Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Things old folks say (including the N word)

My mom didn't like to use the "N" word. She preferred to use the term colored.

Step Dad was a young Marine in 1949 and was stationed in NYC, and got engaged to an Italian gal from the Bronx. Her mother came down to Chattanooga TN, to visit his mother since their two children were engaged to each other. Then Bob got transferred to Japan, and then South Korea was invaded by N. Korea, and he was with the first Marines to be shipped over from Japan to Korea. He spent his entire time, until the Korea War ended on his 21st Birthday, July 27, 1953.

Meanwhile after being there for 6 months, his fiancé from NYC wrote him a dear John letter and told him she was engaged and then married to some other guy. But her mother " Mrs DiRusso", had gotten to know and loved my grandmother, ever summer she'd come down to Tennessee and visit her for a month or so...They became lifelong friends. Mrs DiRusso also came to visit us, no matter where my dad was stationed at, the whole time I was growing up. It was like she was a third grandmother.

She has always came down from New York to visit my Grandmother. Well in 1972, she instead convinced the family to send Grandma up to NYC, to visit her, since the furthest north she'd even been was Washington DC, which was pretty much home base for our family.

Mrs DiRusso was pretty involved in Democrat Politics, and in 1972 she was campaigning and on the committee for Bela Abzug for Congress. The one reservation she had while Grandma was up there, was she had a large meeting to go to at lunch time at a restaurant ran by black women, specializing in "Soul Food". The gal who owned the place told Mrs DiRusso to go ahead and bring her. Grandma who was born in 1900 was like most people in Tennessee in 1972, called black folks N*^@gers. She meant no harm in it...Grandma was also kind of shy and standoffish...

So at the restaurant there in Harlem, they close up and they were going to each lunch and then do their political meetings, when Bela Abzug was suppose to show up. So they asked Grandma if she had ever had soul food. Her response was she never even heard of it...." oh you're in for a treat!" she was told.. they serve it and she was telling them, why do you call this soul food? This is the same type of food I grew up on in Tennessee.

So they were waiting for her to take a bite or two, all interested in what her opinion of it would be....So when she was asked how did she like it? her response was her usual, " oh its good"... but her face said different. " you don't like it do ya?"..... her response was did you put this in it, or that?
"NO" was the response....the cooks wanted her to come in the kitchen and show how she would cook it... Grandma was the first person they had ever had contact that knew how to cook all of this stuff.. some little old White Lady from Tennessee....

Well in the kitchen, women being women.... Grandma is adding all of this or that, and the Black Ladies loved EVERYTHING she did to their recipes...
They are writing ALL of this down.. Soon they are in there slapping each other on the back, laughing etc. Mrs DiRusso almost had a heart attack when Grandma made the state statemen " Y'all are the nicest bunch of N*^@gers I've ever been around"..

Instead of being shocked, or mad these women started laughing like crazy, either hugging her or slapping her on the back.. and someone tells Grandma she's the nicest Southern Redneck they ever met....The political meeting went out the window, Bela Abzug could never make it any way.

My grandmother ended up getting a Christmas card from each of these women, until they passed or she passed in 1986. My granddad was pretty shocked when many of these black women from Harlem would make a trip down to Chattanooga in pairs or threesomes to visit her for a week or two...

Grandpa didn't warm up to people like Grandma did, so it was hard time when some of those women visit... he would take off and spend a week or two with some of his own kids when Grandma "had company"....

Being from the south, at least in our family.. white and black folks got along a lot better, than you see white and black people getting along since my college days and beyond...

Sure there were hard core rednecks and hard core black racists back then, but I think it is has gotten a lot worse since the 70s than I saw growing up.

In this region, that was what was said when
one person was using 10 cane poles with a
bobber as big as a baseball and fishing for
bream and catfish. No intentional carp
fishing, but none got thrown back

You'd see them either arriving or leaving in
a sedan de ville with a huge wad of cane
poles poking out of the back window