Fucked up in the head from the experience and from being raised by my grandmother. So he moved to a town, Palatka, Fl. population - around 400. He wanted to be away from people and Palatka was a good place to accomplish that..... until Hudson Paper Products opened a plant there, on the banks of the St. John's River. Population increased to around 4,000, "overnight."
We lived in N.J. and going to visit him, well, as memory serves me, 2 1/2 days of driving. The interstate highway was not yet built. For miles and miles, there were signs on the road for a place, "South of the Border." When we finally reached there, it was kind of a disappointment. The next landmark was Shorty's Motel. Kind of a run-down affair on Rt 1. And the third landmark was Brunswick BBQ. Oh, and the Burma Shave signs.
I would recall the separate drinking fountains but we never saw those. Fact is, we didn't see any drinking fountains in any of our stops. But there were separate rest rooms for "colored." A little more of that later.
During one or two of the trips to visit my uncle and his family, my parents stopped by a cotton farm and a tobacco farm to ask the farmer if we could have a couple of bolls of cotton and a tobacco leaf to take back to N.J. for show and tell. I was probably in the third grade.
Segregation, I recall signs in restaurants, "We reserve the right to refuse service...." I don't recall the exact wording. I remember feeling lucky I could go into any restaurant I wanted. Downtown, Palatka, If a white person was on the sidewalk, and the sidewalk across the street had no white people on it, any black people had to walk across the street to the "empty" sidewalk.
But the episode I recall most vividly, I went with my aunt to register my cousin for Kindergarten. While we were inside, a buzzer went off. It was a black woman at a service window outside the building. She had to register her kid from outside of the Board of Ed.
headquarters.
Palatka was also where I had my first taste of hominy grits. l still slow cook grits every Sunday morning. It was also a place of open range. There were a few people who raised cattle and dairy. But they were not fenced in. They were allowed to go where ever they wanted. Uncle said ya can't shoot them if they come on your property but if they damage your property, the farmer had to pay for the damage.
Well, ten years later, a major highway was built. Shorty's motel was remodeled and expanded and "South of the Border" is still in business selling fireworks and whatever.
That's about all the stuff I remember about my trips to f.... well, one more. She was blond, about 15 and gorgeous and making out in the back of her brother's car.... mosquitos be damned.
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