After growing up in a small town in East Texas in the 1940s, Kendall Furlong went on to graduate from Southern Methodist and a career in international business. After stints with major American corporations in the multi-racial societies of Mexico and Brazil, he started his own company in São Paulo and ran it for many years. When retirement came, a life full of adventures demanded telling and this story is part of them. In “The Colorizer,” he looks back to childhood with Jim Crow. You can find Kendall on Twitter and Facebook.

 

 

 

It was my seventh year when the President’s Whistle Stop Tour came through our town on the Missouri—Kansas—Texas Railroad. My father thought Mr. Truman was a buffoon, but for the history of the moment he took me to the station and lifted me onto his shoulders to see over the crowd.

The railroad station house stood between the downtown corner it shared with US Highway 69 and the Trailways Bus Depot where a large sign hung squarely over the middle of the intersection proclaiming with emblazoned words, “Greenville, Welcome — The Blackest Land — The Whitest People.”

As soon as the President finished his speech my father put me down. He had to get back to his barber shop on the town square and told me to go straight home. It was the last time I ever sought my father’s support; the day my world changed.

I ran the two blocks to our house and burst in shouting, “I’m home.” My mother was working at the kitchen window that overlooked our backyard and the neighbor’s sandlot. She asked, “Did you get to see the President?” “Yeah!” I yelled, grabbing my baseball glove and rushing out the back door. “You come back in here,” she said. Not shouting, but in that forceful, teacher-way she had in a day before disobedience became self-expression and parents were to be obeyed. I came back. “What did you say to me?” “I said, ‘Yes, ma’am’.” “Well, that’s what you’re supposed to say. Now, tell me what you said?” “I said, ‘Yeah’.” “That’s better. And what should you have said?” “Yes, ma’am.” She waited a moment for contrition to reinforce the lesson. Then, “And now do you think you can remember?” “Yes, ma’am. I can remember.” “All right, run on then. Chicken Coop’s already been around asking for you.” Relieved at the gentle reprimand, I rushed back out of the house and yelled, “Chicken Coop, let’s play catch.”

About my age, Chicken Coop lived in a dilapidated shack abutting our backyard fence. He got the colorful nickname from sleeping in a chicken coup because he had too many brothers and sisters to all fit in the house. Everybody called him that except his mother.

Chicken Coop also had a special talent for baseball. He could throw faster and hit farther than kids much older. Always ready for a game, he never complained and was top pick in our sandlot games. When Jackie Robinson started his second season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicken Coop came alive. It was a magical summer for baseball. Joe DiMaggio and the New York Yankee baseball club came to Greenville for a pre-season game with our local minor league team, the Majors. When the Majors won to the wild jubilation of the town–nobody noticed the Yankee’s rookie line-up, a distant, mirage-like image of a beckoning world outside became concrete. The Majors’ win produced in us a single-minded devotion to the sandlot baseball games that filled our summers. Suddenly, they were our tickets to glory.

Six days a week Chicken Coop and I played baseball in every spare moment. Even on the Sabbath, if we got home from church and Sunday dinner in time, I would toss a ball at an old tire my father had hung on a backyard shed. My little dog fetched the ball and its enthusiastic barking soon alerted the other neighborhood kids. Chicken Coop came first for a game of catch. Garnet Harrison’s son Frank usually came out next and we would start a round robin. Though two years our senior, Frank had a rivalry with Chicken Coop and would have given his agate collection to best him. Others drifted in; Billy Johnson from a tiny apartment over the neighborhood grocery, Gus and Willy from Chicken Coop’s side of the fence, Larry Stapleton and Charles Luttrell from across the street until there were enough for ‘sides’.

Before the war the Harrisons’ had kept milk cows on the field where we played. After the war and the city council banned livestock in town, Mr. Harrison turned the lot over to our games. The field sloped away from home plate, giving us an empowering sense of strength. Past the center field fence the walls of shanties bounced the crack of a bat back to home in about a second. That meant a hit had to travel over 500 feet for a home run. Only Chicken Coop and Frank managed the feat with any regularity.

