Back when I was a kid, maybe six or seven, my father let some colored man come live in our tool shop for two weeks, while he looked for a new place to stay. Fourteen years later, and his first social security check in pocket, Old Andy moved out. Here’s our story with Old Andy and our Southern home.
Old Andy lived in what was called “The Big House” with his entire family. It was about twenty of them, spanning three generations, that inhabited the same, run-down house in the heart of the county, all sharing partial ownership. Old Andy, a lowly cousin and without any wife or kids, came up with the short end of the stick when a family vote took place to sell the house to some developer looking to build a 7-Eleven. Old Andy, with a keen attachment to “The Big House,” was the only one to vote no.
He’d lived there his whole life, and by God they’d have to bulldoze it with him in it. Old Andy was also an alcoholic, so as soon as the fridge was empty, he meandered down to the local store for a new case of beer. He returned to “The Big House” to find a pile of rubble, as they’d snuck a bulldozer down the road when they saw him leave. They demolished not only his home, but all of Old Andy’s belongings.
My father knew Old Andy and had hired him to do some work, like trimming trees and cutting grass. When his home was destroyed, Old Andy spoke with my dad and secured a cot in our shop, a little spot we called the “Hound Pen.” Old Andy, being the smellier sort, drove us out of our own shop whilst he inhabited it. There was a spigot outside, a television, refrigerator and woodstove inside, so Old Andy was going nowhere fast. He was called upon to help out with a few chores at the house in exchange for his free accomodations, and some beer money.
Old Andy ended up seeing a black snake in the shop and was hesitant to sleep down there afterwards. Seizing the opportunity for us to reclaim use of the shop, a shed was designated as his new living quarters. This 10×10 shed was furnished with a wardrobe, a couch, a woodstove, and, of course, a television. Old Andy was living large at this point. With his bicycle he could easily reach the nearby gas station for cigarettes and beer. He had no need for food. When he was too drunk to balance his bicycle, he’d ride the lawnmower there, or walk. With his bucket out back and a spigot out front, he wanted for nothing.
When called upon, Old Andy would help with moving something outside, cutting the grass or cleaning the gutters. He wasn’t good for much else, but as long as bossman let him borrow twenty dollars, he was a happy man. No twenty dollars was ever returned, and I expect he misunderstood the word “borrow” entirely. I’d be out there choring as well and he would call me “buddy” or “cousin” at first. But, eventually I became “the bossman,” and was asked for things to do in exchange for my precious dollar bills.
Old Andy was a faithful friend and worker. As a kid, when he started calling me bossman, we joked about the odd situation he was in, but he never seemed to want anything else. While well past my age, and even my father’s age, it was almost like he looked up to us. We provided for him in exchange for a little help around the land, and other than a few times where he’d crash the lawnmower into a tree or accidentally paint the wrong outbuilding, we never had reason to resent or become cross with him. Old Andy became an important part of my upbringing, teaching me how to interact with his sort of people. Although he only came into the house twice a year, for Thanksgiving and Christmas, he was basically part of the family.
Old Andy was not a young man when he came into our “posession,” and fourteen years later and at the age of 64, he figured he could get social security checks. With the help of his niece, he set up an account in her name, into which his checks would be deposited for her, and she, in her infinite mercy, would give him a small portion for his cigarettes and beer, as long as she had enough for her mortgage each month. My father and I found it heartbreaking that someone would take advantage of him and urged him to correct the situation.
Eventually, Old Andy did regain control of his funds, but by then he decided to strike out on his own. Moving to a nearby haven for his own people, a local city of not so humble crime rates, Old Andy thought he had it made. The new apartment building seemed clean enough, although they wouldn’t let him drink and drive a lawnmower. In turn, he began to spiral into depression and additional drinking, eventually having a stroke a few years back.
I never found our arrangement with Old Andy strange, until I joked about it with some friends at a college bar a couple years later. People found it racist and despicable that we, not his actual swindling niece, were the ones taking advantage of him. These were folks who had never been around a colored person, other than when they brushed hands purchasing their weekly marijuana. I found their casual remarks, suggesting there was also something wrong with Old Andy, disturbing since I was the one to grow up interacting with him, not them. Some people haven’t quite left the plantation, and while some may now find that appalling, there are still those out there, like Old Andy, who didn’t find it strange at all.
