Month: January 2017

What Poor Smelled Like

When I was a boy I almost always had a newspaper route, The Gadsden Times when I was 10 years old and, after we moved to Charlotte, The Charlotte News and, later, The Charlotte Observer.

When I was 12 and 13 years old, delivering The News to families who lived in North Charlotte, I found out what poor smelled like.

North Charlotte is evolving into an expensive, artsy kind of place now but in 1950s it was home to white, cotton mill workers. I delivered the afternoon paper there six days a week and then went to my customers’ homes on Friday night or Saturday morning to collect 35 cents, the price of a week’s papers.

Poor folks ate a lot of cabbage.

When they opened the front door, especially in the winter, I could see and smell poverty.

The front room – the living room– would often be closed off, so they wouldn’t have to heat it.  And if they had what they considered to be nice furniture it would be covered with white sheets, year around, to keep the sofa and chairs nice for company.

The smell of poverty met me when they opened the door: the odor of coal or kerosene burning in a heater; cabbage cooking on the stove; and stale cigarette smoke.

Coming Friday: Two Acres For A Quarter

No Dogs Or Reporters Allowed

I was sitting in Honey’s Restaurant on Tryon Street in Charlotte having lunch with my city editor, John W. Jamison, and another reporter from The Charlotte News, minding my own business.

Our food had arrived — I got a hamburger and fries — and I was trying unsuccessfully to open one of those little plastic packs of mustard.   It was frustrating. That pack was designed to be torn open. By a child. But I couldn’t, not that day.

A child could open it.
A child could open it.

So, as unobtrusively as you can do that sort of thing, I put a corner of the mustard pack in my mouth, bit down, and tried again to rip it open. But it was no dice.

Now I was determined.

I couldn’t tear it open with my fingers or my teeth so I decided to squeeze it open.  Very gently, of course. I knew when it came out, it would come out fast, under pressure. So as the mustard pushed through the package seal I carefully, very, very carefully, aimed it at my hamburger patty.

But I was not careful enough.

When the mustard broke through the seal, it arced up like a missile. It flew over my city editor’s head –well, not all of it, a little bit fell on him — and it kept going, up and up, until it barely touched the ceiling of the restaurant, where it left a short yellow streak.  Then it arced down, splatting like a big, yellow gob of bird poo-poo on the white shirt of a man two tables away.

I was mortified. I didn’t say a word. He didn’t say a word either, at first. He just picked up his knife and began scraping mustard off his shirt.

The guy knew my city editor and he must have guessed what I was because he said to Jamison, “They shouldn’t let dogs or reporters in this restaurant.”

Coming Monday: “What Poor Smelled Like”