It’s early October, 2004. Four adults and two toddlers sit crammed inside a newer model, white Cadillac rolling through a less than desirable downtown Savannah, GA neighborhood. The warm, humid air varies greatly from our freshly adopted Colorado home. If in a nicer part of town, perhaps I’d lower the glass and listen to the local activity and breathe in the floral scents as they waft through the car. Perhaps, indeed.
The notion of adjusting the car window never enters my mind.
That side glass buffers me and my young family from the uncertainty and risk looming on the other side. Of course that protection is merely psychological. The window provides almost zero shielding. Instead, it puts my wife and young children on display as if sitting in a rolling aquarium surrounded by hammer head sharks ready to smash that barrier into tiny shards. All the while my father steers his GM automobile along his predetermined “wrong side of the tracks” tour.
Roofs miss shingles, if not sporting open holes or tarps. Shutters hang precariously uneven, front porches sag, paint peels, and broken, weathered children’s toys litter unkept yards separated by rusted chainlink fences. Only moments earlier we viewed live oaks, Spanish moss drooping from their majestic limbs as we passed by elegant southern mansions. Million dollar homes gave way to multi-family, government subsidized dwellings. Shockingly, one could veer just a block or so off course and find themselves in questionable quarters as if suddenly teleported to a distant, incongruous world.
So why venture onto this street?
No, my dad didn’t make a wrong turn. He simply wanted to show us the first house he ever lived in, a bit of familial history I willingly agreed to see. And why not? Who knew the neighborhood was eagerly awaiting a transition into a real estate rejuvenation. It just needed some speculative investors to get the ball rolling, albeit uphill. Crack lords slinging drugs tends to soften a neighborhood’s housing market. Maybe that street is the pride of Savannah today, a testament to regentrification.
But this was early fall two decades ago. Today, the only money I saw getting pumped into this community went into beer quarts stuffed inside brown paper bags. And by the looks of the “inbetween jobs” young men sipping beverages on my father’s former front porch, that micro-economy boomed. My dad’s Cadillac slow-roll came to a halt as he pointed towards his childhood residence. Naturally, the brown bag sippers believed he stuck his his finger in their general direction, not the old homestead.
I squirmed in my seat as the imbibers lowered their bags and rose from their chairs.
My father’s arm remained outstretched as his index finger accusingly jabbed towards them. They squinted their eyes as if they’d recognize the man behind the wheel. Some crouched lower to obtain a better line of sight. That made me feel uneasy, like a target. My father remained oblivious. As a matter of fact, I may have been the only passenger experiencing any level of discomfort.
Perhaps the fellas on the porch felt a similar sense of unease as we eyeballed them from our stopped car on the street. Even though my understanding of drive-by shootings did not involve cessation of vehicular movement, I did not know if that was also their experience. Maybe that’s how they did it in Savannah. Did they believe an altercation may unfold, placing their manhood, reputations, or even their lives at stake? We’d created a rather rapidly developing, tenuous predicament that was apparently only felt by me and the mobile guys on the upper ground.
Of course, our intentions revolved around taking in the scenes and appeasing my father’s trip down Memory Lane, which looked more like Skid Row now.
My father shared stories of his early years in the third person by referring to himself as Baby Jerry. I unsuccessfully tried to mentally restructure the neighborhood with Baby Jerry crying on the front porch or rolling down the street in his 1920’s Baby Jerry carriage. I was more than interested to learn about Baby Jerry’s early life antics, just not right here or right now. I’m not so sure our alcohol laden slackers were too pleased with this interruption to their otherwise unscheduled day or my dad’s middle of the road history lesson. I began to share in their displeasure.
I subtly suggested it was no longer prudent to block the road. Of course, traffic concerns did not weigh heavily on my mind at that exact moment. I’m uncertain if my father comprehended how the day drinkers possibly misconstrued his sightseeing tour as something far more volatile. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t give a hoot about those guys hanging out on his old front porch. Maybe he still viewed this haphazard house as part of his roots, Baby Jerry’s original family home.
Fortunately the Caddy crept forward, the afternoon social club retook their seats on the porch, and my father drawled on about his infant southern upbringing, showcased by the life and times of the seemingly immortal Baby Jerry. I breathed a sigh of relief, while Baby Jerry’s escapades once again drifted into the past. Still, it was fascinating to see where my father began his life, even if I saw ours prematurely ending for a brief moment. Amen, sweet Baby Jerry!
All of this joking around has a serious undertone.
My dad’s mother died shortly after his birth from delivery complications. Eight years later, my dad’s father committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun, stretched out on the family couch. You have to be really committed to punch your ticket like that. Or he really hated that damn sofa. Regardless, the compassionless Deputy Sheriffs paraded my 8 year old dad past the body so he could gather clothes from his childhood room.
Hard to imagine nobody thought better of that, but police sensitivity training wasn’t really a thing during the Great Depression. Law enforcement was still busily beating confessions out of convenient suspects and planting incriminating evidence. PTSD was a typo, not a condition. Buy a vowel, stupid! Who would have guessed that wading an elementary-aged kid through their father’s blood soaked crime scene might create some early psychological trauma. Well Dr. Freud, without his mother it’s unlikely the young lad will ever develop an Oedipal complex. Small miracles.
My dad ended up at Thornwell, an orphanage in Clinton, South Carolina. He stayed there all the way through high school. He never spoke anything other than praise for Thornwell and remained connected with them his entire life, which ended in 2015. He survived WWII inside a B-17 bomber as a teenager, attended Emory University undergraduate and law school, and eventually became an administrative law judge for the National Transportation Safety Board.
He went from Georgia to South Carolina, back to Georgia, and onward to Virginia and California. In the end he found his way back home and retired just south of Savannah where he remained for the next 25 years. The south was his home and where he always planned to return. This clearly worked out for the best. Why? Because the world will always need more southern style grits connoisseurs. Paula Deen would be so happy.
Even Baby Jerry would agree.
