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Motel Sepia
By Dale Kueter AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2016 Dale Kueter
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5246-2036-3
CHAPTER 1
June 1952, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
"Andre, you get on in here right now! Playtime is over. Was over 15 minutes ago. Time to get cleaned up and go to bed. No arguin' either, hear?"
Lillian Sanders, hands on hips, chuckled to herself. Who could blame kids, recently freed from the structural rigors of school, from wanting to romp outside until darkness consumed nearly every corner of summer's 9 o'clock sky?
For 11-year-old Andre, there was more to the lingering than shucking off the constraints of a long school year. He kicked at the dust and pondered how to explain a rip in one knee of near-new pants and elderberry stains on the other.
The robins in the woods toward Indian Creek dispensed their distinctive night song, a shrill chorus that some would describe as an annoying, disjointed cacophony. In the distance was the more soothing, rhapsodic melody of the whippoorwill, an almost beckoning call to years gone by.
For a few minutes, as a gentle northwest breeze caressed the already sleeping oak leaves, Lillian pondered the age-old question: where had time gone?
Here she was, 41 years old, married to a man who had a thousand ideas to change the world, and bit by bit, she had to acknowledge, he was inching ahead. She wasn't thrilled by some of his prospective enterprises, and told him so. Like most couples they plowed forward in life, rejoicing in the good times and riding out the bumps. She giggled silently and wiped a strand of hair from her still sparkling eyes.
Over the years, like autumn accepts winter, she had cautiously taken to his incurable itch to try something new. Some people hate change. But for Roy Sanders change was a challenge, not always something within reach today, but not always something too distant for tomorrow.
Patient change.
Testing new ideas, to him, seemed as natural as breathing. Sometimes his notions were a breath of fresh air. On other occasions, they were a whiff at wishful thinking. Failing, in his mind, was not trying at all. She naturally savored what to her was his best idea boldly approaching a new girl in town. That was nearly 20 years ago. Her mind drifted back. She focused on his gangly charm. It still tickled her fancy.
The Rev. Richard Rollins, Lillian's father, had just become the pastor at the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Cedar Rapids. The family moved down from Minneapolis some 10 days before. While adults in the congregation were sizing up their new minister, Elroy Sanders was giving the eye to the pastor's oldest daughter.
Young Roy (few called him Elroy) did not suffer a lack of confidence. When he first saw her, he was convinced. Her attractive looks, especially her petite figure, distracted his church meditation. Delilah herself could have strutted up the aisle, but Roy's eyes were focused on Lillian. Her black hair, with ends rolled casually on her forehead and falling with a curled tease over her ears, gleamed. The brown of her eyes was deeper than the color of her skin. She walked with elegance in her blue dress peppered with small, white polka dots.
In the fashion of young men overwhelmed with natural attractions, he pledged to himself right there that she would become his wife. While the Rev. Mr. Rollins was soliciting amens from the congregation, Roy said amen to Lillian. On the Rollins family's second Sunday in town, he forthrightly asked if he could walk Lillian home after services. He was sure it would impress her, and just as importantly, influence her parents that church was his choice for a "first date."
Going to parties and dances could come later.
Roy's father, Thomas Edward Sanders, had purchased an old Buick, a sharp-looking, deep blue that concealed some minor scratches and rust. Its square shape was distinguished by a short-billed front visor and bug-eyed headlights. While his Dad purchased plates for the car every year, oddly, neither of Roy's parents drove.
Nearly 19, Roy was allowed to drive the family to church and other places. But not on dates.
It was not uncommon that people walked to events. Lillian and Roy would often hike to nearby youth parties and dances. Sometimes, for fancy, dress-up functions, they would accompany another couple and hire a white taxi driver named Frank for a trip to the light fantastic. For $1.25 Frank would take you downtown in his 1930 Kissel. Nothing like arriving in style. By double-dating, your cost was cut in half.
"What did you say about kissin'?" his mother asked him once after bending a wary ear to talk about the Kissel taxi. She gave it the motherly translation.
"No, no, Mom. Not kissin'," Roy informed her. "It's a brand of a car, Kissel." Lillian had to laugh when she recalled the exchange between Roy and his mother.
Her memory trip was detoured by a honking horn from the nearby highway that screeched through the evening air only to be absorbed by the country quiet. Life is like that. Change suddenly interrupts routine and then becomes part of the ordinary. Chemistry is a fascinating science, she mused.
"How did they let such a pretty girl escape from Minnesota?" Roy whispered in her ear one night not long after they met. They were dancing. She still remembered how his eyes dazzled, almost in a spellbinding way.
Talk about being swept off your feet! Lordy! And was he a dancer! He could cut a rug and have it installed before the final verse. In his late high school years, Roy and two siblings organized themselves into a dancing and singing act called The Faststep Trio.
