| Biographical Non-Fiction posted April 17, 2016 |
  |
Based on oral histories.
Boxcar: Part 1
by Sis Cat
The author has placed a warning on this post for violence.
The author has placed a warning on this post for language.
The author has placed a warning on this post for sexual content.
Freddie Wilson, a black boy of about twelve, carried a water bucket up the embankment of the Mojave River. He passed around the bedsheet-constructed tents, the corrugated huts, and the jerry-rigged shacks clustered between the cottonwood trees. I suppose I should be grateful. I have a better home than most people in this camp. The license plates of bug-splattered cars read Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Along with their dogs, people wilted in the patches of shade they found or created. It seemed to Freddie like everyone in America had flocked to California’s factories, mines, and shipyards to help in the war effort against Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Even his own Papa James had left Chicago to work at the new George Air Force Base under construction north of Victorville. Mama Jennie had followed him, and dragged Freddie and his sister, Julia, across country to a place where people built their own shelters from the sun or burned alive.
He panted. The precious water sloshed outside of his pail with each step. He remembered the luxury of turning on a faucet in his Chicago tenement. The memory refreshed him. He dipped his hand into the pail, scooped water, and rained on his head. Droplets beaded on his brown face. He imagined them sizzling and drying up.
He made a final push up the embankment as his home came into view—the tilted boxcar sunk in dirt fifty feet from the tracks which ran along the river. The temperature inside the railroad boxcar rose in the Mojave Desert during the course of a summer day to the point where it could bake bread. The heat remained inside long after sundown. If touched, all metal bars and rivets on the outside of the boxcar could scorch a person. Behind a cold campfire, Mama Jennie and Julia lolled on crates before the yawning boxcar door. They waited for the temperature to cool enough inside, so they could sleep in their home.
Freddie joined them in the vigil and placed the bucket on the ground at his mother’s feet. “Mama Jennie, I got water.” He noted that the bucket had lost three inches of water since he had dipped it in the river below. He hoped his mother did not order him to refill it because he would have to go around the campsites below to get to the water.
He smelled the sweat emanating from the dark rings under the armpits of her dress. She reached over and grabbed a ladle which she dipped into the water. She quenched her daughter’s thirst. The pigtailed girl with parched lips revived and her eyes fluttered open. She leaned against her mother and tried to keep her eyes open. Mama Jennie dipped again and took a long drink herself. “Thank you, Freddie, and thank you, Jesus.”
Freddie tensed. He wondered if she could taste that his hand had dipped into the bucket, but she smacked her wet lips and said nothing.
Sunset streaked the sky. The smoke and smells of campfires formed a haze over the riverside encampments as people began to cook that evening's meal. Freddie knelt at his family's cold campfire and arranged a teepee of branches within the circle of stones. He stuffed leaves under the wood, twisted a sheet of newspaper, and struck a match. He lit the paper and inserted it beneath the branches. Smoke rose as flames licked the wood. He would eat cornbread and beans again tonight washed down with river water.
They heard a rumble behind them and felt a rumble beneath them. A train filled with ship-bound soldiers and sailors clickety-clacked down the tracks and passed their abandoned boxcar. Mama Jennie remembered a story. “When my mama died years ago in Evansville, Indiana, my brothers and I were up in Chicago when we got the word. My brothers planned to go to her funeral without me, but they didn’t want to tell me because they didn’t have any money for my train fare and you were just a baby then.”
Julia balled her fist and rubbed her eye. “Am I in this story, Mama?”
“No, child, go back to sleep.” She petted her daughter until her eyes shut.
Freddie grinned that his mother told a story about him.
Mama Jennie continued. “I asked them, ‘How ya’ll going?’
“They smiled and said, ‘Sis, we’re gonna hop that freight train heading south.’
“I went home and packed a few things in a bag and I took you. Just before the time the train was to leave, I made my way to the jumping-on spot. My brothers were shocked to see me with the baby. They said, ‘Whatcha doing carrying your baby out here for?’
“I said, ‘We’re gonna hop that train heading south with you.’
“They looked at each other and snatched my bag. As the train pulled around a curve, they spotted an empty boxcar and leaped on. With you in my arm, I took a running leap and we all hoboed from Chicago to Evansville, Indiana.” Mama Jennie raised her voice and fist in triumph.