I’ve visited him in his old folks home since then. And, he still called me bossman. Unfortunately, I haven’t been back for a spell. I reckon I will soon enough, since my father made a deal with the local funeral home in exchange for selling a piece of property to expand the local graveyard. In return, they have to provide a plot and free burial service for Old Andy. Although, I’m pretty sure that he’s immortal, since I never saw him get sick or partake in eating anything. Maybe he’s always been around us and always will.
-By Dixie Anon
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
Interesting story about your family’s relationship with “Old Andy.” My wife’s sister and brother-in-law live in Wilburton, OK. The father of our brother-in-law was an auto mechanic by trade, and accumulated quite a sum of money and property over the course of years plying this trade and investing his money wisely. His eldest son (our BiL mentioned) inherited his father’s work ethic and keen business sense, and has likewise done well for himself. He worked for his father in the mechanic shop up until the former got sick with cancer and eventually passed away.
A few years after I got out of the AF I moved our family out to Eastern Oklahoma, where we lived for about twenty years until we returned home to take care of my dying father. But during that time in Eastern Oklahoma we of course spent a lot of time with my wife’s sister and their family. I met and developed a good and friendly relationship during that course of time with an old black man our BiL and his father employed at the garage who they called “Black Charley” (some referred to him as “Nigger Charley”). Charley spent more time sitting and relaxing and having long conversations with customers in the shop than he did working, but that was their arrangement, he was paid a small weekly salary, and nobody within the arrangement – and certainly not Charley, who I had many many enjoyable conversations with – felt that he had been in any way “wronged” by this arrangement.
The story of Black Charley ends about the same way as your story about Old Andy. One day I went into the shop to have some work done on my vehicle and noticed immediately of course that my friend Charley was not there. When I asked my in-laws whether he was sick or something, they informed me that some of his relatives had moved him in with them when he started receiving his social security, and Charley, in turn, stopped showing up for work. For two or three years afterward my wife and I would occasionally run into Charley in Wal-Mart or somewhere like that, and we would always have a nice, albeit short, conversation with him. His younger family members were not so friendly as Charley, and in fact there was always hostility written all over their faces when we would dare to talk to him, shake his hand and exchange hugs upon departing. Charley eventually passed away, but none of us found out about his passing until it was too late to attend his funeral. Which I have since always thought regretful. Charley was a good old negro, and a devout Christian man who I never, in all my conversations with him, heard say a single curse word or talk bad about any person, white or black. I miss my conversations with “Black Charley,” and have always felt my life was enhanced for having met and developed a friendship with him.
Good post, Sir. Thanks for sharing your story about “Old Andy.”
Your story is one in which many, if not all Southerners can relate. I remember my cousin bought a beautiful old three story historic home in the old downtown of a metropolitan Texas city. An older black man sort of, well, came with the property. He lived in the garage at no charge, didn’t do any work but had no other place to go. The only mischief was once he sneaked into the house and got some food out of the refrigerator when my cousin’s wife was home alone. After only a stern talking to there were no other issues and he continued to live in their garage for as long as my cousin owned the house. Southerners are far, FAR more familiar with blacks than the Yankees are due to our historic close proximity together.
These two stories sort of remind me of the relationship My Dad had with negroes. When I was a child in the fifties, every time I went with him to certain sections of Houston, we’d often run into some old negro my Dad knew. My Dad even intervened one time to get a negro woman out of jail where she was because of an arbitrary arrest. She was rendering aid to an accident victim from a car crash right in front of her home in the Fifth Ward and the police officer ordered her to get back into her house immediately or he’d arrest her for indecent exposure (she was in her bathrobe) which he did. After my Dad got her acquitted and all charges dismissed, a black lawyer with the NAACP approached my Dad asking him if he’d be interested in working with them on other civil rights cases. He adamantly refused, saying he was no civil rights activist but in her case, she had been unjustly arrested.
In those days, I never could understand what negroes were saying, but my Dad could communicate with them. He understood them when they spoke. He also spoke Spanish fluently which helped when he collected bills from Mexican renters.
He had a mean temper. And he firmly resisted Brown vs. Board etc. and that S** Johnson’s presidency.
Though he did say at one point that the race business would work itself out so long as the Federal Government and that Supreme Court Justice Leibowitz kept their noses out of it. Once when we were on our way back home from out on West Montgomery-I was around 11 years old at that time- and we were passing through Sunnyside, he said that these people, some of them anyway, were getting ready to start demanding things. Lots of them had college degrees and weren’t like their parents. “But at the same G*****n time, if one of my sons EVER shows up at the house with some black girl, I’ll shoot ’em both before they get through the door!”