In those days, adults referred to the collection of shacks that haphazardly occupied the space between the working class whites of Wright Street and the railroad tracks ‘nigger town’. The President’s train passed right by them. Years later when I learned that President Truman had integrated the Armed Forces, I wondered what went through his mind. He could have almost reached out and touched the run-down houses along the tracks. When school integration threw our town into turmoil, I traced the categorical imperatives of justice and fairness that burned within me back to what Frank’s father did that day.

Not all our parents encouraged our passion for baseball. Mine had the hardscrabble sharecroppers’ suspicion of dreaming too high, but Mr. Harrison pushed Frank. Garnet Harrison was a large, muscular man with narrow-slit eyes who had played in the minors and desperately wanted his son to make it in baseball. He saw to it that Frank had the best equipment and he kept up the sandlot. He even brought in dirt for a pitcher’s mound and would talk to us about how to hold the bat, to catch the ball, to slide, or steal a base. None of us were ready to trade our father for Mr. Harrison, but we felt a touch of envy at his knowledge and his support of Frank.

I guess he just couldn’t stand Chicken Coop being a better player than his son. And in hindsight, I’m sure Chicken Coop’s being black —and dirt poor— just rubbed it in.

 

#

 

After the Presidential Train left and the crowd went back to daily routines, the sandlot players gathered as always. Matchsticks put Frank, Gus, Larry, and Billy on one team: Chicken Coop, Willy, Charles, and me on the other. A coin flip gave Franks’ side first at bat.

Larry objected when we wanted Chicken Coop to pitch. “Aw, come on,” he said, “we wanna git some hits.” “What’s the point havin’ a good pitcher if you won’t let ‘im pitch?” I said. A compromise, the result of practice in negotiating Chicken Coop’s special skill, allowed him to pitch every other inning. When Frank decided to bat first, I made Chicken Coop start. He struck Frank out, then Larry. Gus hit a bouncing infielder I swooped up and threw to first for the out. At the bottom of the first inning we stood aught-aught.

Though not the best pitcher, Frank insisted on a revanchist shot at Chicken Coop. For our part, we agreed Chicken Coop should bat last to bring in anybody who had gotten on base.

Willy got on first with a hit off a low fly that landed between Larry at second and Billy on first. Charles struck out with a hit straight to Gus, then I knocked a grounder past Larry he had to chase down. That gave Willy time to get to third and I got to second. When Chicken Coop’s turn came two runners were on base–just like we planned. Frank decided to try a fast ball that Chicken Coop easily knocked over the center field fence where a large colored man stopped chopping wood long enough to throw it back.

We would start down the lineup again with one out and a score of three to nothing.

This time Willy got on first with a fly to left field. Charles popped a fly to Gus who dropped it letting Willy reach second. I bunted and the ball fell fair in front of the plate. Frank was closest, but he hesitated and I got to first, loading the bases with Chicken Coop again at bat. Frank was furious. He stalked around the mound, finally going to Chicken Coop and shouting in his face, “You think you’re smart, doncha!” Chicken Coop didn’t move. He didn’t back away, but he didn’t challenge Frank. “Can we jes play?” he said.

That was when Mr. Harrison came out of his shop. At first we expected one of his baseball lessons. I thought he should tell Frank to play second and let Larry pitch. Instead, he said in a booming, agitated voice, “All right, all you nigger kids go on home. I don’t want to see you in my back yard again.” Everyone froze.

Mr. Harrison shouted again, this time with a boiling anger in his voice. “Go on now! Jus git outta here!”

It shattered the moment and I yelled, “You can’t do that”, expecting everyone to protest with me. But no one did. The raw glare of hatred and jealousy is too overwhelming. It blinded our still innocent eyes. Already wiser in the ways of the world; Chicken Coop, Gus, and Willy climbed back through the fence without a word.

There weren’t enough players left for sides. Frank tried to start a round robin, but no one had the stomach for it. The game was over.

I ran home where I found my mother at the kitchen window watching us.

