by Sylvester Pierpoint (aka John Jeffries)

Created on: February 21, 2009

REMEMBERING JENNY - During my youth segregation was still the way we lived our daily lives and the change toward integration was years away from reality. I still recall the "White Only" signs over some water fountains and "Colored Only" on others. I can still see the white robed and hooded KKK members riding on running boards of ten to twenty cars blowing horns and shouting words I couldn't understand headed for the colored section of town. Having blacks come to your house was frowned upon unless they were domestics who cooked and cleaned for the whites.

Many southern housewives hired black women to help them with housework and other chores. My mother had five children and hired a black woman to help out. Her name was Jenny and she was in her late twenties. Jenny became part of the family and was treated with respect and love. Actually I don't remember a time in my early youth when Jenny wasn't there.

One of the major tasks she had was to watch my little brother and me and try to keep us out of trouble, an almost impossible job. Most of the dangers facing young children today were practically non existent back then and children had much more freedom to venture away from the house without the parents being fearful. My brother and I took full advantage of this and were almost never at home. There was a county playground at the end of the block and our favorite place, the river bank, just a short distance from there. Jenny would come looking for us when our mother needed us at home.

A dirt road separated the playground fence and the river bank and my brother and I would walk down this road to see the huge sinkhole which appeared suddenly one day in an area behind the baseball park. County vehicles used the road to go to and from a county owned tree and plant nursery further down the road. The road was littered with flattened tin cans that had been run over by the truck traffic and made great early day Frisbees that we sailed through the air to see the flight pattern each one would make.

Kids those days had to make their own games out of whatever was available. The cans were fun to sail through the air except for the one my brother sailed that stuck in the calf of my leg. Blood began to rush from the gash and Jenny almost turned white with fear. There was a veterinarian living in the corner house on the opposite side of our street and Jenny knocked on his door and he answered. "This boy here done got stuck with a sharp can an' is bleedin' pretty bad. Can you take

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