former home of the Staple Singers, Archie Manning, my friends Robert Atkinson who flew F4's in Vietnam and earned three Distinguished Flying Crosses and Cleve McDowell who attended the University of Mississippi School of Law at a time when the University of Mississippi was not African American friendly. Over the years I have met many people from Drew doing things that my father could only dream of.
For us kids, many of whom seemed to have permanent question marks on our faces, the Mississippi Delta seemed to have two faces of its own. One was warm, carefree and fun filled. The other was uncertain, cold, and with the charm of a cobra.
My family migrated to Mississippi from Maryland by way of Georgia and Alabama. Like many African American's they followed the fieldwork because it was what they had been taught to do. In the Delta, most black people were share croppers and lived on plantations where cotton was king, and cotton houses built to hold at least one bale of cotton looked like soldiers standing at attention from one end of the plantation to the other.
The unwritten contract between the plantation owner and the share cropper usually meant your family chopped the cotton, picked the cotton, and loaded the cotton on the truck or trailer so it could be hauled off to one of Eli Whitney's great inventions. The families received advances between March and November and received a settlement when all the cotton was picked and sold by the plantation owner. On the other hand there were day hands that usually lived in the city limits and were paid once per week to do farm work.
I didn't come from a large family. My grandfather, Rev. John H. Bailey, my grandmother, Mrs. Betty Johnson Bailey, my father, John L. Bailey, his sister, Mabelle Bailey Freeman, my mother, Lucille Clark Bailey, who died when I was two years old, and a half sister named Carrie M. Love. My only cousins that I knew of were my aunt's daughter, Betty, and her four children, Willie, Gloria, Brenda, Donald and the Staples family who were second or third cousins of my father. I got a chance to meet Oakie, Billie, and Flora Staples before we moved to Texas.
The T.A. Looney family owned the plantation on which I was born. It was located approximately two miles from Drew. About one hundred yards from the front yard of our house was a railroad track that paralleled highway 49. About 100 yards behind our house was a bayou that provides many fond memories to this day.
T.A. Looney was a proud man who took good care of his people. He often rode a beautiful horse and would allow us kids to rub its head. My father was his lead day hand, meaning he kept the trucks and tractors in operating condition except for major maintenance, and was one of the equipment operators. Our house had four rooms and stood about three feet off the ground, behind the house was a big barn with a high ceiling and a tin roof. It was in that barn that I made my first parachute jump; only my parachute was a big umbrella used on a tractor. The minute the weight of my body pressed down on the handle, the thin braces gave way and the ride to the barn floor was expedited. I only made one jump.
The Looney house seemed quite big and had a loft. From time to time I would get to go up there and look at all the things and clothes that the almost grown Looney kids had out grown. We referred to the daughter as Bea Baby and the son as Baby Brother. Mrs. Looney was called "Ole Miss." As I grew older I thought maybe it was because she had attended the University of Mississippi, but never found out for sure.
Life on the plantation was what we knew, and as a five year old my job was to stay inside while my father and my grandmother were at work. My grandmother cooked and cleaned house for the Looneys. My father's best friend, Mr. Arthur Phipps, was their yardman and gardener. He and Mr. Buster Crockett were the only two of my father's friends whom I never saw take a drink of whisky or a drink of my dad's home brew. Mr. Phipps had a daughter a little older than I by the name of Lee Anna Phipps. Between she and Bea Baby I started reading quite early. Mr. Crockett had several children. I remember Charles and Joann best of all. After my father decided to put the big pasture that surrounded our quarters to use as a baseball field and organized a team we found that Mr. Crockett was one of the best pitchers in Mississippi. They played each Sunday after church. In some games Mr. Crockett pitched shutouts. He had a curve ball that dropped at the plate.
Of the festive moments during my young life were the holidays when the men got together and barbequed goats and ribs during the day and at night, in the absence of fire works, they rolled rags tightly and soaked them with kerosene, lit them and hurled them skyward. This they did to entertain the children of the families. I also received great Christmas gifts, one Christmas I received a pedaling car, another Christmas I received a pedaling airplane. I got my first whipping from my dad for riding the plane off that high porch and breaking off the propeller. My father cried with me. When I asked my grandmother why was he crying since it was I who had received the whipping, she said he sacrificed so much to buy me great toys and make me happy since I had lost my mother at such an early age. My reply did not help matters very much either, because I said I would rather have my mama than any toy. As I look back over those days I wonder how in the world could my dad afford to buy me expensive toys like that in the 1940's?
