All God's Dangers (43 page)

I done reached out and got as high as four head of stock and a two-horse wagon and a rubber tire buggy. I was prosperin and when I married I didn't have decent clothes to wear, had nothin. But I never did have no view ahead that caused me to work as hard as I done. I did have it in view to support my family, keep em in shoes,
clothes, groceries—and to accumulate what I could accordin to what I was makin at the time. Often, somethin to buy, I'd want it if I
could
buy it, but I wouldn't dote on it if I didn't have the money. I bought a brand new Ford car when I was haulin lumber. As colored people started to buyin cars, I started right along in there not very many months behind the first colored car buyer.

One Sunday I was over here to a church, way out between Sitimachas Creek and Beaufort, called it Sylvan Grove Church. I was up there for services. And my mother-in-law was livin up there after the death of her first husband and I kept up with the old lady, I'd do her favors, I knowed it was my duty. I never slighted my mother-in-law, I never slighted my daddy-in-law in his lifetime. Well, after he was dead about four years, she married an old colored man by the name of Joe Louis, lived right there close to that church. I thought well of the old man but he was too old for me to put trust all the way through to take care of the old lady, and I dearly loved her as a mother-in-law. I'd drive up there every week sometimes to see about her.

I drove my car up there enough, but when my wife and children took a notion that they wanted to go somewhere for pleasure, I never did set down or object—wanted to go visitin, wanted to go to church—I wanted to go up in them hills, see about her mother; the old lady was definitely lookin for me at any time. So I'd tell my wife and children—my oldest son could drive, Calvin Thomas—“You all take the car, go on about your business. Mac and that rubber tire buggy is down there at the barn yet, waitin on me. You all take the car and go ahead.”

So, when my wife and children would hitch up to the car, go where they wanted to, I'd clean up and get ready, travel to Sylvan Grove meetin, and also my wife's mother lived close to the church with old man Joe Louis. Hitched that Mac horse to that rubber tire buggy one Sunday, before I ever bought that Ford car, and I hit the road through Pottstown and on in to Sylvan Grove Church, fully intendin to stop for services, then drive over to my mother-in-law's. Nobody in that buggy but me—my wife didn't visit her mother as regular as I did; we had a crowd of children and she always believed in pleasurin the children unless somethin was the matter with her mother that she had to go. And she'd tell me, “Tell Mama how I is, and tell her that I'll come as soon as I can.”

Got up there at Sylvan Grove one Sunday and a fellow said to
be a cousin of mine by the name of Elijah Giddings was there at meetin. We men would stand out and huddle or set out and talk. Here's the subject come up: we got to talkin about cars and I thought but little of that, in a way, because I knowed how the conversation would run.

I told em, “Yes, I'm thinkin of buyin me a car, get me a new Ford. Thinkin about it; I haven't done it yet but it's my thorough aim—my boys, anyway, they done got big enough to go and correspond girls and I think I'll just buy me a new Ford to please them. I can make it all right with a car and the stock I got and my rubber tire buggy. So I think I'll get me a car.”

And our colored race is a curious race of people. Don't want you to have nothin less'n he got it too—that's what I call a begrudgeful heart and a heap of em is that way. So, I said, “I think I'll get me a car, new Ford.”

Elijah looked at me and said in the presence of them other fellows, “Yeah, all of us will know when you get a car.”

I wouldn't say nothin out the way to him.

“All of us will know when you get a car.”

He just thinkin I was talkin bout somethin that I was as far from, the way he expressed it to me, as the east from the west. Well, in a few days I bought a Ford car and drove it up there, drove it right across the yard. When I got ready to leave, after service broke, I cranked that car up and drove it back across the church yard and my cousin Elijah Giddings was standin there lookin. He wouldn't turn his head hardly. When I drove through the crowd—soon as service was over they just crowded out in the yard, all in the way. And I got in that Ford and cranked it up, started off, easy, and blowed my whistle for em to get back and let me through.

Elijah Giddings never did lose no time with me from that day until he died.

