THE TIME AND PLACE THAT GAVE ME LIFE In her book, Janet Cheatham Bell writes about coming of age in a northern city that felt very much like the Deep South of the era. Race is a significant presence in this candid and evocative memoir as Bell explains how race and racism impacted and helped shape her life in mid twentieth century Indianapolis. Her struggle with racism is interwoven with local history and forthright discussions of her education, her marriage, and conflicts with her parents. "JANET CHEATHAM BELL'S BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN MEMOIR IS BOTH A TENDER MEDITATION ON HER CLOSE-KNIT MIDWESTERN BLACK FAMILY AND A SEARING INDICTMENT OF THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY RACISM THAT CIRCUMSCRIBED THEIR LIVES. HER SPIRIT AND RESILIENCE--AS SHE GROWS FROM DEPRESSION-ERA TODDLER TO CONFIDENT CIVIL RIGHTS ERA WOMAN--WILL KEEP YOU CAPTIVATED AND CHEERING. THIS COMING OF AGE TALE HAS UNIVERSAL APPEAL AND SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING FOR ALL INDIANA HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS." A'Lelia Bundles, author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, and Madam Walker's great-great granddaughter "BELL'S IS THE BEST FORM OF SOCIAL HISTORY: A STORY THAT FOCUSES ON AN ORDINARY INDIVIDUAL, BUT ALSO ILLUMINATES THE EXPERIENCES OF MANY OVER TIME." Nancy Gabin, author of Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1933—1975 "Through the centuries of despair and dislocation, we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope." Maya Angelou in Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now When the United States entered World War II Daddy wasn’t drafted; he was thirty-eight years old with four children. I often heard him say, “I was too young for the first war and too old for the second one.” As the number of able-bodied men on the home front dwindled, Daddy had more than one opportunity to get a better-paying job. The Stumpfs did not want to lose him, but they couldn’t compete with the salaries being offered elsewhere. James told me that Daddy proposed a solution to their mutual dilemma that allowed him to make additional money while remaining at Stumpf’s. Stumpf Brothers had been discarding the hog guts, considering them garbage. Daddy asked Stumpf’s to let him have the guts. He also requested permission to use their equipment to clean the partially digested food and mounds of fat off the hog intestines. Daddy could sell the intestines as Kentucky oysters or chitlins, thereby increasing his income. If Stumpf Brothers agreed to do this, he’d stay. The Stumpfs had nothing to lose. They could keep their best worker without increasing his salary, and he would unload some of their garbage. They struck a deal. Daddy shared the chitlin work and profits with his father and brother—Grandpa and Uncle Rozell. By 1938 Daddy’s family had stopped sharecropping, left Tennessee, and followed him and Aunt Christy to Indianapolis. Aside from the time the Cheathams put in to make the guts fit to eat, there was little operating cost for this family business within a family business. Stumpf’s even provided reusable tin pails with the company logo in which ten pounds of chitlins were packed for sale. Many Negro families would not consider a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner without chitlins, but if they couldn’t buy from the Cheathams, they had to settle for the fatty, frozen supermarket version. Daddy always had more customers than chitlins because people liked how clean and fresh they were. Twice a week, hours after the hogs were slaughtered, chitlins, at a price of $1.75 for a ten-pound bucket, were delivered to customers’ doors. After a while, sales increased to a point where Daddy sold most of his chitlins to neighborhood grocers. He only made home deliveries to a few special people, like older people who would have found it difficult to carry the chitlins home from the grocery. I became accustomed to seeing buckets of chitlins lined up on our back porch and in the trunk of Daddy’s car during the season—-November to March. Daddy’s chitlin money eased the strain of providing for a family of six on a butcher’s salary. The additional income also allowed him to indulge us at Christmas and take the family on vacations. There were no chitlins in our house though. Mama thought they were nasty and said she wouldn’t cook or eat them. After cleaning hundreds of pounds, Daddy didn’t want any chitlins on his plate anyway. |
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