It wasn't long before we moved in with my grandmother because my dad had finally decided I needed another mother since he was gone almost every night. My grandmother lived on the other side of the railroad tracks. Across the secondary road from her house was a German POW Camp. The Germans seemed strange to me. They would throw my toy guns away and say "No good, no good." They seemed to like my father because each Saturday he would go into town and buy them cases of canned pet milk. They loved milk. The only one I remember was one nicknamed Tom who would come by after work and talk to us before being escorted back inside. He looked at my grandmother in a strange way because she didn't look like the rest of us. She was lighter complexioned with green-gray eyes and a different grade of hair. Her eyes would change from green to gray when she was upset. That was quite often.
In October, of the year I turned six, my father and his new wife moved into a house across the street from Drew Colored Consolidated School. Her name was Ms. Willie Mae Williams. She was quite nice and very well organized. She worked for the Atkinson family. It was because of her that I met Robert Atkinson, who would end up being a life long friend. We had great times playing together while my new mom worked for his. His father had his own farm but lived in the city limits. His grandfather owned a drugstore and lived in one of the biggest houses in Drew. We referred to it as the "big house".
A day in the Atkinson household was much different from ours. Robert's mother, Mrs. Miriam Atkinson, had strict rules. She made us take naps at the same time each day and would give us graham crackers and milk after our naps. I love graham crackers and milk to this day. So do my own children. Another difference was what we did many Saturday afternoons. That was movie time and she would take us to the only movie house in town fondly referred to as the "picture show". Because of the temper of the times Robert would go downstairs and I upstairs to watch the same movie and we would meet at the ticket booth after the movie was over.
A funny, but great thing, happened one day after the movies. One of the teen age girls working the booth called us and gave us a huge box of left over popcorn and said there is something special for you two in the bottom. We couldn't wait to dump the popcorn and retrieve our surprise gift. The bottom of the box was covered with shinny new dimes. It seemed that they were the shiniest dimes I had ever seen.
I said lets count and divide them, Robert said you take them and use them for lunch money when you go to school and I did that and I ended up with a shoe box full of dimes as time flew by and a lot of love in my heart for all people. Black, White, you name it.
It wasn't long before I lost Willie Mae as a mother and was again alone with dad. Grandmother, who had left the Looneys, moved into town following daddy, her only son, now she worked for the Otha Sheridan family. Grandma lived in a one-room house on their property and I went to live with her. That was when I met Sammy and Theathel Wells. Their father was Mr. Sammy Wells Sr. and their Mother was Mrs. Ethel Wells. They were great people who treated me like their own child. Whenever my grandmother went away to St. Louis, MO to stay with her only granddaughter when she was having her babies the Wells family would take care of me. Once she left and never came back. That's when my father, who had found his second wife after my mother, came and took me back to the Looney place, where we stayed until we moved away to Texas, my dream state because I always liked western movies.
As I became older things seemed much different. Mama wouldn't allow me to wear shorts and I very seldom got to see my friends in Drew. A day I'll never forget was when I decided to go down the hill to the bayou and throw rocks into the water. I saw three colored teenage girls on the other side looking at me. The taller one said "Hey little boy. What's your name?" I said "John." "John what?" she asked. "John Bailey." I replied. She started walking towards the water asking, "What is your daddy's name?" I said "John L. Bailey." The teenager, who was now waving both hands in the air and jumping up and down, said, "Your mama's name is Lucille and she died about six years ago." I said, "Yes. How do you know that?" She said, "She was my mama too. I'm your sister Carrie." I then panicked and started running toward her. They calmed me down and told me to meet them at the footbridge about a quarter mile away. There we met and cried and I took the girls home with me to meet my new mama, Sarah Tibbs Bailey.
After they left my mama looked at me and said I was too black to have a sister that light skinned. When daddy came home he set the record straight. Carrie was my mother's daughter and I was her brother. She spent many weekends with us while we were still living in Mississippi. Carrie loved basketball and when my daddy and his friends would get in the bayou to san for fish, she and her friends were right in there with them. Those were fun times. They not only caught fish, they caught turtles, snakes, eels, and an occasional bullfrog. They kept the fish, killed the snakes, and threw everything else back into the water. If certain people were among the sanners, turtles were also kept since they made great soup.
One Saturday morning a shinny car with Texas license plates pulled up to our house. My step mom, Sarah, was as happy as I was when I saw my sister, Carrie, for this was her baby brother, Jack Johnson Tibbs (Rev. J.J. Tibbs), whom she had not seen since he left Mississippi going into the Army. With him was his wife, Izora, a tall good-looking Texan who had spent her teenage years between Mexia and McKinney, Texas. He was now a preacher and she was a musician and great singer.