Freddie squinted, as if his eyes could see backwards into his head, but he found vague memories as a baby who hoboed in a boxcar. Now grown, he lived as a hobo in a boxcar. He poked the fire with a stick and offered his own railroad story. “Remember, Mama, Chicago in winter?”
The new Californian smiled pearly teeth. “Yes, I remember those winters. They were cold.”
The boy leaned forward on his crate. “We didn’t have enough money to buy coal to keep us warm, so I went down to the rail yard and I waited. When the coal train came by, coal fell off the cars. People everywhere, whites, blacks, adults, and kids, ran all over the tracks behind the train to grab the coal in the snow. You had to be fast before someone else grabbed your coal first. I was fast.” Freddie puffed out his chest.
Mama Jennie nodded an exclamation mark at her son. “Yes, and that was some mighty fine coal, too, Freddie. Didn’t cost us a cent and it kept us warm.”
Night had fallen on the riverside campsites. The sun down, the people revived like nocturnal animals. Banjos plucked. Guitars strummed. Hands clapped. Voices yodeled. The biggest instrument of all, the Mojave River, provided an undercurrent of tones as it rushed around the rocks. Night, when people told the best stories, the type of stories you only told around campfires.
Mama Jennie gazed at her daughter, Julia, sleeping with her head in her lap. The woman studied to make sure the girl was asleep. Convinced, the woman gazed at Freddie and began a story. “My great grandfather Thomas worked as a house slave at a Kentucky tobacco plantation before the Civil War. He was the butler and his wife Elizabeth was the cook. She was also the mistress of the plantation owner Master Harrison. That was the thing then, the master could have any slave woman he wanted and her husband couldn’t say a thing about it or else his master would whip him and sell him off. Elizabeth and their master had a girl named Jennie who Thomas raised as his own daughter.”
Freddie pointed. “Jennie’s your name, too.”
Mama Jennie nodded. “Yes, I was named after my grandmother. She was fifteen when the war ended. After the Civil War, their master freed them. He gave them silverware, mattresses, bedding, cattle, food, and tobacco seedlings. The tobacco, by the way, was pure and did not make people sick. His master told Thomas, ‘Wherever you go, you could grow your own tobacco and make money.’ ”
“So, their master did not turn them out with nothing?”
“No, their master did not turn them out with nothing. Thomas was a well-respected man and Jennie was the master’s daughter. The family traveled through the South. They slept in the bombed out ruins of plantations. Once, when Jennie awoke in the morning, she found a snake curled up in her bedding.”
“Ugh!”
“The family moved to Indiana where the Freemasons helped them establish a tobacco farm.”
“Who are the Freemasons?”
“They are a fraternal organization of white men. They get together in what they call lodges and try to do good. At that time, and still today, they did not admit Negroes as members. Nevertheless, they helped Thomas get established. Maybe that lodge had a connection with his former master which is why they helped Thomas out. Like I said, he was a well-respected man.
“One day, when his daughter Jennie worked the field picking tobacco, this white guy started bothering her. He watched her from the edge of the field, making faces, whistling, calling her to come over, and he would . . . you know . . . with himself.”
Freddie grimaced. “Yuck, that’s nasty.”
“Jennie ignored him and went about her business. Jennie was light-skinned and had blond hair on account of her father being their former master. So when this guy saw Thomas, who was black and dark-skinned, the guy thought Tom had raped a white woman, and that Jennie was their child. The guy got mad and started going into the field and molesting Jennie. Thomas was afraid to do much because of his life as a slave where he was told to keep quiet and never raise his voice at a white man, but his daughter told him, ‘Do something; don’t just stand there.’
“One day the white guy came into his field and raped Jennie and really hurt her. Tom confronted him. ‘Leave her alone and get off my property.’
“Enraged that a Negro would raise a voice at him and try to stop him, the white guy said, ‘Why don’t you kill me?'
“And so, Tom did.”
Freddie bolted from his seat. “He killed him! How?”
“I don’t know, maybe a farm tool like an ax or a shovel, something that was handy. It happened really fast. The guy didn’t think Tom was going to do it because he thought Tom and all Negroes were cowards who would not lift a finger to stop a white man from raping their daughters.”
