5 - Deep South Drama At Aberdeen Lake

Summertime at the lake 1953 (Moore County Historical Association)

  
 

     Looking back, there was something vaguely idyllic about growing up in a sleepy southern town in the post-war years,  but life was easy for only some of us.  There was a distinctly darker side for others living in Aberdeen.

      This is a  story about our one-time police chief,  his teenage daughter,  a young black man, and the Aberdeen Lake.   The names have been changed, but the story is only too real.

      As for Chief Pringle, picture Rod Steiger in the movie "In The Heat Of The Night."  Then just take my word for it, the Aberdeen character was a whole lot worse.   He was fat, loud, rough and roundly feared and hated in the black community.   He had any number of children, but Peggy Ann was his favorite, at least until she started growing up and showing signs of independence.

      The Aberdeen Lake was municipal property, and like much of the town, it was then  reserved for "whites only."   It sat on a well kept lot with bathhouse and refreshment center, a jukebox and dance floor popular in the evenings with several generations of jiving and bopping teenagers.  It then stretched north by  the all-black community of Broadway, but by that point there was no longer a beach nor easy access to the water.

      Peggy Ann was not an especially attractive girl, just kind of average.   She lived in a house in the middle of town just about where the Aberdeen creek turns into the lake.  The young black man (whose name I never knew, but let's call him Cary) lived a half mile away in Broadway.

      All of what really happened, no one really knows today.  What is fairly certain is that in some measure Peggy Ann and Cary knew each other, perhaps only by sight.   Whenever the black man went into town, he would have inevitably passed by the police chief's house.  It had a big porch with swing, and he probably saw Peggy Ann there.  They just might have exchanged words at some point.

      One day, Cary slipped a written message to Peggy Ann.  It proposed a rendezvous the following evening somewhere around the Aberdeen Lake.

      Did Chief Pringle discover the note by accident?  Did Peggy Ann voluntarily show it to him?   This was always a little hazy.  The official story was that Peggy Ann --appalled at the proposal-- turned it immediately over to her father.

      The rest was not pretty.  Cary was at the designated place, but instead of Peggy Ann, he was met by a contingent of local law enforcers.  He  was arrested and put in jail.  Even in those days when interracial courtship would have been more or less illegal, it was never clear precisely what law had been broken.  He appeared in the Aberdeen court where he was found guilty of whatever crime and incarcerated.  

      He was sent to prison, or more likely to some sort of work farm, for a sentence of a year or less, then released with the obligation to leave the area.   I never knew what kind of life he might have found elsewhere, though it takes little imagination to understand that his future would have been mightily compromised.

      I remember that a number of the kids, my age and a little older, were aware of and disturbed  by what we saw as such a blatant injustice; but no one to my knowledge went so far as to voice any kind of official protest.  

     Whatever one may have thought of Peggy Ann, she was almost certainly one of the victims here.   I cringe to imagine her relationship with her father, either before or after the incident.  The week Cary had been "banished" from Aberdeen, she came into Bryan's Drug Store where many of the young people congregated after school.  It was always noisy there, but a hush fell over the soda bar when she entered that afternoon.

     I remember her speaking, either to me or to someone right next to me:  "I know they are all saying that I led him on," she said.   That is all I remember.   

     Chief Pringle did find his comeuppance, of sorts.  I think he must have crossed the line once too often, because he was suddenly and somewhat mysteriously removed from office about a year later.  He left virtually overnight with his family.  They moved to South Carolina or Georgia, and as far as I know, none of them were ever heard from again.   

   

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

4 - RENATA

I have no photos of Renata, but who knows,

 this one just might come close ... back in the day

       As a young woman in her first teaching job, my aunt Ruth lived in a teacherage* with Renata.   They were the very closest of friends, and even after Ruth married her first husband, she and Renata --who stayed single into her thirties-- remained inseparable.

      Whether it was with her niece (my mother) or her daughter or just her friends, Ruth felt a kind of lifelong mission to help steer them all toward a better and more financially secure life.   She was a staunch proponent of  a good education opening doors, but not unlike Dolly Levi from Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker" (and later "Hello Dolly"), she also saw this path best realized via what was often referred to as a good catch.  In other words, a rich husband.

      With my mother, Ruth's efforts had come to no avail.   She was considerably more successful, however, with her friend Renata.

      Leon Fairchild was a middle-aged bachelor who had grown up with his older brother in Aberdeen.   Neither sibling had much of a personality, but they had a distinct talent for making money.   For a start, they had the foresight to obtain an early franchise to bottle and distribute Coca-Cola.   Once having sewn up the local soft drink monopoly, which was then a considerable and never-ending pot of gold, both brothers launched out into some serious real estate investments, the most notable being the development of an entire village of at least 100 low-cost dwellings destined to house employees of an important textile factory which located in Aberdeen after the Second World War.

      Ruth had acquainted herself with Leon at a social gathering in Aberdeen in 1932, and newly married, herself, she saw possibilities for Renata.   My aunt was very much a take-charge lady, and she wasted no time arranging the first meeting with Leon and Renata; and almost before you knew it, the deal had been sealed.   

