BLUES FOR THE
WHITE BOY
(abridged version)
Author: Dan Pollock © 2003
Chapter Six
“Mister Blue”
We we're getting very
popular around the northern Alabama area after I joined the group. We even
started venturing up to Chattanooga, Tennessee’s legendary “9th Street”, the
land of blues great, Bessie Smith and again, I was told that I was the first
white guy to venture there and our tenure on 9th Street will be explored in
another chapter. I'm not saying that I
was the reason for the increased interest in the band but I think the addition
of the guitar to the group was the catalyst. That's not to say that the band
wasn't great and already getting notice before my arrival but I think adding
guitar was just what the band needed.
Lloyd was already a married man with a family and was working full time.
So were Ted and Sonny. Frank and Jack
were full time students majoring in music at Alabama A&M College, located
in Normal, Alabama right next to Huntsville and Uncle Sam certainly had his
hooks in me, so procuring other gigs beside our usual proven haunts, like The
Elks and Bigger 'n Seay's Upstairs Club presented a problem. Enter our
"Booking Agent/Manager"
For the life of me, I
can't remember his name but he was the only black policeman on Huntsville's
force then and was a token of it's society. A really nice guy, who believed in
equality and believed in us and he thought he could make an extra buck or two
by booking us at some different venues around the area. The only problem with
this arrangement was his total lack of experience in dealing with club owners
and promoters, which isn't an easy task for a seasoned veteran. He wasn't
really good at giving sound advice either and he was involved in my very naďve
incarceration, thinking he was helping me with what he thought to be sage
advice on the merits of the Constitution and the American Justice System. I'll
call him "Mr. Blue", as in
blue uniform and I first met him while playing one of my early gigs at the Elks
Club.
I still didn't have
any transportation yet and getting to and from the gigs to the base was
difficult and could get expensive in a hurry if I used the base taxicab
service. Frank graciously complied to my request of him in providing a ride or
two for me to some of the gigs or rehearsals until I had enough time in
residence at the base to get a loan for a car at the Federal Credit Union. I had met a lovely woman named Nedra that
worked at the PX on base through another GI, named Jim Morrisey who worked with
me in Headquarters Personnel when I wasn't gigging. This guy had a beautiful
1957 Corvette and would sometimes let me take it for a serious cruise or two.
Wonderful car! He was bedding a chick off post who had a roommate that turned
out to be Nedra. She wasn’t committed to anyone at the time and Morrissey’s
little arrangement looked pretty good to me, so I then became determined to be
her “companion” because, as I said before, I had mostly been hanging out on
base and had just met the guys in the band and Pap. It was mostly like a page
out of "Bull Durham" where these women would pick a GI to hang with
during his tour at Redstone Arsenal and you got all of the benefits of shacking
up, to use an old term but an additional benefit of seeing other women just as
long as you paid her portion of the room and board. I guess my being a musician
was intriguing to her because with that and some “sweet talk”, it didn't take
long before I was moving some of my belongings over to her place and ditching
the clamor of a military base. Those
gals were into some interesting things and I would be safe in assuming that
they were a little ahead of their time. For a young guy, freshly on his own and
just back from Korea, suffice it to say that it was lewd and lascivious and
worth every penny of that room and
board!
I'm pretty sure it
was a Friday night and it was clouding up for a nice rainstorm. This was in
September of 1964 and I hadn't yet been introduced to northern Alabama's severe
weather yet. There was either a gig or
a rehearsal and I had arranged for Frank to pick me up at Nedra's and he came
over around six o'clock in his 1950 Ford.
