I know I
wrote that my next blog entry would be about finding a title for Book #2, but
consider this a “post of opportunity” I
couldn’t let slip away.
My sister
related this modern story to me a few nights ago while we were at her house in
Tyler, Texas.
Beth is one
of my sister’s long-time friends who just retired and moved back to Tyler.
Within a few weeks of moving into their Tyler house, Beth kept four of her
grandchildren for a week, such being a summer tradition in many southern
families. These four little grandsons are the offspring of two of the four or
five children in Beth and Ben’s blended family, their marriage being the second
for both of them.
Just before
the grandsons arrived for their summer visit, Beth had unpacked some boxes
recently liberated from a storage facility where they had been since Beth
married Ben shortly after she found her nest empty. Beth opened one box and
found it was full of her son’s old toys. On top were Star Wars toys from the
1980’s. Happy to have found entertainment for the grandkids, she set the box
aside.
On the first
day that the boys needed a new diversion, Beth brought out the big cardboard
storage box, and the two pairs of brothers dug in. The Star Wars figures and
vehicles were a treasure trove to the four cousins. They all knew the Star Wars
movies and play began as they kept pulling more toys from the big box. Soon enough, a smaller box near the bottom of
the storage carton was pulled out.
Unlike the
Star Wars storm troopers and figures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leah, and
R2D2, the younger pair of grandsons, maybe ages 4 and 6, didn’t recognize the
blue and gray figures in the bottom box. A conversation ensued between the
younger brothers and Granny Beth as they examined the toys in the last box,
while their older cousins flew Star Wars space ships around the room.
“Granny
Beth, what are these?”
“Those are
Civil War soldiers.”
“Oh. Was the
Civil War a real war or a movie war?”
“It was
real. The Civil War was fought a long time ago when the Confederate states, the
South, tried to break away from the United States and make their own country.
The Yankee soldiers wore blue uniforms and the Southern soldiers wore gray.
“Oh. Which side were we on?”
Pause while
Beth considered her answer. “Well, we live in Texas, so we were part of the Confederacy,
the gray soldiers.”
“Oh. So we
were the good guys.”
“Well…it
wasn’t like Star Wars where one side was good and the other side was bad.”
“Oh. Did we
win?”
Another
pause for adult reflection. “Uhhh…we lost, but we’re glad we did.”
“We’re glad
we lost?” asked the little boy.
“Yea,” interjected
his first cousin, older by a few years and having been introduced to the Civil
War in his fourth grade school class. “Because if we had won, you’d be a slave,”
he said nonchalantly as he swooped Hans Solo’s space ship in an attack on his
little brother’s toy.
“Oh, OK,” the
younger cousin answered, having no idea what that meant.
The younger
two boys who asked all the questions are the bi-racial sons of Beth’s white
daughter and black son-in-law. Their cousins have two white parents.
Granny Beth
quickly decided that it was time for Stars Wars play to replace the Civil War history
lesson, so she slipped the blue and gray plastic toy soldiers back into their
box and handed figurines of Darth Vader and Wookie to her younger pair of
grandsons.
Play
continued, as the lure of the toys from a make-believe cinema war they knew, easily
pulled the four cousins back from a confusing new real war from the past.
Several
major characters in my Book #2 are based on historical persons. One is a
half-white twenty-year old slave named Levi who is taken to war to serve as the
body-servant of the main character, who is an infantry captain in the
Confederate army.
If Granny
Beth had a hard time in 2014 sorting out how to explain to her bi-racial
grandson about slavery, the southern culture of 1862 did not. “One drop of
black blood” was all it took to be denied any Anglo heritage. In real life, and
in Book #2, Levi was born to a black mother, herself a slave, so her bi-racial
son was a slave from birth, while his white father became an invisible man.
That was a disgusting reality of race relations in America 150 years ago, but
is great grist for novels of about that difficult decade. One of many hopes I
have for Book #2 is that I treated that particular malaise with a proper
perspective.
Look next
week for a post about the search for the right title for Book #2.
from Mary Chesnut's diary (her husband being a Confederate general):
ReplyDeleteMarch 13
Read Uncle Tom's Cabin again. These negro women have a chance here that women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves - the "impropers" can. They can marry decently, and nothing is remembered against these colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs. Stowe revels in it. How delightfully Pharisaic a feeling it must be to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend and like to live with such degraded creatures around us - such men as Legree and his women.
The best way to take negroes to your heart is to get as far away from them as possible. As far as I can see, Southern women do all that missionaries could do to prevent and alleviate evils. The social evil has not been suppressed in old England or in New England, in London or in Boston. People in those places expect more virtue from a plantation African than they can insure in practise among themselves with all their own high moral surroundings - light, education, training, and support. Lady Mary Montagu says, "Only men and women at last." "Male and female, created he them," says the Bible. There are cruel, graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas North as well as South, I dare say. The Northern men and women who came here were always hardest, for they expected an African to work and behave as a white man. We do not.
I have often thought from observation truly that perfect beauty hardens the heart, and as to grace, what so graceful as a cat, a tigress, or a panther. Much love, admiration, worship hardens an idol's heart. It becomes utterly callous and selfish. It expects to receive all and to give nothing. It even likes the excitement of seeing people suffer. I speak now of what I have watched with horror and amazement.
Topsys I have known, but none that were beaten or ill-used. Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs. Stowe's imagination. People can't love things dirty, ugly, and repulsive, simply because they ought to do so, but they can be good to them at a distance; that's easy. You see, I can not rise very high; I can only judge by what I see.
Mr. Chesnut's negroes offered to fight for him if he would arm them. He pretended to believe them. He says one man can not do it. The whole country must agree to it. He would trust such as he would select, and he would give so many acres of land and his freedom to each one as he enlisted.
July 3 1862
If anything can reconcile me to the idea of a horrid failure after all efforts to make good our independence of Yankees, it is Lincoln's proclamation freeing the negroes.
July 8
Table-talk to-day: This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous. The Yankees, since the war has begun, have discovered it is to free the slaves that they are fighting. So their cause is noble. They also expect to make the war pay. Yankees do not undertake anything that does not pay. They think we belong to them. We have been good milk cows - milked by the tariff, or skimmed. We let them have all of our hard earnings. We bear the ban of slavery; they get the money. Cotton pays everybody who handles it, sells it, manufactures it, but rarely pays the man who grows it. Second hand the Yankees received the wages of slavery. They grew rich. We grew poor. The receiver is as bad as the thief. That applies to us, too, for we received the savages they stole from Africa and brought to us in their slave-ships. As with the Egyptians, so it shall be with us: if they let us go, it must be across a Red Sea - but one made red by blood.
Another interesting post! I love the short story format of this blog describing the kids interaction and questions. I almost thought the Star Wars characters were going to take sides. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteTam