Clarence

Frank had a three man operation. He and Stan were the masons and Clarence was the laborer. Clarence did all the support work and the three of them worked together on the job to get ready to lay blocks and bricks. Clarence mixed the mud (mortar for laying block), carried and stacked the blocks and bricks, dug the footers and cesspools, pulled up the forms, cleaned up the sites. You get the idea. Keep in mind this was a small operation. They had no cement mixer. No backhoe. No bobcat. Only shovels, hoes, digging bars, sand screen, hands and backs. During the peak periods Frank needed an extra laborer, and I was it. So, at 17 I signed on to be another pair of hands and a back. Frank turned me over to Clarence to show me how to work. He taught me the way to dig so I could dig all day in the hot sun, and how to carry two 60 pound blocks and swing them up on a chest-high scaffold, and how to mix mud and set cesspool blocks and rings and how to get a 200 pound bluestone chimney cap up two 16 foot ladders. He and I often worked alone on site preparation. We dug footers and cesspools. Now there is a job. A cesspool was built in the ground in a hole that was 10 or more feet deep and about 10 feet around. We dug them by hand. Clarence taught me to throw dirt a long way. Then we dropped the blocks into the hole and Frank built the round cesspit walls. We had lots of time to talk over the years we worked together, but Clarence was a man of few words and I could keep my own company when needed. Lunch time was different. We had 45 minutes to rest and eat and talk. He talked about the world of black men and segregation. How he grew up into that world and how he navigated through it. He owned several houses that he rented out, and had a comfortable retirement planned. He was about 60 when we met. He talked about the events in the South and I listened, but I didn’t understand. It was the time of Brown v Board of Education and Rosa Parks. I was a middle class white boy living in New York and didn’t have a clue what was going on. One day we were talking about racism and he said “If a man steals corn from your field that doesn’t mean the next man coming down the road will steal your corn.” I never thought it did, but that is part of the core of racism. I went off to college in the South and saw firsthand what he was talking about. Clarence was a teacher, mentor, business man, laborer, husband, father and more. I learned a lot from him. He was strong and lean, and dignified. He retired, died, and I never got to tell him that I finally understood what he was trying to tell me. But I did in the end understand. And Clarence, thank you.
Signs: http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jscully/Race/images/colored%20sign.jpg