Life Lessons Learned
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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I spent my days as a wee lad in a company house on a company
lot beside a company street in a company village. The company furnished the water and
electricity … and my dad’s job.
There were four of us in that house: My mom and dad, my younger brother, and
myself.
The house had three rooms and a path … literally. No
bathroom, but there was a toilet (an “outhouse” – a “privy”) down that
path. There was also a small stable for
a milk cow.
Later, the company decided to bless its employees with a
bathroom in, or on, the house. In our
case the bathroom was built on the back porch so that in order to use it one
still had to exit the house and cross the porch to get to it. It had the all too common porcelain toilet
and a shower. There was no lavatory, or
sink, in that bathroom. There was a small push-out window near the ceiling of
the room. It was hot in the summer and absolutely
frigid in the winter.
Between the house and the outhouse there was a huge cast
iron wash pot in which mom did the laundry every Monday. Wire clotheslines were strung across the
backyard so that making an emergency trip to the outhouse at night was akin to
maneuvering an army obstacle course -- blindfolded. It was here that I learned the importance of
having a flashlight readily available at night.
I do – to this day.
The lighting in each room of the house was a single electric
wire, hanging from the middle of the ceiling, with a socket for a single light
bulb and -- a string attached to the pull chain -- as the only switch to turn
the light on and off. There were no
electric receptacles anywhere in the rooms.
That single socket was the only source of electricity in every room.
As was everything in those latitudes (upstate South
Carolina – the Piedmont/
foothills), the house was on the side of a hill. The front
porch was at near ground level while a man of average height could walk,
unstooped, underneath the back of the house.
In fact, that is where we stored our firewood for the stove and wash pot
fires and coal for the fireplaces that had coal grates in them instead of dogs
for burning wood.
As I mentioned, a good portion of the wood underneath the
house was for mom’s huge cast iron wood range cooking stove. It was a monster! The thing would heat a city block when the
fire got going. (The best food I have ever had, in my life, was cooked on
that wood range.)
To get some relief from the heat in the kitchen in the
summer, we had to raise the room’s two windows, one on the south side of the
room and the other on the east side, and prop them open with pieces of
firewood.
The kitchen table was rectangular and covered with an
oilcloth tablecloth. That table was the center of our family universe.
There was an icebox.
I mean a REAL icebox. It was my job to see that it didn’t run out
of ice. I had to walk a city block, and
a bit more, to a community grocery store (every day) and purchase a block of
ice (for five cents), which the grocer man placed in my little red Radio Flyer
wagon that I used to haul that slippery, heavy, cargo.
Then there was the drip pan beneath the icebox that had to
be emptied at least once a day, or more, depending upon how hot the kitchen got
on any given day.
The kitchen was the family room. The other two rooms were for sleeping.
The house was set back, ten or twelve feet, from the cement
sidewalk. My earliest memories have the
street itself unpaved, but later it WAS paved with the old macadam mixture of
round smooth river rock and tar. It
stunk to high heaven when it was hot and would blister the bottoms of your bare
feet.
The rent
was a dollar a day.
We were poor. But
then, so were all our neighbors -- so nobody seemed to notice.
It was on that block that I learned to fend for myself. It was on that block that I learned to fight,
lie, cheat, steal, curse, and the most wondrous thing of all … that girls
are different from boys. I also
learned that I like girls … a lot!
The block was awash in children, or “younguns,” as they were
called in those days. In my house, my
younger brother and I were referred to as “chaps.”
It was on that block that I was cold-cocked, knocked
unconscious, when I ran headlong into a China Berry tree while chasing a fly
ball.
It was there that I learned, mostly, (I admit) by trial
and error, right from wrong. It was
on that block that the basic building blocks of what passes today for my
character were forever molded.
When we moved to a four-room house in another mill village
across town, I wept.
I will always be a Mill Hill boy. It is in my blood and maybe -- in my DNA.
The Mill Hill is where I came to know and understand poor
working people … people who live their lives on the very edge of out and out
destitution. It is where I learned self-reliance. It is also where I decided that I would claw
my way to a better future through hard work; determination, stubbornness, and
perseverance taught me by my father’s example.
It was on that Mill Hill where I learned that you must be
ready to take a stand and defend your position from all comers regardless of
the clamor of the opposition.
The Mill Hill was tough and it was not fair. I learned, on that Mill Hill, that life is
truly NOT FAIR. But, most importantly, I
learned that life is not supposed to be fair!! I learned that crying out for fairness was only an
excuse for a shortcut to one’s goals.
That Mill Hill taught me
that if one truly wants to make something of one’s self then you first must
forget “fair.” You play the hand you are dealt. But you play it with cunning and skill and
perseverance. And you NEVER,
EVER, QUIT because you are never beaten ‘til you quit!
And finally, I learned, on
that Mill Hill, one should never compromise when one is satisfied that he/she
is right. Compromise neuters one’s self-reliance. When you believe -- to an absolute
certainty -- that you are right, compromise is nothing less
than a personal sell-out.
Some will disagree with
the life lessons I learned on the Mill Hill, but that’s OK. They are MY lessons. And they have
served me well. After all, it was the
hand I was dealt over 70 years ago, and
I am still in the game!
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