This past Sunday, Margaret and I saw “The Help” – after reading and enjoying the book, we were really ready to see the movie. It was a great experience. I would highly recommend both the book and the movie to anyone.
Growing up in Miami our next-door neighbor had a maid, Miss Pearl. And it was always MISS Pearl never just “Pearl” or “Hey” or any other such nonsense – we were told that Miss Pearl was an adult and thus due our respect. She was getting up in years when we moved in during the late 1940s. Miss Pearl, at this point, did more sitting around than work, but that was accepted by Mrs. Hall. Miss Pearl still did the laundry and some house cleaning, but beyond that nothing much. The one thing that I do remember is that Miss Pearl was encouraged by our parents to give us a “whack on the backside” if we needed it. She was just another parental figure in my growing up years.
But, back to “The Help” – we have friends in St. Petersburg, Buck and Sunny Roberts. During our sons illness and death they were “adopted” parents to our daughter Tracy. They have three daughters and a son. I have been privileged to officiate at a couple of their weddings. They are a part of our extended family … very special people.
Anyway, Buck loves history and has been writing down some of remembrance for his children and grandchildren. I share his story #27 which he wrote after seeing “The Help”:
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Sat - Aug 13, 2011
Last night. Mom-Sunny and I went to see the movie "The Help". We believe that the movie is much better than the written reviews probably because we were raised in the "old south" and could relate to it better than a …… northern newspaper writer. It was about the degrading hardships that black/Negro/African-American maids had to endure two generations ago (and probably to a small extent even today). They mostly were referred to back than as "colored" or that "n" word. We folks may be Caucasians, but back then we were white folks.
I well remember our colored maid/cook named Bell who lived on our property in a small 4-room wooden shack-of-a-house located just across the bottom west of Mama's house. The house wasn't much, but it was free. It had a tin roof and two fireplaces and a small two-burner kerosene stove for cooking. We provided the coal and the kerosene. Bell had a son named Willie Jim and no husband. Willie Jim was about 3 years older than me. He and I played cowboy and indians (he was always the indian) or "shot marbles" or he joined-in kick-the-can or hiding seek games with me and my white friends. Occasionally, we would go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon to see the Durango Kid or Hopa-Long-Cassidy or Gene Autry or Roy Rogers ...... Willie Jim would sit up stairs with the colored people and I would sit downstairs with the whites. Mama & Daddy were always having to work, but one of them would would give Willie Jim his money to get into the movie (10 cents) ... popcorn was a nickle a bag.
Bell was always at the house early each day to cook and clean. At each meal, "the family" would sit at the dinner table or at the kitchen table and Bell & Willie Jim would eat on the back porch table or wait until we were done and eat inside. We didn't have A/C, so it didn't much matter except in the winter when they mostly ate inside near the fire. We had a two-hole privy about 50 feet behind the house that the family used before indoor plumbing and Bell and Willie Jim used it now. Just a-side story, when we sold Mama's house, my brother Jim had written in the contract that the privy was not part of the sale and he was going to have it moved to Marianna (a collector's item I suppose). He never moved it and it eventually rotted-down.
Bell washed our clothes using an old iron wash pot located out in the chicken yard where Grandma Brown had her egg-laying hens and 3-4 mean roosters that would spur you bad. The chicken yard was not a small enclosure --- it actually was about 5 acreas large with a large hen house. I well remember when I was about 3-5 years old, Bell would carry me on her hip into the chicken yard and sit me on the laundry table where the roosters couldn't get me ...... I remember watching her start the fire around the pot and fill it with water, put a small bar of old lye or octagon soap in the pot and she would boil the clothes and stir them in the pot with an old shortened boat paddle. We used clothes lines back then to hang clothes to dry.
Anyway, if you ever go see "The Help", please remember that both Mom-Sunny and me "have been there - done that", BUT REMEMBER ONE THING, we were NEVER mean to our help, we gave them extra money when they needed our help, we shared food with them right from the dinner table plus I always carried them rabbits and fish, we gave them clothes, we made sure that they never were hungry or cold, ...... just ask Bell, Lulu Mae, and Nellie. They were our nannies and we loved them.
Love,
PA-Daddy-Buck
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Thanks Buck for sharing and allowing me to share your story in this blog. One last story about Miss Pearl: She, on occasion, would state: "Now, Jimmy, if you ain't careful, I can give you a 'what for' just for good measure for those times that you be misbehavin' when you be out of my sight" ... just another set of eyes watching over me. I also remember her telling my mother, on more than one occasion, "Miss Vera, I'd be careful of that one, he just seems to me like trouble brewin'." Boy, did she have my number. Might have something to do with helping to raise the five Hall boys.
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