His sister, Maddie, played the piano and, depending upon the audience, would sometimes toss in sporadic lyrics in Czech or German. Roy and older brother Walter did the high-stepping. The group occasionally hooked up with a white, hillbilly band leader for shows. Maddie would dress in a gingham Aunt Jemima gown, while Roy and Walter donned waiter outfits. That's when they played to white crowds. They had flashier costumes when entertaining black audiences.
"Just call me Snake Hips," he had brashly told Lillian shortly after they met. Some of his gigs during high school were as far as 100 miles from Cedar Rapids. Classes at Washington High School, home chores and a two-hour road trip made for long days.
"When you are young you have energy to spare," he told her. He continued to dance professionally after they were married.
His father always preached the value and need for work. As a young teen Roy polished shoes at the 12-chair stand at the John Adams Hotel in Cedar Rapids. On University of Iowa football weekends, when the hotel was filled, he'd make as much as $16. Men and women dressed up for games like they were headed to a fancy ball. Some men wore suits and hats, and women donned fancy dresses.
Roy and his friends also raised money through boxing matches. His mother opposed it. She detested boxing, especially the format Roy entered. The last man standing could make as much as $100, an enormous sum.
Roy even worked at a beauty shop owned by a white woman. He cleaned, mixed shampoo solutions and did general maintenance. And he marveled at the mysterious ways of both men and women when it comes to tinkering with hair. Why, his curiosity begged, did some women spend hard-earned money for permanents to curl their hair while some black men underwent conking, a process to remove hair curl?
Unlike most teenagers, Roy listened and learned about the nuances of race. Father Pat Carmody, one of his shoeshine customers and chaplain at Mercy Hospital, suggested that "listening is a sacrament." Roy liked that notion, once Father Carmody explained the meaning of sacrament. He became alert to the manipulation of language, how whites conversed with each other and how they talked with black people. He took note how Negroes changed their words and voice, depending if they were talking to whites or other colored.
He studied how people responded to ethnic jokes. Was reaction to a racial joke different than when a Bohemie joke was told? Cedar Rapids Czechs, most of them descendants of immigrants from the Bohemia region of Czechoslovakia, made up a sizeable portion of the city's population. Jokes often portrayed them as being more pedestrian, even slow of mind.
He entered these experiences into a subconscious account that collectively guided his own behavior. Roy, in his internal bookkeeping, called it a formula for sensitivity and patience. It helped shape his reactions and responses. He believed it was in his best interests to use that approach in a culture dominated by whites. It was a highly unusual process for a teenager of any race.
It was during the dark days of the Great Depression when Roy and Lillian first met. Romance was a happy contrast to a world in economic and political turmoil. One fifth of the people in big cities were unemployed. Even educated professionals stood in breadlines. Adolf Hitler took over in Germany and formed the Third Reich. In America, a once timid man crippled by polio assumed the presidency and created the New Deal.
While most people talked about jobs and poverty, and were abuzz over Hitler's atrocities and Wiley Post's solo flight around the world, two young people in love were content to focus on each other. Roy knew that pastors stayed only a few years at a particular church, but he wasn't ready to propose marriage. He wanted to be older and more financially secure.
Growing up Lillian's life was as textbook as Roy's was busily uncommon. Besides schoolwork and time spent in home-ec club, she had regular babysitting jobs and those assigned by her father with church youth groups.
"I have a question for you, Mr. Smooth, Dancin' Man," she said one night about a year after they'd met. She recalled exactly where they were at the time, a half block down the street from McKinley High School. And she also remembered she was nervous.
"How should I say this?" she began pensively. Her hesitancy underscored the uncertainty of her direction.
"What's the question?" Roy prompted.
"Well, it's difficult. I'm embarrassed. I -"
"Just go ahead and say it, Lillian. What's on your mind?"
"OK. OK." She took a deep breath. "Why is your skin so much lighter than mine?" she blurted. There. She said it. She thought she knew, but she wanted him to tell her.
"Ah-hah!" Roy smiled. "Think you're gonna get married to a whitish fellow? That it?"
"Well," she halted. "Yes. To be honest, that's it. Sort of it."
"Lillian, Lillian. While you have lips that are soft and trustingly receptive," he said, executing his finest charm, "I also sense," and he switched to a more formal voice, "you have the eyes and perception of a suspicious detective. You are absolutely correct woman."
He paused for effect.
"I'm part white."
She was startled by his abrupt honesty, even though she wasn't surprised by what he had said. It's like eyeing chunked sweet potatoes on your plate, but your taste buds discover cooked carrots. It takes some digesting.
"Related to General Robert E. Lee," he boldly continued in undulating cadence. "Attention!! Right face! Left face! Pucker your lips, baby!"
"Be serious, Roy," she said. "My question was serious."
"I'm tellin' you the truth, I swear on the constitution of the Confederacy. I'm part Indian, too."
Her eyebrows raised and her curiosity spiked. She thought she knew quite a bit about this man she hoped to marry. But apparently not everything.