     Never considered a real beauty, Renata was nevertheless a handsome woman with a vivacious personality, and despite a considerable age difference and little in common, she became Mrs. Leon Fairchild after only a few months' courtship.   In no time at all she resigned her teaching post, built a fine home in Southern Pines not far from Ruth, and little by little metamorphosed herself into the archetypical Grand-Lady-of-the-town!

      As a child I thought she resembled the Duchess of Windsor.  They looked a little alike, both were from humble albeit respectable back grounds, and both went more than a little over the top with their new-found social status.   She swiftly acquired what many, including my aunt Ruth, would have called "airs", and she proceeded to discard most things which reminded her too much of her previous life.

     Among those discarded was my Aunt Ruth.   At least that was the way Ruth remembered it.  Ruth could be demanding, however, and no one ever knew exactly what happened.  The fact was that for the next 40 years their friendship was definitively broken, and by the time I was growing up I never dreamed that they had ever even known each other.

      After only a few years marriage, Renata found herself an extremely wealthy widow, and she remained thus for the rest of a long life. She outlived Ruth by more than a decade.

     I ran into her once when I was visiting the family around 1980.   Mother re-introduced us, and explained that I lived in France.  By this time Renata had become so grand that she seemed absurdly unreal.  "Yes, France, such a lovely country," she said.  "The grandchildren all go there to finishing school, of course, there or in Switzerland ..."   No literary license here, I specifically recall the "of course" and just how foolish  she sounded.

Ruth 1930's

    When Ruth died a few years later, my mother was alone waiting to greet visitors at the funeral home when she saw the black Chrysler arrive.  Renata emerged, holding herself straight as an arrow despite her 80-plus years.

     When she saw Mother, she started to offer a rather stilted and formal condolence.  Then suddenly she paused, and it was as though she had reverted to a different person ... the Renata of the depression years who would pop by the house every day to see her best friend, the days when my mother was a teenager living with her aunt.  How Ruth would have savored the scene!

     They put their arms around each other,  then, unexpectedly, Renata burst into tears.  Her voice changed and all the affectation seemed to disappear.   She was just an elderly woman, overcome with grief ... and perhaps guilt.

      "Oh, my darling Jeanne," she sobbed.  "I have never forgotten what she did.  She made it all possible, you know.   It was Ruth who found my Leon for me!"

________

*Teacherage : that was a word that everyone used to know back in Aberdeen.  It seems to have just about disappeared today, as I suppose there are no longer any boarding houses for teachers in existence. 

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Aunt Ruth is also featured in  "Thanksgiving, Ruth and Dickie" from Hotel Musings No. 49; Mother is featured in "A Christmas Gift ... or the Little Red Lamp", Hotel Musings No. 51.  Renata is also mentioned in "Hazeline and Josephine" from Musings and Meanderings No. 8  (to access, click on highlighted titles).

3 - Mademoiselle Laslier and Arielle ... Parallel Lives

Arielle circa 1990

         The rich and the poor cohabit differently in Paris than in most American cities.    The average neighborhood is often fairly evenly populated with residents of variable economic and educational levels.  That is, within the same block, you might find a family of immense wealth, then a few doors down the street another household living in relative poverty.   In fact, such diversity  might well be found within the same apartment building, and as a general rule it doesn't bother anyone.

     Parisians, unlike their New York counterparts, are fairly indifferent to who chooses to live across the street, just as long as they behave themselves and keep the noise down.  That does not mean that people are any less discriminating in Paris than anywhere else, they just go about it differently.

     This is the story of two women of my acquaintance, both born on my street in 1926.  Arielle and Mademoiselle Laslier.

      The former was the mother of one of my best friends, and she lived a few houses up the street.  She was born there, as was her mother.  It was her grandmother who had bought the entire six-floor building around the turn of the 20th Century.

     As for the latter (whose first name I never knew), she was born in my apartment building a few flights up.  Her father had been a respectable illustrator of religious books, but he  made just enough to make ends meet.  A fluke of politics and history at the end of the 1930's gave him the opportunity to acquire the property he had hitherto rented, so Mlle Laslier never left her family apartment.  Neither did she ever have installed a modern bath or shower, and she made do with a toilet in a closet on the landing (hence the term "water closet").  

     As surprising as it sounds, a big majority of Parisians were without private toilet or bath long after World War II ended, and when I arrived 45 years ago, there were still many, many apartments (including my own) with only the bare hygienic minimum.*

     Mlle Laslier never married (indeed, I can hardly imagine her ever having so much as a gentleman caller).  She always seemed like a very old lady to me, although she was under 60 when I arrived in the neighborhood.  She had worked for awhile as a helper at a childcare center, but was retired when I met her.   Like her father, she enjoyed drawing, and passed her hours away doing watercolors of flowers and children, which few found of any particular merit; but friends and neighbors sometimes made a token purchase.

     Her real passion was the church, and never was there a more devout churchgoer.   She went every day, sang in the choir, served soup to the poor, and visited the elderly.  I sometimes found her piousness a bit tedious, as she did tend to recount with relish all of the good deeds she had accomplished.