“What happened next?”
TO BE CONTINUED
Freddie Wilson, a black boy of about twelve, carried a water bucket up the embankment of the Mojave River. He passed around the bedsheet-constructed tents, the corrugated huts, and the jerry-rigged shacks clustered between the cottonwood trees. I suppose I should be grateful. I have a better home than most people in this camp. The license plates of bug-splattered cars read Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Along with their dogs, people wilted in the patches of shade they found or created. It seemed to Freddie like everyone in America had flocked to California’s factories, mines, and shipyards to help in the war effort against Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini. Even his own Papa James had left Chicago to work at the new George Air Force Base under construction north of Victorville. Mama Jennie had followed him, and dragged Freddie and his sister, Julia, across country to a place where people built their own shelters from the sun or burned alive.
He panted. The precious water sloshed outside of his pail with each step. He remembered the luxury of turning on a faucet in his Chicago tenement. The memory refreshed him. He dipped his hand into the pail, scooped water, and rained on his head. Droplets beaded on his brown face. He imagined them sizzling and drying up.
He made a final push up the embankment as his home came into view—the tilted boxcar sunk in dirt fifty feet from the tracks which ran along the river. The temperature inside the railroad boxcar rose in the Mojave Desert during the course of a summer day to the point where it could bake bread. The heat remained inside long after sundown. If touched, all metal bars and rivets on the outside of the boxcar could scorch a person. Behind a cold campfire, Mama Jennie and Julia lolled on crates before the yawning boxcar door. They waited for the temperature to cool enough inside, so they could sleep in their home.
Freddie joined them in the vigil and placed the bucket on the ground at his mother’s feet. “Mama Jennie, I got water.” He noted that the bucket had lost three inches of water since he had dipped it in the river below. He hoped his mother did not order him to refill it because he would have to go around the campsites below to get to the water.
He smelled the sweat emanating from the dark rings under the armpits of her dress. She reached over and grabbed a ladle which she dipped into the water. She quenched her daughter’s thirst. The pigtailed girl with parched lips revived and her eyes fluttered open. She leaned against her mother and tried to keep her eyes open. Mama Jennie dipped again and took a long drink herself. “Thank you, Freddie, and thank you, Jesus.”
Freddie tensed. He wondered if she could taste that his hand had dipped into the bucket, but she smacked her wet lips and said nothing.
Sunset streaked the sky. The smoke and smells of campfires formed a haze over the riverside encampments as people began to cook that evening's meal. Freddie knelt at his family's cold campfire and arranged a teepee of branches within the circle of stones. He stuffed leaves under the wood, twisted a sheet of newspaper, and struck a match. He lit the paper and inserted it beneath the branches. Smoke rose as flames licked the wood. He would eat cornbread and beans again tonight washed down with river water.
They heard a rumble behind them and felt a rumble beneath them. A train filled with ship-bound soldiers and sailors clickety-clacked down the tracks and passed their abandoned boxcar. Mama Jennie remembered a story. “When my mama died years ago in Evansville, Indiana, my brothers and I were up in Chicago when we got the word. My brothers planned to go to her funeral without me, but they didn’t want to tell me because they didn’t have any money for my train fare and you were just a baby then.”
Julia balled her fist and rubbed her eye. “Am I in this story, Mama?”
“No, child, go back to sleep.” She petted her daughter until her eyes shut.
Freddie grinned that his mother told a story about him.
Mama Jennie continued. “I asked them, ‘How ya’ll going?’
“They smiled and said, ‘Sis, we’re gonna hop that freight train heading south.’
“I went home and packed a few things in a bag and I took you. Just before the time the train was to leave, I made my way to the jumping-on spot. My brothers were shocked to see me with the baby. They said, ‘Whatcha doing carrying your baby out here for?’
“I said, ‘We’re gonna hop that train heading south with you.’
“They looked at each other and snatched my bag. As the train pulled around a curve, they spotted an empty boxcar and leaped on. With you in my arm, I took a running leap and we all hoboed from Chicago to Evansville, Indiana.” Mama Jennie raised her voice and fist in triumph.
Freddie squinted, as if his eyes could see backwards into his head, but he found vague memories as a baby who hoboed in a boxcar. Now grown, he lived as a hobo in a boxcar. He poked the fire with a stick and offered his own railroad story. “Remember, Mama, Chicago in winter?”
