I must share a story that is Southern to the core, as told by an elderly Black Gentleman, and passed to me by my Father in Law. This is told from the perspective of a man named Buck, a Chaffuer for Warren Sewell, owner of the largest suit manufacturer in the known world located in Bremen, Georgia., and quite possibly one of the richest men in the world at the time.
Back in the forties, the automotive industry was taking off after WWII, along with housing and other textile manufacturers, and most folks with an ethic for hard work headed to Detroit for the chance to get factory work assembling automobiles in the numerous auto assembly plants that had been converted back to such after the war effort and the boom that followed. The South was still a hard place for a black man to find a good job as all the decent factory jobs went to the white men who had just ended their stint in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Most Southern Blacks had jobs cleaning houses, as maids, cooks and wait staff in numerous restaurants. There was still a generous amount of cotton still being harvested in the USA and North Florida kept a generous crop to be picked, still jobs relegated to the black population as Hispanics were migratory workers and mostly in the western states like California, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Southern Texas. Transportation was scarce, and most Hispanics kept to the states bordering Mexico, I assume to be able to “escape” back if necessary. Buck, a black man in his early twenties and the subject of the short story you are reading, decided he’d give the factory work a try.
Buck was a hard worker and was also in the Army during WWII, but as a cook and general laborer, not seeing much action in battle. He was overseas for a short while but his company was afforded little opportunity to distinguish themselves in battle, other than fighting pots and pans. He received a small stipend when the war ended and a free ride back home, so he returned to Bremen, Georgia, and after returning he gave a generous percentage of his “dismiss pay” to his mother. Buck made a decision to find a way to make a good living and attempt to settle down, maybe find a wife and have children, then hopefully fulfill the American dream of home ownership. Buck knew that he was not going to be able to make much money in Bremen Georgia, and he had enough “seed” money to carefully plan what his next step might be. He thought on it for a weeks time and finally decided he’d head to the city of Detroit, Michigan. He had heard that the boom meant that every man would own a new car, and spending his remaining savings purchased a train ticket and took that train to Detroit to find his way.
Buck had never been away from home for very long, save for the time he was in the Army serving his country. He’d even promised himself that when the war ended, he would never leave the south again. It was where he was born and where he’d planned on being planted when it was all said and done. He was about to break his own promise to make a way for himself. Buck was scared and excited at the same time, and he thought “it musta benn like a sho nuff well-trained American troop puttin the cross hairs on a Nazi for the first time.” He said his goodbyes to his momma and his brothers and sisters, and then found his way the “Blacks only” train car reserved for black men and women of means. Truth was, this was still the South, and folks just didn’t allow it. When he found his seat, he remembered the whistle blowing meant he was on his way, He waved to his family and watched Bremen disappear out of sight. He was headed North to prosperity, and hopefully a new job in the automotive industry. Surely there would be a job there for a veteran, surely. Buck arrived on schedule in Detroit, and it was indeed a boom town, and bigger and louder than any city he had seen in his whole life. He went and found a small hotel in the part of town a traveling black man might be able to find a room. He gave the man at the hotel desk his ten dollars, good for five nights in the hotel, and made his way to his room. The bathrooms were down the hall, and the bed was comfortable enough, he thought. It had a small radiator heater in the room, and for Buck, this was a sight to behold as only white affluent “in-towners” had radiant heat in their houses. He had always relied on the big black pot-bellied stove located right in the middle of the four room house he and his six brothers and sister grew up in. He was as excited as the first day he got to go to the County Fair. Just seeing the radiator in his room made him feel he was in the right place. He prayed: “Oh Lawd, woucha please have mercy on ole Buck? Would you please help ole Buck finds a decent job hea up Nawth, and wouldcha pleas look afta my fambly while I is away?” Then Buck laid down on the bed, thinking he might be a guest of the President of these United States, what him having his own bed to sleep in.
He remembered having to share one bed with his three brothers growing up, and how cold the wall was when he slept against it, the wind howling and cold coming right through in the wintertime. Buck slept right slap in the middle of the hotel bed, like he’d done in the Army, remembering how the other men in his company thought him stupid when he asked how many men had to sleep in all those beds. When he was told that the bed was just for him, he quietly thought to himself it was going to be a bad joke. He said he laid awake in his bunk for three days, waiting for someone to show up and tell him they had to share a bed, but that day never came. Buck was equally excited when he was issued a pair of boots that was just his. He also struggled with the notion that one pair of shoes, any kind of shoes, might be just for him and him alone. The only thing he had to do was polish them from rough leather to shiny black, using the shoe polish issued to him by the Army, for him to keep the boots for himself. This was according to his drill instructor, a man who Buck had grown to trust, although the man hollered alot and about everything. Buck figured that the faster he’d get them shoes polished, the better chance he had of keeping them all for himself. In one week his boots were so shiny, a man could field shave in the finish. Buck even said how his drill instructor told him to quit saying “thank you” for all the free clothes, meals, and a rifle all for just marching around and saying “Yessuh Drill Sargent and Noosuh Drill Sargent!”
