The Long Hard Road

It was late 1958, Nelly Laverne Hollis walked down the wide hallways of the Medical Center of Central Georgia in the city of Macon until she reached the waiting room. The doctors entered frequently, with their long white coats fluttering behind them, and guided their patients to the back. This only made the pit of anxiousness in Nelly’s stomach deepen, and she clutched on tightly to her handbag. She knew in her heart her cancer had returned and was to blame for her feeling so poorly those past few days.

“When it rains, it pours,” she thought to herself. It was finally her turn to pass through the thick wooden door leading to the back of the doctor’s office. She reluctantly pried herself from her chair and proceeded forward, her head hung low in anticipation of the bad the news. But, it wasn’t bad news she received that day; come to find out, her cancer had not returned, her heart was strong, her lungs were taking full breaths of air, and, most importantly, a small life had taken root in her body. Nelly Laverne was to become a mother for the third time, and at the age of forty-two.

In August of 1958, Mrs. Hollis gave birth to a boy named Scottie Dell. There in that delivery room, a man everyone called “Ed” held his son for the first time. Ed was no spring chicken, he was forty-eight years old. No doubt this child came as a surprise to him, considering their age. However, another child is always a blessing and another son was welcomed. Ed was a manager at a filling station near the center of town and although he was a man of meager earnings, his mannerisms and etiquette made him almost mistakable for a member of the upper-class. Filling his role as the provider, Ed embarked from his home on Park Place early each morning and traced the sidewalks through town to where he earned his living for his family. He was a steady, constant and reliable man.

Regardless of his position, or where he was in life, he dressed respectfully in a suit and tie. He had a reserved demeanor, only spoke when he had something to say and still respected the sanctity of truth, secret and promise. As Scottie got older, he would wait patiently for his father to arrive at the door of their modest home and Ed would scoop him up, bringing him up against his tall stature and hoisted him up high on his shoulders. He’d take him down the street to get ice cream on top of his shoulders, while all the neighborhood boys would circle around Ed and call up to little Scottie, who was exalted upon this great hickory tree of man, and begged him to come play.

Unfortunately, these would be the only memories he would have of his father. Ed passed in the fall of 1966 at the age of fifty-five. Scottie was only eight. With the main pillar of their household fallen, Nelly became encumbered with the cost of living and maintaining her family. There was a seventeen year age gap between Scottie and his oldest sister, Joyce. And, a thirteen year gap between him and the middle son, Bobby. Both were out of the house by the time Ed had died, so it only left Nelly and Scottie to figure out their next steps. Or, so they thought.

Around this time, Nelly had a sister who was named William (I’m not kidding), but everyone called her “Willie.” Willie reached out her white gloved hand to her sister and asked her, in Willie’s adopted, high falutin way of speaking that wasn’t native to their childhood on the farm, if she would leave their home on Park Place. In turn, Nelly and Scottie could come along with Willie and her husband, so they could figure it out together. Riddled with uncertainty, and feeling like her options had run dry in Macon, Nelly took her sister’s hand and loaded up their personal belongings in an old car, one that suffered a hole in the side of it from a shotgun blast, and took off out of town.

What would ensue after that departure from Macon would be anything but easy for Nelly and the rest of them. It turns out that life is just as hard everywhere else. They first put down stakes in the small town of Glenwood. Both sisters found work at the local retirement home and Scottie would spend his summer days beating around town with Willie’s husband, a man he called Uncle Snap. Needing a male role model in his life, Scottie clung to his Uncle Snap. After school, he would often race to their home at the center of town, throwing his toys in the rocker on the front porch, and pile in the family car with the hunting dogs, Uncle Snap and a goat. Looking puzzled at his uncle, who sat sweating under his hat pushed above his forehead, he asked him inquisitively, “Uncle Snap, what you gotta goat in here with these dogs for?’’ And, Uncle Snap gave him a tired sigh and replied, “I don’t rightly know. He just kinda fell in with ’em one day.”