That was steppin up higher than some—but I was a workin man, whatever I had it come to me through my labor, and the work weren't hurtin me. I didn't mind jumpin out and rollin in the defense of my family, if it was for groceries or a way for them to ride and go and enjoy themselves. I was just as proud of that car as anything I had—in a way. I didn't love it. And I weren't the only one that had a car there at church that day. But I was the only one that had a new car, spankin new Ford. I'd always been a poor man, but I was scramblin. I didn't buy that car to try and get bigger than nobody
else, I didn't buy it to show myself rich—I weren't rich; I bought it to serve my family and I knowed I was entitled to anything I wanted if I had the means to get it. There's a heap of my race didn't believe their color should have a car, believed what the white man wanted em to believe. And I'm thankful to my God I have had as much outside property—leavin off ownin land—I've had nice buggies, nice wagons, nice a mules as any white man drove.

M
Y
boys, after they got big enough to drive cars, they come to me—they drove the car more than I did for their pleasure; that was most of the reason why I bought the car. After they got big enough to help me work, I found out, they'd talk it to me, they'd be glad if I bought a car so they could enjoy life some. So I went on and bought a brand new Ford car. And it got to where, after two years, them boys wanted me to change it and get a Chevrolet—a little higher grade of car.

I bought that Ford from Collier Motor Company in Tuskegee. Mr. Ed Pike was a agent for em and he got on his car and carried me and my oldest boy to Tuskegee and represented me to the motor company. Told the head boss, “Nate Shaw here wants a car. Fix it up for him and let him have it.”

And he told em what was needed to tell em for them to sell a car to me. Well, I gived the head boss ninety dollars down payment and he had the mechanics to fix up the car. When it was ready, we got on the car and I put my oldest boy to drivin, Calvin; he understood it. He drove that car out from there and before we got to Apafalya—we wasn't over three or four miles out of Tuskegee and I detected that left hind wheel, every once in a while—cling-aling-aling-aling-aling—just kept a drivin, I listened at it definitely. I said, “There's somethin wrong with it.”

Drove it right to Mr. Ed Pike's garage there in Apafalya—he had a garage too at that time; planer mill, gin house, and garage—and he come on out of his office and told one of the men that worked for him, young white fellow by the name of Mike Holt, said, “Mike, come out here and pull the left hind wheel of Nate's car off.”

Mr. Holt come out there and jacked up the car, pulled the left hind wheel off—found it didn't have no brake-shoe in there. Mr. Holt said, “Mr. Ed, this car aint got no brake-shoe in that wheel.”

“Put it back on, Mike.”

Got in and drove right on back to Tuskegee—Mr. Ed told me, “You tell the head man there that I say for him to have that wheel pulled off and see what the trouble is. I know what it is and I want him to see it for himself.”

Told the head man about it. He called them two fellows that put the car up that mornin; said, “Pull that left hind wheel off this car and see what the trouble is in there.”

They pulled the wheel off and found just what they should have found and knowed at the start, but how come they hadn't put no brake-shoe in it, I don't know. One of em looked at the other and laughed, said, “You done that. You done that.”

“No, I didn't. You done it.”

“No, I didn't. You done it.”

So they got up on that car and when that car left there the second time it was jam up, had all the tachments to it. Never did hear that racket no more.

And when we go back to Apafalya, I told Calvin, “Well, son, your time is out now. I'm goin to drive it from here home.”

I stopped the car in the yard, settin under the steerin wheel myself. Got out, fooled around there awhile. My wife and the little children what was in the house at the time come runnin out soon as we turned off the road—not all the children was yet borned—Two of the boys, Vernon and Davey, was workin down here on the Tukabahchee River that mornin.

After a while, Mr. Lemuel Tucker come walkin up the road. I thought about that: what in the world was he doin walkin? Come from down close to the place where I moved from, comin from down the road. He stretched his eyes when he got to my well—the well was close to the road—and he looked in my yard and seed a brand new Ford car there, some thin he'd never seed before. He didn't never walk up to the car but he come in the yard. He looked at it, said, “Uh-uh-uh-uh, by George, Nate, I see you got in the car business.”

Told him, “Yes sir. I went to Tuskegee today and bought one.”

“Well, you better—”

He started to say, “you better mind what you doin now,” that was what he meant to say but he caught hisself and changed it.

“You bett—uh-uh-uh-uh”— scratchin his leg and talkin—“you always managed every proposition you went against.”