It wasn't unusual for them to show up two or three times a year. Because I was older now she insisted that I leave Mississippi and come with them to Texas where things were better for colored people. When she told me I could go to football games and not have to stand on the outside of the stadium and watch the game I was ready to go. For you see, my grandmother and I spent many Friday nights standing outside the Drew stadium so I could watch the football games. My grandmother was great. She would pop popcorn and peanuts and take sodas to the game so I could be like everyone else. I don't know if Drew Colored Consolidated School ever got funded for a football team, but they had great basketball teams. The principal, Professor Hunter, insisted on having a team and even having the school acquire a building that was intended for a second movie house as a gym so the team would not have to play outside during the winter months.
My father would not tell me what was up, but he insisted on taking me to see all of our friends over the course of a three-week span. And then he decided it was time to eat my pet pig, Tom, and my pet chicken, Firestone. I started thinking, Tom and Firestone are gone, what's going to happen to my dog Brown Eye. The name was not only because his eyes were brown, but because he was white all over with a brown patch covering his left eye, the tip of his tail and his ears with one brown spot on his back. After my mom died, dad would leave me at home with him when he went to work. Dad said Brown Eye wouldn't let me get too close to the fireplace or go out of the house and he was right. Whenever I went near the door he would get between me and the door and start starring at me.
Daddy finally told me why we were visiting everyone, we would be catching the bus for Texas in a couple days, but I couldn't tell anyone. We had three more places to visit. My mama's grave, his friend "Big Junior" who owned night clubs in Drew, and his friend John Taylor, who's son was our barber. All went well but one. It seemed that the cemetery where my mother was buried six and a half years earlier was now a cornfield because the church had burned down. So we just threw the roses we had picked all over the field. When asked what we were doing by the property owner I spoke up and told him and he said, "I don't know what you are talking about."
After we drove off my father said "I'm glad I'm getting you out of Mississippi. You don't speak to white men in that tone." I simply said that he would be upset too if he couldn't find his mother's grave. I have spent a lifetime wondering if we were looking for the church and cemetery at the wrong place.
My dad parked the truck in the Looney shed, gave his shotgun to another of my stepmother's brothers who lived on the Looney place and the next morning we caught the bus heading south on highway 49. When the bus stopped I was holding Brown Eye. The bus driver stepped to the door to take our money and said "Boy you can't put that dog on this bus." Before I could say anything daddy nudged me and gave me that you had better not say a word look. I rushed to the back of the bus where we had to sit according to customs and watched Brown Eye run behind the bus until I could no longer see him. I then slumped down in my seat and cried myself to sleep.
Chapter Two
Texas By Sunlight
After crossing the Mississippi River at Greenville Mississippi it seemed to take forever to cross the state line from Arkansas into Texas. I remember my dad shaking me and saying, "Wake up! We are in Texas." The first loud, squeaky words out of my mouth were "I don't see any cowboys." Everybody on the bus thought that was funny, except me. I was dead serious. As we exited the bus at our destination, McKinney, Texas, one of the passengers with a big grin on his face said "Hey Junior, forget the cowboys. You'll find the cowgirls are much more fun." He was right, but I didn't know what he meant at the time.
To be eight years old and have to go through such a noticeable transition in life took some getting used to. In a matter of hours I went from being extremely careful of what I said, what I did, and how I interacted with people to having kids my own age who were Hispanic and white living on the same street as I did and treating me like just as Robert Atkinson and I treated each other. My first week in McKinney a carnival came to town. It was my first. I had never had so much fun. I wished all of my friends in Mississippi could have been there. People of all races were there enjoying the rides, the games, the food and no one seemed to care about how black I was. Black kids in McKinney had new bicycles, black families had televisions and it seemed that every household had at least one automobile and most were property owners. My God mother's land at 913 Rockwall Street extended a whole block, from Rockwall Street to Lindsey Street. On the fence rows we raised grapes, along the sides there were peach trees, plum trees, apricot trees, and in the back yard there was an apple tree which I slept under many nights on my little green Army cot dad had bought for me from the Army Surplus Store. My dad, Uncle Jack Tibbs and I built a storage house in the back yard that would become the mount for my basketball goal and a source of much needed shade for my friend George Howell Jr. and me during the hot summer days. Just as our fathers worked and hung out together, George and I played and hung out together. He was my best friend although I couldn't count the friends I gained on my fingers and toes. As an only child growing up in our household I needed that. My father often said he wished his lifelong friends, whom he left in Mississippi, could experience the esthetic overtones of McKinney's culture and her wealth of good and decent people of all walks of life.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Up from the Fieldsby John H. Bailey II Copyright © 2012 by John H. Bailey II. Excerpted by permission of Abbott Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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