His car always brought back fond memories because a 1950 Ford had been
our family car, a green two door coupe just like Frank's and it was the car
that my dad taught me how to drive in. Pap Rice was along for the ride and as
they pulled up, Frank lightly tooted the horn for me to come out of the
apartment. Nedra went out and told them that I arrived late from work and that
I was just out of the shower and I was shaving. She asked Frank and Pap to come
on in. She should have known better by having lived there for a few years and
she was originally from Tennessee too, so having told them to "come on
in" presented a serious problem for Frank and Pap who were well versed in
the ways of Jim Crow. Remember, I'm in
Alabama now, not California and the civil rights strife is in full swing and
hordes of freedom riders, counter
sitters and voter registration people are arriving in the state and the
indigenous white people of “The Sovereign State Of Alabama” were taking all of
this in and starting to get real pissed off! Being new there and being from
California, I thought nothing of it
either and was yelling from the bathroom in the rear of the place for them to
take a seat and I would be right out.
All I was wearing were my military khaki pants and a face full of
shaving cream.
I think I had been
staying there for a little over a week and I had just found out the night
before that there was a third roommate that shared the apartment. Until then, I
was under the impression that it was just Nedra and Jim Morrisey's chick that
are living in this place. I was told
that she worked a couple of jobs and we’d hardly ever see her. She mostly slips
in at night and is gone the first thing the next morning and is hardly ever
there. It shouldn't but her name escapes me too with the passage of time.
She just happens to
come home that evening to retrieve something in a hurry from her room. All the while I'm shaving, I'm unaware that
Jim Morrisey's chick is attracted to Pap and she hits on him. "Sweet
Chocolate Brown" as Richard Pryor would put it. Pap was a handsome man
with a fine brown frame, so I can see why she was attracted to him but she's
been there a few years too and she should have known better. Pap had been around the block a few times
and knew the consequences but maybe the allure of a white woman at that
particular place in time is what caused him to abandon his defenses and turn
into a buck in rut. Who knows? Suffice
it to say that everyone involved should have known better.
Nedra is in the
kitchen preparing snacks and I'm in the back shaving. As far as I know, Frank
and Pap are patiently waiting on the couch and I’m hurrying to be ready to
leave. Nothing could be more demure. As
the elusive, third roommate is passing through the living room going to her
room, she sees two niggers in her
apartment. Frank sitting on the couch by the front door in the living room and
Morrisey's girl laying on a couch or some kind of portable bed across the room,
swapping spit with Pap while he’s laying over her.
So, roommate three turns around and goes next
door to the manager's apartment and calls the cops, telling the dispatcher that
her two roommates, both white, are getting raped by two niggers! I first become
aware that there's a problem when Frank is hurriedly coming down the hall
towards the bathroom telling me that the "PO-LEESE IS HERE"! I come
rushing out of the bathroom, still wearing only my khaki pants and some
remnants of shaving cream and head for the front door. As I come into the living
room, I see a middle aged woman in an old terry cloth bathrobe and curlers in
her hair standing in the doorway with some blonde chick that turns out to be
roomate number three and maybe eight or nine policemen including one short, fat
one approaching me and declaring, "I'm Dutch Holland". "Who are you"?
He starts asking me
my name and if I’m stationed at the Arsenal. As he’s grilling me, I'm getting
more than a little worried and that nauseous feeling starts to take hold at the
bottom of my gut. Dutch gets Frank, Pap and me to sit down on the couch and has
Nedra and Morrisey's chick stand against a wall across the room. The
interloping third roommate is standing next to the ugly ass woman wearing the
tattered terry cloth robe and curlers at the front doorway, who turns out to be the manager. After we
tell him who we were and where we were from, Dutch Holland leaves us and goes
over to get the story from roommate three and the land lady who are the
reporting parties and his backup officers are just milling around while I'm
getting real busy trying to stuff a switchblade knife that I had been carrying,
down the crack of the sofa cushions in an effort to hide it. But the girls had thrown some type of Afghan
spread over the sofa, trying to cover some frays or stains and I couldn't get
it out of sight down between the cushions. Frank and Pap are now staring at the
knife with wide eyes, knowing they'll point to either one of them as it's owner
but all I could do was slide it behind me and I was literally praying at this
point that no one would have to take responsibility for it.
