Let Us Now Praise Famous Women: A Memoir

(electronic)

1

When she died on that March day in 1989, the skies had exploded tons of rain. Yellow lightning flashed upside-down Ys in the sky; thunder roared angrily as though in salute to her fiery temper.

It was fitting weather to say farewell to Minnie Belle Helms.

Standing near the soggy mound of flowers after the funeral, I said, Well, she was an ornery old lady, but I guess in a way I’ll miss her.

My son-in-law, Johnny Carpenter, a tall, dark-haired man of thirty-four, shook his head slowly. Not me. She was the meanest one person I ever knew.

He grinned slightly as he spoke, but I had to admit he was right. She was hardheaded, and it was clear from the first she was a segregationist (although by the end, you had to wonder about that). But we just never figured why she became so angry for no apparent reason.

Mrs. Helms and her husband, Dan, were my wife’s parents. I first saw them on a hot summer afternoon thirty years before, on my first visit to Alabama.

In the withering heat of that August day in 1959 the old house was a portrait of poverty in the South: a weathered frame structure that sat on brick corner posts, the sides covered with whitish-gray shingles that were discolored with age. The roof was tin, with some of the edges curling up.

This was Wellington, a rural community in northeast Alabama, sitting off U.S. 431 between Anniston and Gadsden. It was home to about two hundred souls.

Two of them were sitting on the front porch. They glanced with detached interest as I pulled the blue Ford Fairlane to a stop on the dusty road. Dan and Minnie Belle Helms. She was sixty, he seventy.

She was on the swing, arms folded somewhat defiantly, mouth drawn tight, eyes narrowed behind the wire-rimmed glasses. Her hair, which had been a deep brown when she was younger, was now tinged with gray.

As we were getting out of the car, I glanced at my wife, Millie, who was obviously excited about being home. She was an outgoing woman with dark-brown eyes, a narrow, slightly upturned nose, and medium-length brown hair that had an auburn tint. She looked much younger than her twenty-seven years.

Come on, she said. I want you to meet my daddy and mom.

In that split second I could not picture her one day looking like her mother. But I didn’t say anything.

Mr. Helms was seated in a wooden rocking chair. He was a burly man who wore faded green work pants, a plaid shirt, and, despite the heat, a rumpled, gray suit coat. A droopy, worn-slick brown hat covered his head, which it turned out, was bald with gray strands at ear level. He had a weary look about him, an expression that seldom changed. But the gray-green eyes showed warmth; and crinkles formed around them on those rare moments when he smiled.

Both had tanned faces that were braced with stern lines. I made these observations as we walked toward them through air that was so humid it was like wading in sweat.

Millie gave them a hug. Then she introduced me to them. They merely nodded, and I thought they seemed uneasy with a stranger from Ohio in their midst. They spoke little, a trait that was due more to the snuff they kept in their mouths than the fact that they were unsociable.

Finally, Mrs. Helms looked at me and in a monotone asked:

Well, what are you?

Puzzled, I shook my head. What am I?

She gave a brief hmmp sort of laugh, and her eyes twinkled. Then: I mean are you a Yankee? Or a damn Yankee?

Mr. Helms chuckled slightly but said nothing as he stared at the floor of the porch.

I shrugged. I’m not sure. Is there a difference?

Well, I don’t know, drawled Mrs. Helms, speaking slowly. I always heard it said both ways and I was just a-wonderin’ about it. I thought maybe you might tell us.

I’m one or the other, I suppose, I said.

Now Mr. Helms tilted his head sideways, glanced up at me and muttered, They got different meanings to ’em. A pause. Then: A ‘Yankee’ is someone from up North who comes down here for a spell then goes back to where he come from. A ‘damn Yankee’ is one who comes down here and stays!

And with that both of them chortled, the merriment strong enough to cause their shoulders to quake.

I nodded and joined their laughter. I guess I’m just a Yankee.

At the time I was twenty-three. There was no way of knowing . . . but within a few years I was to become a damn Yankee.

