Growing Up King by Dexter Scott King, Ralph Wiley Read Free Book Online Page B

everything was in the store, and he told us to “help yourself,”
     against my grandmother’s wishes. Her thing was, “Child, you need to eat healthy. You’re going to work here.”
    Her cooking was great, southern country cooking, the fresh taste. I mean even till this day, once you’ve sampled it, you can
     never forget it. Fresh turnips, collards, okra, squash, onions simmering over roasts, and hams stuffed with cloves and a raisin
     glaze; cornbread, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, fresh everything, made deliciously. Now you and I know time gilds—often dietary habits
     you had as a child are remembered so fondly until other people from other families in other parts of the country find it all
     too appalling. You ate grits!? Indeed we did, ate them and loved them as they were prepared in the country, slathered in fresh
     butter or in a puddle of brown gravy off the rendering fat of chicken or ham with a touch of celery or bell pepper. Those
     grits back then were not just plain grits you get from a box or some Denny’s. In my memory, they were right—creamy, smooth,
     delicious, all so good and remembered well.
    Granddaddy Scott was a hardworking, frugal man, who learned from watching his father. It must have been hard to maintain a
     simple abundance in a system where a black man’s life was virtually worthless and he could be “disappeared” for working hard,
     accumulating something, a little more than some few of his white neighbors down the road. An authentic line from
Mississippi Burning
, delivered by Gene Hackman, talking about how his poor white southern character’s father felt about a “Negro”: “If you ain’t
     better than a nigger, who are you better than?” We could talk about the psychology behind that line, or dryly recite events
     of the day. But no need. Great-granddaddy Scott and Granddaddy Scott lived when it was an unforgivable crime for a “Negro”
     to get ahead.
    Granddaddy Scott’s home was a wood-frame house on a large tract of land. Animals in the backyard; cow pasture, barn behind
     the house, adjacent to the hog shed and chicken shack; vegetable garden and produce trees on the side of the house; then cropland,
     several hundred acres elsewhere; the farm itself, and main house, on about fourteen acres. My grandfather was well regarded
     in the community—you got that sense. Marty and I would come in the store and work. He’d let us tag along, teach us how to
     work a cash register, let us help wait on people who came to get gas.
    You could tell that everybody looked up to Mr. Obie. Mr. Obie was for all intents and purposes the local bank and the local
     barber. He did some of everything. Cut hair on his porch. When people couldn’t afford to buy groceries, he’d extend them credit.
     There were so many people who owed him money that if they paid him off, seemed like he would’ve been a millionaire. He gave
     away so much at the end of his life and didn’t have a lot to show for it. Some people see that as mismanagement, other people
     see it as I do—he worked at what he loved, he helped people out, wasn’t in it for the money. He saw it as justice. He’d been
     fleeced himself. He was always courteous and giving to people. Some people took advantage, cheated him right to his face,
     let’s say on his gas pump. “Three dollars on regular,” a bad one might say, when he’d actually put in five. Granddaddy didn’t
     spend his life chasing the bad ones, or trying to keep them more honest. He was honest himself, never let other people’s transgressions
     affect him or the way he lived. And I saw this, and at the time it confused me, but in later years I began to understand it
     better. It took a while, though.
    “Granddaddy, did you see what that man did?”… “Yeah, boy, I sure did. Think I’m blind? Make sure you don’t go around doing
     things like that.”… “You gonna let him get away with it, Grand-daddy?”… “Ain’t for me to let him get away or not.