I had brought the knife
back from my tour of duty in South Korea and it was buried at the bottom of
my footlocker at the arsenal. No one
ever checks your footlocker as an E-5 and I never had routine or surprise
inspections. But a little bit of fear goes a long way and I dug the switchblade
out after a couple of gigs at Bigger 'n Seay's and The Elks Club. At this point, that switchblade was no longer
my protector but now my accuser, shouting loudly, "he brought me here"!
"He's the one that was carrying me around", all because I couldn’t
ditch it with that spread thrown over that couch. Now I'm stuck in a malaise
that I had no control over, carrying a switchblade knife, running around with
them "niggra's" and most probably an accessory to a rape charge.
At this point, Dutch
Holland asked Nedra and Jim Morrisey's chick who lives in the apartment? Nedra
said she did, Morrisey's chick and roommate number three lived there. She
doesn’t even mention me or Morrisey and I pipe in saying, "I live here
too". With that, bathrobe and curlers louts in saying, "He don't
live here......he's just shackin' up"! "He's the one that brought
them niggra's over here". "Hell, we don't even allow niggra's 'cross
our lawn.....that's how we do our own laundry"! I’m shouting something back at her as my fear is now turning to
anger. Old Dutch gets us on our feet
from the couch and some of his boys
in blue are approaching, as if they’re maybe going to cuff us. When he stands
me up, he blurts out, "hold it boy's.....looks like we got ourselves
a pig sticker here". With all that was going on, I had almost forgotten
about the switchblade that I was practically sitting on and a grimacing sigh
was uttered by all three of us when Dutch Holland spotted it. "Well now,
looks like we gonna have to take y'all in for carryin' a concealed weapon
and disorderly conduct". I still don't know to this day whether they
were probably going to let us go when they were sure there was no rape being
committed but when that switchblade was spotted, the whole mood changed. As
they're taking us away, I'm still applying disparaging remarks upon bathrobe
and curlers as we're going through the front door and they march us out to
the street and place us in the backseat of a squad car.
It's starting to drizzle
and there's rain coming while I'm watching Dutch and his boys gather in a
circle on the front lawn, somewhat like a huddle in a football tones, almost
whispering ."Ain't this a trip....I'm going to jail", I mutter in
the backseat. Frank never takes his eyes off of the group of southern cops
on the lawn and says very distinctly, "you better hope and pray real
hard that they're taking us to jail"! What? It never dawned on me that
any place other than jail is where we would be taken. Then I remembered the
three civil rights activists that had just been murdered in Mississippi by
the police. Man, for a moment there, it seemed like I was stuck in mud and
couldn’t move but then it slowly began to become clear and then my mind took
off like a jackrabbit. Out to some swamp maybe or some ditch or landfill.
A tree or just taken out to some cotton field and shot. I hadn't put two and
two together yet that the burgeoning civil rights movement was threatening
their way of life and I hadn’t forgotten the statement made eons ago that
the south would rise again. Blacks
and whites mixing, in almost any kind of setting was a big no no below that
“Mason/Nixon Line”! As my anger slowly dissipated, it was quickly replaced
with the fear that first struck me, augmented by that sickening adrenalin
feeling in my gut again when you suddenly anticipate something very unpleasant
is about to happen. Automatically,
my teeth were clinching together and I was starting to get sweaty. My mouth
was so dry I could barely swallow. Lots of things were racing through my mind
and I was trying to think rationally. Maybe we could reason with them if the
worst should be true. But no. I'd been in Alabama long enough to know that
there was no way in hell anyone was going to reason with these rednecks, so
I decided they wouldn't get the satisfaction from me and I didn't say another
word as we pulled away from the curb and started our journey into the unknown.
As the good Lord and fate would have it, they evidently decided that this
wasn't the time or place, so off to the Madison County Jail we went.
That cold, gothic building was almost a welcome sight when we were
led in and taken to booking. Certainly better than some rural, moonshine road.
It was raining hard now. Maybe that saved us.