Buck started out early the next day and set out for the large auto plants located near the rail lines. He guessed it was good sense to put the plants near to where the materials to build them might come in (he learned that in the Army) and then be able to load the finished cars onto the trains taking them back to all points in the USA, and his hometown of Bremen. He was a happy man, feeling like he had arrived in the big city, and he anxiously hoped he might find a job in a hurry. He walked the two miles to the plants and the long line of men waiting to apply for the jobs there. Ole Buck applied to every plant from GM to Chrysler to Ford to American Motors, but none would be hiring a black man any time soon. At all of the places he applied, the folks hiring were as nice to him as he had been treated in his whole life, but as he sat, he noticed that the white men were getting jobs almost immediately. The black men, however, were placed on a waiting list and told that jobs were tight and hard to come by. Buck got down right mad about the entire situation, even told one person in charge of hiring that he had served his country just like all the white men that were getting jobs handed to them. He said it was almost like a dark curtain had dropped on him. He spent the duration of his days looking for any kind of work, even cooking or washing dishes, but no one seemed to want to hire a southern black man, even to sweep a floor for a meal.
Buck decided he was going to go home.
Back to Bremen Georgia, where he at least knew what the rules of the game were. Where he had grown up, worked all his life, and left to go into the service. It was a hard decision to finally come to as he had spent the last of his money surviving while he looked for work, so when he left Detroit, he was flat broke. He didn’t have enough money to buy a bus or a train ticket and he thought about jumping on a train car, but Buck knew he couldn’t “Hobo” on the trains, as they were populated predominantly by whites and he would be a most unwelcomed guest. After much soul-searching, Buck decided he’d just walk back to Georgia, his home, and all thing familiar. He spent the last of his money buying beef jerky, a poor mans meal when traveling. He had on his Army issued boots that fit him like a glove and were still shiny from the months and months of polishing. He decided he’d better dirty up his boots in case he ran into some disagreeable folk who might think he stole them from a man of means. It upset him to do it, but he knew he’d be more upset if he had to walk back to Georgia barefooted. He had no maps of the area or a compass, so setting out he relied only on the position of the sun as his guide. Before he left he asked the hotel clerk how far away he thought he might be from Georgia and the man behind the desk only told him “Further than I’d care to walk”. Buck took this to mean that it must have been thousands of miles. Buck said one last prayer before he left. It was “Lawd, guide my steps“. He then set out back South with just the clothes on his back and some beef jerky.
Buck walked for two days straight taking the back roads and avoiding the highways as often as he could. He had no money, and no self-respecting white man, or woman, was going to give a black man a ride regardless of if it were the South or not. When you added fact that Buck slept outdoors or in barns, and he smelled like the livestock he slept with, it made for a picture that was most unpleasant. Buck knew the livestock he slept near was eating better than he did, and it made him recollect the “proddiggal son, eating wiff de hogs, till he got up the currage to go back to his daddy and ax him to please make him his slave“. This thought made Buck as sad as a man could be, and he was sure that no man, not even the prodigal son, was as discouraged as Buck might be. He had been walking for a good ten days and he was tired and starving. He would go to the front doors of the houses asking for food, and sometimes he’d get a biscuit or a cookie, sometimes maybe even a sandwich and something to drink and be sent on his way. This went on for weeks, according to Buck, as the walk was long and arduous. He often feared for his safety, being raised in the South and taught by his father to be on the lookout for “rapscallions” – mean folk that would take pleasure in tormenting a black man. Buck kept to the back roads and depended on the food he would get from the front doors of strangers… he longed for a hot meal, and home. Buck thought at one point, he’d ask God to just kill him dead, thinking he might not ever see his beloved Georgia again this side of Heaven. He walked one stretch for almost three days with nothing to eat and barely seeing a car. Buck thought he might even be dead already, and walking was how he was going to spend eternity. He knew he was a good man and he believed in Jesus, going down to get saved at church and getting dunked in the river, his sins washed as white as snow. Buck thought he was a new man when he was “baptized” but he said when he got home and looked in the mirror, it was the same old Buck staring back at him. He thought he might have upset God in some strange way, and Hell for him at least, was going to be spending eternity walking, tired and hungry.
When he finally saw a house off in the distance, he was so happy he thought “he might bust open”. He decided he was going to ask the folks living there for just a little something to eat. When he opened the gate and headed up the path to the front door he was met with: “Hey, you God Damned Nigger, what in the hell do you want?” Buck heard coming from inside the screened door, but no face to go along with the voice. Buck replied “I’m hungry sir, and I’m trying to get back home to Georgia” The same voice said “Well, Hell, son, don’t you know you need to come around back?” Buck said he cut and split wood, then stacked it neatly. He was using the very last of his energy, thinking he might go ahead and die before the job was done. After the wood splitting was done and stacked, the man and woman living there fed him like a king, and even let him take a bath in the house. They gave him clothes to wear and washed his traveling clothes. He slept in the barn like a man that had never gotten to sleep before. When he woke up the next morning, he ate breakfast with the kind people there and they sent him off with provisions for the rest of his trip. He bade them farewell and didn’t ask where he might be. He thanked the man and woman one last time for their hospitality as he headed out the back door and around the house to the road. He didn’t know for sure how close he was to Georgia, and home, when he started to walk again.
Buck said he cried when he left. He knew that someone calling him ”a God Damned Nigger” meant he was close to home. He said it was like music to his ears.