The new Californian smiled pearly teeth. “Yes, I remember those winters. They were cold.”
The boy leaned forward on his crate. “We didn’t have enough money to buy coal to keep us warm, so I went down to the rail yard and I waited. When the coal train came by, coal fell off the cars. People everywhere, whites, blacks, adults, and kids, ran all over the tracks behind the train to grab the coal in the snow. You had to be fast before someone else grabbed your coal first. I was fast.” Freddie puffed out his chest.
Mama Jennie nodded an exclamation mark at her son. “Yes, and that was some mighty fine coal, too, Freddie. Didn’t cost us a cent and it kept us warm.”
Night had fallen on the riverside campsites. The sun down, the people revived like nocturnal animals. Banjos plucked. Guitars strummed. Hands clapped. Voices yodeled. The biggest instrument of all, the Mojave River, provided an undercurrent of tones as it rushed around the rocks. Night, when people told the best stories, the type of stories you only told around campfires.
Mama Jennie gazed at her daughter, Julia, sleeping with her head in her lap. The woman studied to make sure the girl was asleep. Convinced, the woman gazed at Freddie and began a story. “My great grandfather Thomas worked as a house slave at a Kentucky tobacco plantation before the Civil War. He was the butler and his wife Elizabeth was the cook. She was also the mistress of the plantation owner Master Harrison. That was the thing then, the master could have any slave woman he wanted and her husband couldn’t say a thing about it or else his master would whip him and sell him off. Elizabeth and their master had a girl named Jennie who Thomas raised as his own daughter.”
Freddie pointed. “Jennie’s your name, too.”
Mama Jennie nodded. “Yes, I was named after my grandmother. She was fifteen when the war ended. After the Civil War, their master freed them. He gave them silverware, mattresses, bedding, cattle, food, and tobacco seedlings. The tobacco, by the way, was pure and did not make people sick. His master told Thomas, ‘Wherever you go, you could grow your own tobacco and make money.’ ”
“So, their master did not turn them out with nothing?”
“No, their master did not turn them out with nothing. Thomas was a well-respected man and Jennie was the master’s daughter. The family traveled through the South. They slept in the bombed out ruins of plantations. Once, when Jennie awoke in the morning, she found a snake curled up in her bedding.”
“Ugh!”
“The family moved to Indiana where the Freemasons helped them establish a tobacco farm.”
“Who are the Freemasons?”
“They are a fraternal organization of white men. They get together in what they call lodges and try to do good. At that time, and still today, they did not admit Negroes as members. Nevertheless, they helped Thomas get established. Maybe that lodge had a connection with his former master which is why they helped Thomas out. Like I said, he was a well-respected man.
“One day, when his daughter Jennie worked the field picking tobacco, this white guy started bothering her. He watched her from the edge of the field, making faces, whistling, calling her to come over, and he would . . . you know . . . with himself.”
Freddie grimaced. “Yuck, that’s nasty.”
“Jennie ignored him and went about her business. Jennie was light-skinned and had blond hair on account of her father being their former master. So when this guy saw Thomas, who was black and dark-skinned, the guy thought Tom had raped a white woman, and that Jennie was their child. The guy got mad and started going into the field and molesting Jennie. Thomas was afraid to do much because of his life as a slave where he was told to keep quiet and never raise his voice at a white man, but his daughter told him, ‘Do something; don’t just stand there.’
“One day the white guy came into his field and raped Jennie and really hurt her. Tom confronted him. ‘Leave her alone and get off my property.’
“Enraged that a Negro would raise a voice at him and try to stop him, the white guy said, ‘Why don’t you kill me?'
“And so, Tom did.”
Freddie bolted from his seat. “He killed him! How?”
“I don’t know, maybe a farm tool like an ax or a shovel, something that was handy. It happened really fast. The guy didn’t think Tom was going to do it because he thought Tom and all Negroes were cowards who would not lift a finger to stop a white man from raping their daughters.”
“What happened next?”
TO BE CONTINUED
He panted. The precious water sloshed outside of his pail with each step. He remembered the luxury of turning on a faucet in his Chicago tenement. The memory refreshed him. He dipped his hand into the pail, scooped water, and rained on his head. Droplets beaded on his brown face. He imagined them sizzling and drying up.