We were photographed
and fingerprinted and taken to the lockup. When we reached the cell area, we were separated and I was thrown in with a
couple of white, hobo type looking guys and Frank and Pap disappeared to the
"colored" section. Even the
jail was segregated. I took the top
bunk of one of two bunk beds in the cell that was nearest the window. I climbed
up to a bare stained mattress with no blanket or pillow. I curled up in a fetal
position with my ass against the wall and trembled from the cold and rain. I
kept straining to look out of the barred window for something to focus on that
was outside the confines of my cell but the pouring rain was all that I could
see.
I kept chanting to
myself, "this is America....you've got nothing to worry
about..........this is America....you've got nothing to worry about". My
dad, ever the idealist, had drilled that into me since my youth that if ever
something like this should happen, you're in America. You are an American citizen
with inalienable rights. If you are innocent, there's nothing to worry about
because the truth will always see the light.
He believed in logic and reason and mathematical certainties. His
favorite pastime was playing with a slide rule for God sakes! I was praying
that he would come and get me. Save me from this nightmare as he had before on
a couple of occasions when I was a teenager.
But I was twenty one years old now and in the Army, so I had to face the
fact that no daddy was coming to my rescue anymore. I've got to face this one
by myself and I would surely have the
support of the Army's Judge Adjutant General's Office. Man, was I in for a
surprise!
I laid there awake
all night, shivering from the dampness and cold. The two hobo guys sharing my
cell with me never bothered me that night and had gone to sleep hours ago. All
of my belongings, except my Khaki pants I was wearing at the time of my arrest,
were confiscated from me. Damn, I could use a cigarette! I wasn’t about to ask
these two if they had one to share. Maybe it was a good thing. These guys were
probably smokers too and I would probably have to deal with them over any
property I may have and I wanted no part in that. You can’t imagine what races
though your mind when your locked in a dungeon. I never once dozed off during
this whole ordeal and my mind had been motoring all night, anticipating my
plight when I hear a rustling and the slamming of heavy doors and an officer
comes and gets me to take me for some type of arraignment or plea entry.
Morning had finally arrived and I was trying to hold on to hope that maybe I
would be released and they had realized that it was all a big mistake. The
night before, all three of us had agreed in the back seat of that squad car to
plead innocent and fight the charges. As I was brought into the courtroom, I
noticed that Frank and Pap were blatantly missing and I found out later that
they had pled guilty and paid a fine. Remember, they grew up here and knew
there was no way they were going to beat the rap, so instead of months on a
chain gang, they paid their fine and put it behind them, all except Frank’s mom
who didn’t speak to me for months for getting her son into a jackpot!
Then Mr. Blue finds
me and begins telling me how there’s a change in the air and how I could do
something about it. ´”Plead not guilty, man”, Mr. Blue encouraged me, so when
they called my name, I was connecting with my dad’s reason and logic and the
matter of fact, sensible request Mr. Blue was making of me. “Not guilty, Your
Honor”. My First Sergeant, Earl G.
Spicer, a white G.I. who hailed from Andalusia, Alabama was in the room and
went my bail, pending a trial. I was rather uncomfortable seeing him there
because through all of this crap, I totally forgot how double jeopardy applies
when one is in the military. Great, I was going to be railroaded by these
bigots to a chain gang and when my time would finally be up, I’d have to answer
to the charges from the US Army too! As luck would have it, ‘ol Earl, my “Top
Kick” was well versed in the ways of Jim Crow too and knew that I had been
unjustly charged, other than the switchblade fiasco but it was obvious that
they had gained entry to the apartment illegally and that would be my out.
All I had to do now was go down to the Judge Advocate’s Office and secure
an Army lawyer for my case.
I was almost laughed
out of the office when I reported there. “Why son, we haven’t won a case down
in that courthouse for over twenty years”, I was told by some lieutenant who
was the office manager. “It’s not worth our time or yours”. “Pay your fine and
be done with it and be more careful the next time you go off post”. Even the United States Army didn’t stand a
chance there. I called a few law offices in Huntsville from the phone book with
the same results. It was panic time and
it was looking bleak. If I’m going to continue with righting this wrong and
further, be a participant in the long struggle for civil rights in this region
then I’d better start remembering all of the Perry Mason courtroom dramas I had
watched over the years with my dad. Good ‘ol dad! If ever I needed him it was
now and I couldn’t help being angry with him for not being there. I still
couldn’t get that off of my mind. I’ve got to fight this one alone and
nervously went about securing Dutch Holland as my one and only witness.