"Lillian, I should have told you before," Roy began slowly. "My family tree has some unusual branches. I'll try to make sense of it for you."
He inhaled a full two-lung dose of air, blew it back out, and then repositioned his respiratory system so as to support and bring believability to an incredulous outline of genealogy.
"My mother's father, my grandfather, was Henry Lee." Roy looked at her smack below the eyebrows, peering into her pupils for signs of circumspection. "Grandpa Lee was a half-brother of General Robert E. Lee. You see -"
"Come on. You're teasing me."
"No. That's true, Lil. Now pay attention."
"How could I not pay attention? Robert E. Lee, indeed!"
"Lillian," he paused to regain traction. "Here's the explanation. Henry 'Light Horse Harry' Lee, who fought in the American Revolution and was a friend of George Washington, was my great Grandpa. Later, he was a congressman from Virginia. He had a wondering eye when it came to women. His slave woman gave birth to my Grandpa Henry Lee, making him a half-brother to Robert E. Lee. Now, on my Dad's side –"
"Hold on General Snake Hips," she said. "Stop the music! Story tellin' is a first cousin to a fib, and I'm a wonderin' if you crossed the line. My father gives sermons about stretchin' the truth."
"Lil, it's true. Grandpa Henry Lee died the year before I was born. My sisters told me his background. First off, he was nearly white. I am told he looked like the Lees. He was sent to Illinois as a young man, a free man. My sister told how he received a monthly check from Virginia. He owned property, and led a fairly comfortable life. That was highly unusual for a black man after the Civil War."
"What you're tellin' me is second-hand, then. You couldn't swear on a Bible that it's true."
"I suppose you could say it's passed on, but why shouldn't I believe my sisters?"
"I'm sorry, Roy. You're right. No reason not to believe them. You were goin' to tell me about your father's side."
"Well, my Grandpa Sanders married the daughter of a Sac and Fox Indian. Did you ever hear of the Black Hawk War?"
"No. What's that to do with your grandparents?"
"Oh, nothing. Just that Chief Black Hawk and his Sac and Fox members were forced out of Illinois. This was some time before my grandparents married. When the Indians tried to reclaim their Illinois lands in 1832, the army stepped in. Abe Lincoln was part of the force that sent the Sac and Fox back to Iowa."
"Roy, if you be tellin' the truth, that's one wild family story. Mine is dull compared to that."
She cupped her hand on her mouth, another question taking form.
"Who's this Light Horse fellow? Why did they call him a horse name?"
"Lil, it was a nickname. Light Horse Harry. He was in the cavalry corps during the American Revolution. He drove horses. Commanded two mounted companies. Can't explain the Light part. Maybe his horse was smaller than the rest. I don't know. Later, as a member of Congress, he was selected to give the eulogy at President Washington's funeral.
"So you see," he paused. "I'm no ordinary fella." He let that soak in for a few seconds.
"Ya know Robert E. Lee was a West Point graduate and had long service with the U.S. Army. But being from Virginia, he decided to join the Confederate Army forces."
"I knew that," Lillian said. "Didn't he resign his U.S. Army commission at the family home in Arlington, Virginia?"
"He did. The home is now part of Arlington National Cemetery. Funny thing is that the U.S. government confiscated the property after Lee refused to pay $92.07 in back taxes. The first Union soldiers killed were intentionally buried near the house. After the war, Lee sued and won the property back. But since it was a cemetery, he sold it back to the U.S. government for $150,000. Crazy, huh?"
Roy stood, did a quick, fancy dance turnabout, clapped his hands and double-pointed toward Lillian.
"Now, let's talk about your family."
After nearly three years of dating, it happened. Lillian's father was transferred to Burlington, Iowa. After another year of long-distance courting, Roy and Lillian were married. He took a job at the Burlington YMCA monitoring steam cabinets and giving massages, and opened a shoeshine stand for extra money.
Roy was already thinking of moving back to Cedar Rapids when Lillian became pregnant. Soon after the birth of their first child, a daughter, the couple purchased a two-bedroom house in Cedar Rapids. It cost $1,500 with a $125 down payment. With his dancing gigs, shoeshine operation and cleaning business, Roy had accumulated some savings. Still, the mortgage made things tight.
Members of the Elks Club, where Roy had frequently entertained, provided baby furniture and diapers for the new parents. Some even helped paint the baby's bedroom, all of which surprised the young couple.
Iowa wasn't the South. Schools were not segregated. Yet Negroes were pretty much confined, by choice or social bias, to the Oak Hill neighborhood southeast of the city's downtown. Coming to their house, Lillian reflected, and helping paint was wonderful and unexpected, a gesture of welcoming and acceptance.
A barking dog down the road intruded on her musings and jolted her back to the present.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Motel Sepia by Dale Kueter. Copyright © 2016 Dale Kueter. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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