Author: Vernon Thomas

Publisher:

Published: 2019-01-22

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 9781644589052

It is 3:00 in the morning. My office window is half open. I can feel a nice cool breeze that reminds me of the early morning when I was a young man. I could hear my mother and father talking. Mother was only 5 ft. 7in. tall, but all of us thought she was a giant. My mother was telling my father about the pain in her neck from pulling the heavy cotton sacks and the pain in her fingers from the needle stick from the cotton bowl from the white man's cotton fields. My brother, Percy, and I were hurting because we knew how bad she was feeling. I had to be about eleven years old at the time, and Percy was around twelve. He looked at me and said, "Vernon, that's it." "No more?" I can remember asking, "What can we do?" He said, "We can run ahead of mother and put the cotton sack around our necks and pull it for her." My mother heard our conversation. Mother stopped walking and bent down and kissed me. Then she turned to Percy and kissed him. The look of pride in her eyes almost made me tear up. I never felt so big and so great. In my life, I am proud to say that my mother, from that day forward, never labored with pulling a horse harness again. As if that moment wasn't enough, let's keep remembering that it is at the end of a long hot day. In about thirty minutes, it would be time to quit. The boss man and his two sons pulled up in a brand new truck. They had the windows up and the air conditioning blowing. He parked the truck at the end of the road, reading stories to his Son, another white man pulled up to weigh the cotton that had just been picked. After he weighed it all, he gave my mother a small white piece of paper. She gave it to our boss man. He never opened his truck door or rolled down his window. A small compartment door came out with some money in it. My mother was not allowed to look up, stare the white man in his eyes. In those days, it was considered a sign of being uppity and didn't no white man put up with an uppity colored person. My mother took the money that he gave her and walked away. He blew his horn and waved for her to come back. He asked her did she forget something. My mother said, "No, sir." Then she repeated it, "No, sir." My brother and I could hear him screaming at her at the top of his lungs, saying, "You forgot to thank me!" My mother was so afraid, she said to him, "I'm sorry, sir. I'm so sorry." He looked at her with pure disdain in his eyes and said, ''That's better. See you tomorrow." All while this was going on, my brother and I could see his children laughing at our mother while their father looked down, seeking their approval. There was one thing that he and his kids did not know, if he had attacked our mother, he would have found out that he had just grabbed two tigers by the damn tail. My brother and I would've been all over him. My mother would not have been able to stop us. My mother was not concerned for her safety, she was afraid for Percy and me. Back in those days, white bosses had a gun rack in their trucks and shotguns and rifles loaded and set to fire. My brother, Percy, looked at me with angry eyes and said, ''Vernon, are you ready?" I said, "Yes, Percy. I'm ready." My mother said to me and Percy-and I'll never forget this day-she said, "This will not happen in my lifetime or your father's lifetime, but Vernon, a new day will come when you won't have to beg or get on your knees for no man. The time will come when you will be able to stand up straight and look them all in the eye." She began to recall a conversation she had with my father where he stated that if he had one choice to stand up straight and look a white man in the eye for just one day or to bow down on his knees and live for fifty years, he would take the one day of life. It was a long walk home, but we learned a lot that day.