Two weeks later, I
was at the Madison County Courthouse, as prescribed, to try “my case”. When I walked in, there was Mr. Blue waiting
for me on the bench at the side of the gallery. As he was approaching me, I
couldn’t help but notice a big, loud, red, white and blue Dixie flag draped
over the entire wall behind the judge’s bench with the American flag, quietly
displayed on a standard to the right, on the floor. With that sight staring me
straight in the face, I knew I was in big trouble before Mr. Blue even began
his diatribe. He went on about mostly the same things; my rights as a citizen,
this is the "U.S. of A" and “power to the people”, ad nauseum. I was
starting to tremble. What did I get myself into? Damn, I’m headed for a chain
gang for sure. Didn’t actor, Robert Mitchum make the best of a chain gang in Georgia? I guess I’ll just
have to be able to make the best of one in Alabama. I was sinking low.
When my case was
finally called, the bespectacled old judge had me introduce myself to the court
and call my first witness. I don’t remember anything about any opening
arguments. I don’t think they use them in Alabama. I called Dutch Holland to
the stand from a subpoena and asked him how he gained entry and what probable
cause he had to arrest me for anything? With that, the old judge slams down his
gavel and looks at me and says, “need I remind you sir, that this officer is
not on trial here……YOU ARE”! I meekly sat back down in my chair at the defense
table. Wasn’t it the great litigator, Clarence Darrow who said that “anyone who
represents themselves in court, has a fool for a client”? I firmly believe in
that philosophy but for the life of me, I couldn’t get anyone to accept my case
and like the fool in the old adage, I represented myself into oblivion! I
should have thrown in the towel as Frank and Pap had because there was no way
you could win. But I had never really done anything before this trial that
really required any courage and I just knew in my heart that what they were
doing was wrong and I convinced myself
to grow some balls and try to right that wrong. You can't blame a guy for
trying.
The judge
further inquired if I had any other
questions of this witness? I said no.
“Do you have any further evidence or witnesses”? No again. He slams down his
gavel and says, “for carrying a concealed weapon......one hundred dollars or
one hundred days”. “For the charge of
disorderly conduct….one hundred dollars or one hundred days….pay the clerk”!
That was it. No muss, no fuss. I didn’t have the money either and my old top
kick, First Sergeant, Earl G. Spicer from Andalusia, Alabama was there and
kicked in the fare for the fines and I paid him back with payments after about
three months. He informed me on the way back to the base that the Army would
not be pursuing charges against me in a double jeopardy rap. James Baldwin had recorded well what Del
said that Alabama in those days was like being in another country.
After a few weeks
while we were playing our usual haunts, Mr. Blue comes around again and informs
the band that he has secured a great gig for us at some place in Gadsden,
Alabama not too far from Huntsville and we’re going to get twenty five dollars
per man, an unheard of sum in those days for a bar band in that area of the
country. We were excited. Imagine $25.00 per man. Let’s put this jail thing behind us and make
some music.
The "some
place" turned out to be “The Sportsman” and we had never heard of it. You know how people think it’s odd when a
recording artist can’t remember a recording they made in their career or an
actor that can’t remember a certain film they were in? Imagine how hard it
would be then for a road musician to remember all of the endless one nighter’s
that they’ve put in? To be honest about it, I’ve forgotten a great deal of the places that I’ve played in over the
years but The Sportsman sure ain’t one of ‘em! Besides we needed a change of
venue and that money was awfully tempting so we agreed to appear there the following
weekend. None of us realized then that almost forty years later, that those two
gigs are still one of the main topics at our get together sessions.