I could tell from the breath he was breathin what he meant
to say but he decided not to tamper with me and went on his way. I jumped on that car that evenin right by myself and I drove it back to the highway there at Two Forks and come on then to Pottstown and from Pottstown on down by the river where they'd been cuttin and haulin logs out of the woods. Went down there and got my boys on that Ford and right back home I come.

S
HOW
you how I learned to drive a car. My half-brother, Bob Shaw, TJ's own dear brother, had a Ford car just about the time the first colored folks was reachin out for cars. And he come to my house one day and me and my three boys, Calvin, Vernon—they was my own dear boys—and Davey, my sister's boy, we all got on Bob's Ford and went up to the fair in Opelika. We stayed there till about one o'clock in the mornin and then we left out from there and come all the way from Opelika to Apafalya and drove about halfway out of the little old town to the corporation limit and Bob sidetracked the car and stopped it. I had never drove a car. Told me to get under the steerin wheel and drive. And when I did that—he was a kind of a giddy fellow, just looked like he didn't know how to transact right, but he could drive that Ford. So, I just crawled under that steerin wheel—them little old Fords was geared in the floor. Had nothin to do but crank it up and when you'd mash the clutch in, it'd move off. And you'd hold it and get off a piece, take your foot off the clutch then and if necessary add a little gas to it—that's all there was to a Ford car.

So, I commenced a drivin Bob's Ford and when we come on out there close to where I'd lived in '23—used to be a vault factory there where Mr. Neil Barrow built vaults—and right there just about a half mile from the old Stark place, I turned to the right, headin north. And I done drove that car all the way out from Apafalya and never had a minute's trouble. Bob was slouchin on the front seat, next to me, just like he was asleep, and my boys was on the back seat. And when I turned to the right, there at the vault factory, I had to go up a little slant—now that's where the devil come up. Mr. Barrow's house set down below and his yard set up above and the road turned off at his house and went right up by his barn in route to my house. Made that turn and Bob jumped up—it was just a little old Ford, weren't no high-powered thing nohow,
and I weren't playin the gears. It was just Cadillackin along, takin that little grade just as nice—he jumped up there and hollered, “What's the matter? What's the matter?”

I was givin the car time to take the grade, didn't change no gear. You could put it in low but it was movin fine and just about got over that rise. Bob jumped up, my half-brother, and he hollered and grabbed the steerin wheel. And when he grabbed that steerin wheel that car jumped up a bank four foot high—you know, it had some speed and up the bank that car went. That was a mess-up for no cause in the world. We had to get out of the car then; didn't hurt nobody but the fender got hung under a barbed wire fence. We pushed the car back on the road and he got under the steerin wheel and went on. I got mad because heaven knows I weren't makin no mistakes. And he jumped up there and throwed a fit and caused a accident. Didn't hit no car; weren't no cars on the road but that one that night.

I told him, “Bob, you know well as you know you're livin, I done drove that car out of the corporation of Apafalya and hadn't had a lick of trouble and drove some windin roads and bad hills comin through there by Highgate before we hit the level piney wood country. And between Apafalya and the place where we had a wreck”—barbed wire scratched the fender but the car was already scratched up—“the car never did give me no trouble until you throwed a fit.”

He seed I was too hot to argue with. He was the kind of fellow that sometimes he'd be too sure of himself and other times he wouldn't be sure enough. He didn't say a word.

I learnt to drive a car that night and in under a year's time I went on to Tuskegee and bought me a brand new one. I just figured it was a inducement for my boys that I could afford. Drove that little old Ford about two years and the boys wanted me to change it for a Chevrolet. So, one mornin I went on back to the Collier Motor Company and changed that '26 Ford for a '28 Chevrolet sedan and gived six hundred and twenty-five dollars to boot. Right there I let it lick me, took a beatin on that deal. The difference between them two cars cost me more than the Ford did new, and the Ford was in pretty good shape when I traded it. Of course, I had to have that little old Ford looked after when it was necessary, some little deficiencies went wrong with it but nothin desperate. My boys just wanted a little faster and a little nicer car. And I was aimin to
please my boys, get em the car they wanted and keep it in my yard for them to use, less'n they couldn't find satisfaction at home.