 
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 276
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 - 7:35 pm: |    |
Afro-American Tom Trotter & tponetom
My files, records, dates and postings are a kaleidoscope. I may have posted this story once or more times, and I beg your indulgence. As some of you know, I suffer from Dementia, Senility, Alzheimers and CRS. In any event I did re-edit this story.
(Just a note Was Racism alive and well in Detroit in 1939? Oh boy, you bet.
I lived in Detroit from 1928 through1973 and then worked in Detroit until 1987.
In 1939, at the age of 9, I got whacked by a car and wound up in the East Side General Hospital which was located near Cadillac and Kercheval or thereabouts. My left leg was put in a plaster cast from my ankle up to the bottom of my rib cage and the cast encircled my lower torso. All one piece. In the summer of that year, before my accident, my father hired a colored man as a part time laborer in his fledgling plumbing business, much to the consternation of our all white neighbors. Dad was not too popular in our neighborhood. (Years later I would go through my Dad’s records and see that Tom averaged about 20 hours a week that got him ten dollars. Don’t assume that ten dollars were ‘slave’ wages in the 1930's.)
Tom Trotter, 30 something, was a congenial gentleman. He would smile at the not so kind remarks that he heard as he approached my father's plumbing shop which was nothing more than the garage behind our house. Tom was hired to do some of the heavy labor in dealing with cast iron radiators and cast iron bath tubs and cast iron boiler parts. Max, the 'sheeney man’ (read, Jewish) was the 'fence' for the resultant scrap. Dad brought the scrap home and dumped it in our backyard with the help of Tom, and then Max would come and load the scrap on his horse drawn wagon with the help of Tom. It was heavy work. At the end of every month, Max would come over to our house with an envelope containing cash in payment for the scrap he had collected. Dad never questioned the poundage or the payment he received from Max. Years later, when I was old enough to comprehend, I asked him about his trusting Max. His reply was simple. "You either trust a person or you eat yourself alive worrying about it all the time.
Tom Trotter did other chores around our house but the one singular job he did, endeared him to all of us. He took care of me.
I came home from the hospital with that damm cast that weighed a thousand pounds, or so it seemed.
Dad was talking to his plumbers in his basement office. I called to my mother that I needed the "bed pan." Trauma set in. My mother was great at anything,,,except blood and poop. She called down to my father who was on the phone with a customer and he told her it would just have to wait. At that moment, Tom spoke up and volunteered to help me with my problem. He came upstairs and into my bedroom. I can still see that smiling face and the gap between his two front teeth. He placed one hand under my body cast and lifted me as though I were a feather and slid the pan under me. He told me that when I was finished he would come in and help me ‘clean’ myself.
Tom was guaranteed six weeks of work just being my friend and companion, helping to wash and feed me, and lifting me out of bed when my mother had to change the bedding.
In retrospect, I think of Tom, never in terms of color, but rather, a person of dignity.
I had asked my father how to address Tom? He said, “Mr. Trotter, just like everyone else.”
Tom stayed with us for a another year until my uncle got him a regular, (40 hours plus overtime) factory job in 1940.
Tom and Max, the ‘Sheeney Man,’ makes me think of the song in South Pacific, "You have to be taught, carefully taught."
Note: I have heard the references, to a persons nationality and ethnic background from the obscene to the ‘politically correct,’ I consider neither acceptable. The first one is just vile. The second one is simply a subterfuge.
There are many epithets connected to the Irish, the Italians, the Poles and other races. None of them are acceptable.
I like to think of myself and my family as a ‘Detroit Person” and/or Detroit People, no matter where we are.
I seldom refer to myself as being Irish, German, Alsace Lorraine, French, American Native, and that only goes as far back as 1780.
Is it possible that the earliest Hominine Fossils were discovered in Ethiopia four and one half million years ago? I think I will run a Zaba Search for relatives in Ethiopia. |
Ravine
Member
Username: Ravine
Post Number: 2081
Registered: 01-2006
| | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 - 8:30 pm: | |
Tponetom, your story-- as always-- was terrific, and your perception of differing skin colors and ethnicities as little more than different kinds of Chevys is a fine thing. Noteworthy, that a man of your age, who comes from a time which is thought of as having been so much less "enlightened," would appear to so easily possess such an admirable point of view.
I think it just goes to show how important the example set by your parents turns out to be. Also, it may be an Irish thing; the Irish, somehow, have the uncanny ability to simultaneously believe in their own superiority while not looking down on those not sufficiently blessed to have been born Irish.
What I can't figure out is how you can tell a story that is, basically, about not too much of anything in particular and make it so goddam fun to read. It's a real gift.
And so are your posts. |
Eriedearie
Member
Username: Eriedearie
Post Number: 1114
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 - 9:40 pm: | |
I agree with your observations Ravine. Tponetom has a knack for story telling that not only makes for fun reading; but he has a way of providing an insight to the reader, and teaching a lesson or two along the way. There's always a moral to his stories for me. Makes one want to think he was perhaps an educator.
Another great post Tp - keep 'em comin'! |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 277
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 - 10:49 pm: | |
Oh, Craig, I love you.
If only you were right. Especially the ‘sideburns’ part. I do take Finasteride for my BPH.
Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia. (A swollen prostate in simple english.) Finasteride is the generic equivalent of the brand name, Proscar. Proscar is supposed to shrink the prostate gland that is squeezing on the urethra, creating a constant urge to urinate, otherwise knowing as whizzzzing.
For me, it is not working too well. I get up 2 or 3 or 4 times a night to whizzzz.
So why do I keep taking it? Because there is an additional ‘side effect’ that is not injurious. In fact, it is beneficial. Are you ready for this? Proscar (Finasteride), in addition to shrinking the prostate, also PROMOTES HAIR GROWTH just above the forehead. Once a week my wife counts the new hairs that our growing on my skull. So far, the count is negligible.
O. K. That is enough of Sideburns and Hair 101.
So what qualifies me as an expert on the subject? It is this: I am a Licensed Master Plumber, retired. My Michigan State License # C-4900 has been retired as well.
Being a plumber, I know a lot about water and urine and poop and all of that yucky stuff.
For instance, poop does not flow uphill. It tends to puddle itself in a pile. |
Bigb23
Member
Username: Bigb23
Post Number: 814
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, March 22, 2008 - 10:56 pm: | |
Tponetom -
You should share your stories with more people than just us on this board.
Of the few people I direct to here, the first place I link them to are your posts. What a great start.
In this time of great trouble, you make me feel human again. |
Craig
Member
Username: Craig
Post Number: 686
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 - 7:17 pm: | |
OK - a kid with sideburns, some dope-smoking, and access to magazine ads detailing side effects of various drugs. |
Ray1936
Member
Username: Ray1936
Post Number: 2895
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 - 8:54 pm: | |
Friend of mine is a plumbing engineer back east. His favorite saying is "It may be s**t to you, but it's money to me."
Sorry, Tp, but I'm not getting into prostate problems. My last biopsy was remindful of the Spanish Inquisition. Results ok, though. |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 279
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 - 9:03 pm: | |
Ray:
My Dr. reassured me that if I did test positive for prostate cancer, I had nothing to worry about. The chances are ten to one I will die from something else. That is the one singular pleasure of going on eighty. We do not worry about those things. |
Ray1936
Member
Username: Ray1936
Post Number: 2896
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 - 11:29 pm: | |
Yup; it's usually such a slow growing item it rarely will be terminal. Even at seventy I no longer worry much about my mortality. Whatever will be, will be. |
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