He made a final push up the embankment as his home came into view—the tilted boxcar sunk in dirt fifty feet from the tracks which ran along the river. The temperature inside the railroad boxcar rose in the Mojave Desert during the course of a summer day to the point where it could bake bread. The heat remained inside long after sundown. If touched, all metal bars and rivets on the outside of the boxcar could scorch a person. Behind a cold campfire, Mama Jennie and Julia lolled on crates before the yawning boxcar door. They waited for the temperature to cool enough inside, so they could sleep in their home.
Freddie joined them in the vigil and placed the bucket on the ground at his mother’s feet. “Mama Jennie, I got water.” He noted that the bucket had lost three inches of water since he had dipped it in the river below. He hoped his mother did not order him to refill it because he would have to go around the campsites below to get to the water.
He smelled the sweat emanating from the dark rings under the armpits of her dress. She reached over and grabbed a ladle which she dipped into the water. She quenched her daughter’s thirst. The pigtailed girl with parched lips revived and her eyes fluttered open. She leaned against her mother and tried to keep her eyes open. Mama Jennie dipped again and took a long drink herself. “Thank you, Freddie, and thank you, Jesus.”
Freddie tensed. He wondered if she could taste that his hand had dipped into the bucket, but she smacked her wet lips and said nothing.
Sunset streaked the sky. The smoke and smells of campfires formed a haze over the riverside encampments as people began to cook that evening's meal. Freddie knelt at his family's cold campfire and arranged a teepee of branches within the circle of stones. He stuffed leaves under the wood, twisted a sheet of newspaper, and struck a match. He lit the paper and inserted it beneath the branches. Smoke rose as flames licked the wood. He would eat cornbread and beans again tonight washed down with river water.
They heard a rumble behind them and felt a rumble beneath them. A train filled with ship-bound soldiers and sailors clickety-clacked down the tracks and passed their abandoned boxcar. Mama Jennie remembered a story. “When my mama died years ago in Evansville, Indiana, my brothers and I were up in Chicago when we got the word. My brothers planned to go to her funeral without me, but they didn’t want to tell me because they didn’t have any money for my train fare and you were just a baby then.”
Julia balled her fist and rubbed her eye. “Am I in this story, Mama?”
“No, child, go back to sleep.” She petted her daughter until her eyes shut.
Freddie grinned that his mother told a story about him.
Mama Jennie continued. “I asked them, ‘How ya’ll going?’
“They smiled and said, ‘Sis, we’re gonna hop that freight train heading south.’
“I went home and packed a few things in a bag and I took you. Just before the time the train was to leave, I made my way to the jumping-on spot. My brothers were shocked to see me with the baby. They said, ‘Whatcha doing carrying your baby out here for?’
“I said, ‘We’re gonna hop that train heading south with you.’
“They looked at each other and snatched my bag. As the train pulled around a curve, they spotted an empty boxcar and leaped on. With you in my arm, I took a running leap and we all hoboed from Chicago to Evansville, Indiana.” Mama Jennie raised her voice and fist in triumph.
Freddie squinted, as if his eyes could see backwards into his head, but he found vague memories as a baby who hoboed in a boxcar. Now grown, he lived as a hobo in a boxcar. He poked the fire with a stick and offered his own railroad story. “Remember, Mama, Chicago in winter?”
The new Californian smiled pearly teeth. “Yes, I remember those winters. They were cold.”
The boy leaned forward on his crate. “We didn’t have enough money to buy coal to keep us warm, so I went down to the rail yard and I waited. When the coal train came by, coal fell off the cars. People everywhere, whites, blacks, adults, and kids, ran all over the tracks behind the train to grab the coal in the snow. You had to be fast before someone else grabbed your coal first. I was fast.” Freddie puffed out his chest.
Mama Jennie nodded an exclamation mark at her son. “Yes, and that was some mighty fine coal, too, Freddie. Didn’t cost us a cent and it kept us warm.”
Night had fallen on the riverside campsites. The sun down, the people revived like nocturnal animals. Banjos plucked. Guitars strummed. Hands clapped. Voices yodeled. The biggest instrument of all, the Mojave River, provided an undercurrent of tones as it rushed around the rocks. Night, when people told the best stories, the type of stories you only told around campfires.
Mama Jennie gazed at her daughter, Julia, sleeping with her head in her lap. The woman studied to make sure the girl was asleep. Convinced, the woman gazed at Freddie and began a story. “My great grandfather Thomas worked as a house slave at a Kentucky tobacco plantation before the Civil War. He was the butler and his wife Elizabeth was the cook. She was also the mistress of the plantation owner Master Harrison. That was the thing then, the master could have any slave woman he wanted and her husband couldn’t say a thing about it or else his master would whip him and sell him off. Elizabeth and their master had a girl named Jennie who Thomas raised as his own daughter.”
Freddie pointed. “Jennie’s your name, too.”
Mama Jennie nodded. “Yes, I was named after my grandmother. She was fifteen when the war ended. After the Civil War, their master freed them. He gave them silverware, mattresses, bedding, cattle, food, and tobacco seedlings. The tobacco, by the way, was pure and did not make people sick. His master told Thomas, ‘Wherever you go, you could grow your own tobacco and make money.’ ”
“So, their master did not turn them out with nothing?”
“No, their master did not turn them out with nothing. Thomas was a well-respected man and Jennie was the master’s daughter. The family traveled through the South. They slept in the bombed out ruins of plantations. Once, when Jennie awoke in the morning, she found a snake curled up in her bedding.”
“Ugh!”
“The family moved to Indiana where the Freemasons helped them establish a tobacco farm.”
“Who are the Freemasons?”
“They are a fraternal organization of white men. They get together in what they call lodges and try to do good. At that time, and still today, they did not admit Negroes as members. Nevertheless, they helped Thomas get established. Maybe that lodge had a connection with his former master which is why they helped Thomas out. Like I said, he was a well-respected man.
“One day, when his daughter Jennie worked the field picking tobacco, this white guy started bothering her. He watched her from the edge of the field, making faces, whistling, calling her to come over, and he would . . . you know . . . with himself.”
Freddie grimaced. “Yuck, that’s nasty.”
“Jennie ignored him and went about her business. Jennie was light-skinned and had blond hair on account of her father being their former master. So when this guy saw Thomas, who was black and dark-skinned, the guy thought Tom had raped a white woman, and that Jennie was their child. The guy got mad and started going into the field and molesting Jennie. Thomas was afraid to do much because of his life as a slave where he was told to keep quiet and never raise his voice at a white man, but his daughter told him, ‘Do something; don’t just stand there.’
“One day the white guy came into his field and raped Jennie and really hurt her. Tom confronted him. ‘Leave her alone and get off my property.’
“Enraged that a Negro would raise a voice at him and try to stop him, the white guy said, ‘Why don’t you kill me?'
“And so, Tom did.”
Freddie bolted from his seat. “He killed him! How?”
“I don’t know, maybe a farm tool like an ax or a shovel, something that was handy. It happened really fast. The guy didn’t think Tom was going to do it because he thought Tom and all Negroes were cowards who would not lift a finger to stop a white man from raping their daughters.”
“What happened next?”
TO BE CONTINUED
 Recognized |
|
CHARACTERS
FREDDIE (Fred Wilson) black boy of about twelve, son of Mama Jennie, and father of author, Andre Wilson
MAMA JENNIE (Jennie Moore) black woman of about thirty, mother of Freddie and Julia and grandmother of author, Andre Wilson
JULIA, black girl of about eight, daughter of Mama Jennie and sister of Freddie
THOMAS HARRISON (Tom), former slave and the great grandfather of Freddie
ELIZABETH HARRISON, former slave and mistress of a tobacco planter, wife of Tom and mother of Jennie
JENNIE HARRISON, former slave, daughter of a planter and Elizabeth
FREEMASONS, a fraternal order of men dedicated to public service
WHITE CAPS, Ku Klux Klan-like vigilante group which executed their version of justice in a form of a noose in Southern Indiana after the Civil War
AUTHOR'S NOTES
I based "Boxcar" on four manuscripts of an oral story that my family passed down for one-hundred and twenty-three years before I wrote it down in a diary on July 8, 1988 when my mother left for her sister's funeral and sent Grandma Jennie to care for me and my siblings. During her stay, Mama Jennie told me the story about our great great grandfather, a former slave, who faced hope and terror after the Civil War.