The two of them would pull off a rust colored dirt road and let the dogs loose and wait patiently for the piercing squeal of wild hog to bounce off the pine trees. Scottie would outrun his uncle, not because of the excitement for the hunt, but to see what that goat was going to do. Snap did a good job of keeping the harsh reality of the financial situation from lingering over Scottie’s head. Budgets were cut at the retirement home, along with staff and the newer hires were the first to go. Snap drove a putt-wood truck and sold moonshine, but even his earnings weren’t enough to keep them all afloat. This was life for them for a long time and the only thing that would change was the scenery.

They piled up time and time again, taking the rural highways across South Georgia, stopping at any word or sign of work. They often found shelter in abandoned shotgun houses with dirt floors and no electricity. Willie would always speak of people she knew and women who she had made connections with that could help them out of their situation, but her attempts to boost morale fell like fat rain drops on the heads of a weary family that yearned for stability. After realizing her sister’s promise of a better life was as empty as their pockets, Nelly put her foot down and said that she wanted to go back to Macon, where at least if she was broke she knew where she was. This forced Willie to humble herself and realize her put-on refined manner, or the people she claimed she knew, was only exacerbating the situation. She conceded to her sister for the first time in her life and they filled the car up with what little cash they had and set off back to Macon.

Once arriving back in Macon they found some resemblance of a life. Both Nelly and Willie had found jobs doing secretary work. ‘Ole Uncle Snap had found work driving a truck. Putting it all in reverse, it was now Scottie who would endure a terrible life. When moving back to Macon, the family could only find housing in one of the last white, middle-lower class neighborhoods on the western side of the city. Unfortunately, during this time was the slow process of desegregation of the public schools. And, given that the neighborhood Scottie lived in fell within the borders of a district that mirrored Africa, his middle school years turned dark and filled with constant conflict.

He and the handful of other white boys in his neighborhood were friends by default. I don’t even know if they liked one another, but given the circumstance they naturally gravitated in a group. Given the racial climate at the time, the colored boys at school were quick to delve out beatings to the new minority, and would make it a past time to gang up on the outnumbered white kid. Scottie was not immune to this and often found himself fighting just to get to English class. Eventually, his mother was able to give him money every day for dinner (“lunch” for the reconstructed), or if he wanted to use it to buy a Coke on the way home from school. Scottie held on to this money dearly because he knew the extent in which his mother earned it.

On one particular day, a group of five or so colored boys spotted Scottie walking into the bathroom. Feeling the good opportunity to rough up a white boy, and possibly get paid to do it, the five of them pursued Scottie into the bathroom and commenced to giving him a serious bruising, while they relished in the fact no one was there to break it up. “Go ahead give us that lunch money, white boy!” they chuckled, as the gang pummeled him to the floor and kicked the wind out of him. The blood dripped from his busted lip to the smooth white tile floor where it slithered like a creek into a river to the nearest seam. With the last little bit of strength he had left, he half-crawled and pulled his way partially under a stall door.

“Look at this white boy trying to get away!” they hollered, continuing to hit and kick him. With the last little strength he had left, Scottie dug in his pocket, letting the colored boys enjoy their spectacle, until the he felt the two quarters slide between his fingers. In one swift motion he yanked the lunch money from his pocket and reached above his head, feeling his abdomen pulsing with pain, and dropped the money in the toilet and extended his finger grasping the lever and puling it, hearing the flush of the toilet echo in the high ceiling of the bathroom. He craned his head toward the group of colored boys, who just realized what he did, and greeted them with a defiant and bloody smirk. They charged him with closed fist.  

Scottie never grew up rubbing elbows with upper echelons of society. Hell, he barely grew up rubbing elbows with the middle-class. His story is one that translates across the centuries to a large portion of rural whites. One common factor I see, looking back at these stories, will always be family. No matter the pain of poverty or the perpetual stomach growl of starvation when your own blood is present to bear it with you, family will always instill a sense of belonging.

Scottie is still close with the surviving members of his family. I often find myself asking, how couldn’t he? Blood is something the landlord can’t evict. Blood is something money can’t break. Blood is something that transcends county and state lines. These were the underlying themes in Scottie’s life. And, it should be the underlying theme in all of our lives.

-By DW