“Mother,” I cried, “did you see what Mr. Harrison did?” Why those friends should be singled out for banishment still eluded me but I knew she would not let such outrage stand. “Just get on in the house. It’s none of our business.” “But, you saw what he did, didn’t you?” She had seen it, and I saw in her eyes what I have come to believe was a conflation of anger and despair at her powerlessness before a cruelty she dared not confront. “Go on, take your bath,” she said. “We’ll talk about it when Daddy gets home.” She could still summon the voice that would not tolerate dilly dallying.

We didn’t talk about it when my father got home. He had worked hard that afternoon and discussions prompted by the Presidential visit had upset him. He dismissed my questions with, “It’s Garnet’s yard. We got no right to tell him who he can and can’t let in it. Ain’t none of our business.” Prisoner of a world that brooked no dissent, he would say no more.

Later that night I heard my mother crying in the kitchen while she canned vegetables from the garden. She often prayed as she worked. This time she prayed a different prayer.

“Lord, forgive them. Keep my boy from the world’s evil. You know I can’t force him to act like a Christian. I got to depend on You now to make a good man of him.

 

#

 

We went to church Sunday and afterward to my grandparents’ house for our traditional noon dinner. Garnet Harrison’s expulsion of the coloreds came up.

“It’s about time Garnet stopped lettin’em nigger kids play in his backyard,” my grandfather said. “Now just you hush, Alonzo,” my grandmother scolded. “That was a mean thing to do. Them little nigger kids wasn’t hurtin’ a thing.” “Don’t make no difference. First thing you know they’ll be wantin’ to play with the Majors if somebody don’t put a stop to it”. It re-ignited my outrage. “Why can’t they play with the Majors?” I said without thinking. “Chicken Coop’s good enough already!” I was almost shouting, oblivious to my heresy. It shut down the conversation momentarily. My grandfather looked at his son and with the finality of a lawyer closing an airtight case, simply said, “See”.

We adjourned to the living room to see something else new that summer in Greenville. My grandfather had bought the first television set in the county and wanted to show it off. It was a credenza with a porthole. He turned it on, fiddled with the controls several minutes until a dim, fuzzy, black and white picture of a man talking appeared in the little window.

“Robert, you want to hand me the colorizer,” he said to my father, pointing to a sheet of transparent plastic tinted blue across the top, green across the bottom, and orange in the middle. He taped it over the porthole. “This’ll make it colored.”

We all looked at the contraption with the strange colors overlaying and distorting the picture underneath. After a few moments, my father said, “You know, I think you got taken, Dad”. “Naw, naw. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

 

#

 

Early Monday morning I climbed through the fence to find Chicken Coop. He and I could still play catch, I thought, even if we can’t use the Harrison’s lot. I knocked on his door and his mother answered.

“Whachyu want?” she asked, with a belligerence I didn’t understand. “I was wondering if Chicken Coop could come out to play,” I said. “Yo mama know you here?” she asked. “Yeah,” I lied, afraid of the truth and in the conviction mother wouldn’t object. She looked at me for the longest time, like she was assessing or deciding what to do. Finally, she sighed. “You best be runnin’ on home now. Jimmy can’t play wit’you no more. Best you not be comin’ here again.”

I peered past her to see Chicken Coop sitting at their kitchen table. He stared at me with a look I could not fathom. Later in life, I described it as ‘blank’ — later still as ‘empty’. As a young adult active in Civil Rights the word ‘betrayal’ emerged, though I never used it. Yet even now, in the sunset of life, it intrudes on that image which has stayed with me ever since.

I never played with Chicken Coop again. I looked for him a few times, but he never came out. For many years I trained myself to use ‘Jimmy’ when I spoke of him–which, to be honest, wasn’t often. I saw him a couple of times after that. Once, when he couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, he was smoking. About five years later I saw him in the back of the sheriff’s car. I don’t know what he’d done. I searched the “Greenville Banner” for several weeks but they never mentioned it.

None of us became baseball players.

And the sign? It hung over the main road through our small Texas town for thirty-eight more years.