The most detailed account of this story was recorded by my step-mother, Kristen Chandler-Wilson, when Mama Jennie visited her and my father, Fred Wilson, and told them the story on February 12, 1996. The shortest version of this story was an undated paragraph written by my mother, Jessie Wilson, after Mama Jennie told her the story. My diary also contains a version of this story told to me by my father.
One of the challenges I faced was to combine all four versions of the story. Some of the facts and details shift with each telling and I am unsure how accurate the tellers or the transcribers are. Also, I lacked firsthand accounts of the incidents described. I solved these challenges by focusing on telling a good story to the best of my ability and using the storytelling skills that my family has passed down to me for generations.
Another solution I used was to not tell this story as a historical essay, but to keep it within the oral tradition. I used my November 28, 2011 journal entry about my father telling me that he lived in a boxcar with his mother and sister in Victorville, California for a year during World War II, and I placed the action of the story within a story told at their boxcar campsite in the 1940's. I incorporated the unpublished story of my mother, "Jennie Bell's Leap," about my grandmother hoboing with Freddie. I also used an audio recording and my diary transcript of my grandmother telling her family's slave narrative "The Story of the Black Cat," which I turned into a solo performance in San Francisco. It is the prequel to the "Boxcar" story:
The boxcar depicted is from Google images and is not the boxcar my grandmother and father inhabited. Five months before he died in 2012, he told me and I recorded in my diary, "The last time he drove by several years ago, the boxcar was still there."
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. FREDDIE (Fred Wilson) black boy of about twelve, son of Mama Jennie, and father of author, Andre Wilson
MAMA JENNIE (Jennie Moore) black woman of about thirty, mother of Freddie and Julia and grandmother of author, Andre Wilson
JULIA, black girl of about eight, daughter of Mama Jennie and sister of Freddie
THOMAS HARRISON (Tom), former slave and the great grandfather of Freddie
ELIZABETH HARRISON, former slave and mistress of a tobacco planter, wife of Tom and mother of Jennie
JENNIE HARRISON, former slave, daughter of a planter and Elizabeth
FREEMASONS, a fraternal order of men dedicated to public service
WHITE CAPS, Ku Klux Klan-like vigilante group which executed their version of justice in a form of a noose in Southern Indiana after the Civil War
AUTHOR'S NOTES
I based "Boxcar" on four manuscripts of an oral story that my family passed down for one-hundred and twenty-three years before I wrote it down in a diary on July 8, 1988 when my mother left for her sister's funeral and sent Grandma Jennie to care for me and my siblings. During her stay, Mama Jennie told me the story about our great great grandfather, a former slave, who faced hope and terror after the Civil War.
The most detailed account of this story was recorded by my step-mother, Kristen Chandler-Wilson, when Mama Jennie visited her and my father, Fred Wilson, and told them the story on February 12, 1996. The shortest version of this story was an undated paragraph written by my mother, Jessie Wilson, after Mama Jennie told her the story. My diary also contains a version of this story told to me by my father.
One of the challenges I faced was to combine all four versions of the story. Some of the facts and details shift with each telling and I am unsure how accurate the tellers or the transcribers are. Also, I lacked firsthand accounts of the incidents described. I solved these challenges by focusing on telling a good story to the best of my ability and using the storytelling skills that my family has passed down to me for generations.
Another solution I used was to not tell this story as a historical essay, but to keep it within the oral tradition. I used my November 28, 2011 journal entry about my father telling me that he lived in a boxcar with his mother and sister in Victorville, California for a year during World War II, and I placed the action of the story within a story told at their boxcar campsite in the 1940's. I incorporated the unpublished story of my mother, "Jennie Bell's Leap," about my grandmother hoboing with Freddie. I also used an audio recording and my diary transcript of my grandmother telling her family's slave narrative "The Story of the Black Cat," which I turned into a solo performance in San Francisco. It is the prequel to the "Boxcar" story:
The boxcar depicted is from Google images and is not the boxcar my grandmother and father inhabited. Five months before he died in 2012, he told me and I recorded in my diary, "The last time he drove by several years ago, the boxcar was still there."
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