There was a big water oak in the lawn. The leaves were wilted in the heat, but its shade kept the porch reasonably cool on such sultry days. Dust-covered hedges lined the front of the lawn. In the yard itself were several tires that served as small flower containers. Across the road were two sets of railroad tracks. About two-hundred yards to the east was a train station, a white frame structure with green trim. Trains ran from Birmingham to Atlanta twice a day, and sometimes at night, Mr. Helms informed me. Another set of tracks near the station ran north-south.

The interior of the house swam with the stale aroma of old furniture, worn linoleum, flour, coffee, and a big can of bacon grease that sat on a table near the stove. There were three small bedrooms, all lined up on the right side, running front to back. On the left side was the living room, the dining room (which they rarely used), and the kitchen.

In the first bedroom was a chest of drawers, its top loaded with little knickknacks, one of them a figure of a small black boy sitting on a commode. The words inscribed on it read, You-r-next. There were also postcards, small oil lamps, and a statue of a circus horse.

At the back porch was a well. A bucket tied to a rope sat on top, and hanging on the side was a metal dipper. The water was so icy cold it took my breath away.

Mr. Helms said that he kept a few small fish in it to eat the green stuff that grew in the water. This bit of news, I might add, came after I had gulped down a dipper full.

There was no running water indoors and no bathroom. Out back, down toward the end of a garden, was the outhouse, an enduring monument to the poverty in the Deep South from the Civil War through the present. Did most people in Alabama live like this? I wondered.

They were buying the house for forty dollars a month. It was the first one they had ever owned. Their entire life had been spent in rented houses or sharecropper shacks, Millie told me. They had managed to make a down payment on this one the year before. It would be theirs in five more years.

There was a larger garden alongside the yard. Mr. Helms planted watermelons, corn, and okra there. In the back he had more corn, plus some greens and squash, both the yellow crookneck type and a green, hard-shelled autumn variety.

I was amazed to find that they survived on about $155 a month from Social Security and a World War I pension. Neither had a formal education, . . . but they could teach me some things about thrift and keeping up with what money you had.

That first visit in the summer of 1959 brought a strange fascination with the South, with Alabama, and with the poor folks there.

That initial visit was the first time I picked a watermelon from a home patch. And it was the first time I saw signs that read White Only or Colored at water fountains and other places.

2

In early March 1960 we returned to Alabama. The nation’s interstate system was incomplete, and the ride from Columbus, Ohio, to Wellington took about sixteen hours, with a good portion of the time spent on the twisting, turning sections of U.S. 27 in the high hills of Kentucky and Tennessee. But seeing spring unfolding in Alabama was worth the ride. It was my favorite time to be there, and I soon learned it was the choice season for just about everyone. Even Mrs. Helms, who, I would soon learn, had an eruptive temper, said she enjoyed March and early April.

They all right, I guess, she allowed. But if a cloud comes up, then I don’t care much for either of ’em.

When a cloud comes up in springtime, it means thunderstorms, and thunderstorms carry the prospect of tornadoes. One had swept through the community in 1954, and the memory of what nature could do had a deep impact on Minnie Belle and Dan Helms. As a constant reminder, there was a big pine tree on the edge of their property that had a two-foot length of sheet metal driven through it by the winds of the twister.

But on the day we rode into the state, spring was just breaking out. The array of colors ran into the horizon, a picture of peace and serenity: wisteria, forsythia, peach blossoms, and ankle-high purple-blue crocus graced farmlands and small towns alike. And in the woodlands there was a dazzling glow where the redbud trees bloomed, the colors ranging from a vibrant red to an almost purple shade. Dogwood blossoms of white and pink were a soft contrast to the leafless branches of the hardwoods. When we had left Ohio there was rain mixed with sleet. But Alabama was another world. However, I was told, March nights in Alabama can be chilly (in fact, I learned, it’s more likely to snow in March than in December).

Down the road from the Helms house was a bright row of yellow daffodils that paraded along a faltering gray-white picket fence. Smaller trees and brambles had overgrown the interior of the place, but a stack of bricks marked where a fireplace had been. This had once been home for a family.

In my mind I could see Yankee troops riding by a century earlier, setting the place afire. But it turned out to be nothing quite so dramatic. Mr. Helms said a fire had destroyed it a few years