* * * * *

     Arielle on the other hand was of another world.   I would never have known her except through her daughter, who brought her mother to an exhibit when I started the art business; and Arielle became one of my most loyal clients --probably disappointing her numerous children and grandchildren when she would fill her entire Christmas gift list with little drawings purchased from me.  

     She was an extremely elegant woman, an understated, impeccable dresser, and her home reflected the same elegance.  When I had known her for only a few months, she telephoned to invite me for coffee one Sunday afternoon.    She said she was in the process of re-doing her living room, wanted to rearrange her paintings, and would love for me to show her how to do it in what she described as my "more creative manner."

     I have probably never been so flattered.  We became friends after that.  

     Arielle was a champion bridge player, and when I took up the game, she would occasionally play with me in tournaments, despite being in a totally different league.   She was known all over Paris as an exceptional player, and I was always immensely proud to enter a club with her as my partner.

     She had been diagnosed with an early Parkinsons, and after I left UNESCO, when the disease had begun to take its toll, I spent more and more afternoons with her at a neighborhood bridge club.

 * * * * *

     So Arielle and Mlle Laslier were born, spent their childhood, in fact lived their entire lives just a few doors apart.  They had at some point gone to the same primary school, attended the same church, albeit a very large one.   They had queued for their croissants at the same bakers,  perhaps even danced in the same street when the Americans liberated Paris in 1945. 

     As old women they had gone to the same pharmacies, maybe even consulted some of the same neighorhood doctors.   But.    Neither was ever aware of the other's existence.  I am sure of this because I knew them both well, and I asked them.  One day I was walking in the street with Arielle when I saw Mlle Laslier approaching.  I asked Arielle, and she confirmed that she had never seen her before in all her life!

     Last year, at 87, they  died within a few months of each other.   I attended both funerals at the local Eglise de la Trinité.  One was full to capacity, the other had only a few attendees, mostly from our building.

     .... And never the twain shall meet.

 *In 1962, only 29% of French households possessed a private bath or shower (source:  Europe 1).

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

 Arielle is also featured in "Introducing Monsieur Gerard" Musings and Meanderings No. 7  (to access, click on highlighted title).

2 - Stanley and Frances ... or the Guardian Angel

Stanley and Frances circa 1956

     Mother and Daddy had a sort of guardian angel, a close family friend and neighbor who had a special affection for them both and always had their interests at heart.

     Stanley Hartly was a charming, fun loving gentleman of some fortune.  He was a generation older than my parents, and he always seemed extremely sophisticated to me.  I thought he looked just like the white-headed bon-vivant on the masthead of The New Yorker magazine.

     He once gave me his hand-me-down camel hair overcoat for which he had reportedly paid 100 dollars in 1939.  That was a big amount back then, and it still sounded like a fortune when I inherited the coat in the 1950's.   I cannot remember what finally happened to it, but I was still wearing it the early years in Paris.

     Sixteen years separated my father from his oldest brother, and it was perhaps for that reason that they never seemed to have much in common or any special affection for one other.   Linwood first worked in Virginia with a large company which mined sand and gravel.  When Daddy finished high school he joined his brother in Richmond where he worked for several years before World War II called him away.

        As for Stanley, he had his house on a large plot on the outskirts of town, and when my father came back from the war, he proposed turning over some of his land so that our family could build and become his neighbors.

     He didn't stop there.  He aspired to a better future for my father than working for the sand company in Richmond, and he eventually talked my dad and his brother into leaving their jobs, and bringing their sand business know-how to Aberdeen.

     The time was ripe, there was a lot of building all over the country after the war, and Stanley proposed putting up the money --all of it-- to create the company.   This became Pleasants Sand & Supply, and it turned out to be a decent investment with some fairly prosperous years for the company in the 1950's.  As I said, Stanley was the silent partner, did all the financing, and few outside of the family ever knew of his connection.  My father and his brother were the working partners and official owners.

     The story takes a little detour here.  I hadn't mentioned there was someone else involved in all this.  My Aunt Frances.  It wasn't common knowledge, but she was even better friends with Stanley.   It was always kind of complicated, because both had responsibilities at home.  Stanley had an invalid wife, at least in the early years.  And Frances?  Well, as the only single sibling of six brothers and sisters, she felt an unnecessarily important responsibility to her parents.  And then, later, there was Rose (see Goodbye Rose).   Tennessee Williams would have felt right at home.

     So, Frances became another silent partner.  Stanley gave her 25% of the business.  It was just a gift, and quite a godsend it was, as all she had to do was cash her dividends.  Frances certainly did nothing wrong; but it  nearly drove my parents crazy as the decades passed by and she continued to pocket the money.

     Mother thought Frances should have at some point renounced her quarter interest, but only an idiot would have contemplated such a move.  Frances was not much of a businesswoman, but she certainly was no idiot.

     She could be, however, indelicate.  She tended to spend her money lavishly, and when there was none left, she continued to spend it anyway.  There were times when my parents were trying to budget for the running of a family of five, when things might have been a little tight.  It was inevitably at a time like this that Frances would appear, asking if Daddy couldn't release the quarterly dividends a few weeks early ... as she was a little low on funds that season.

     It didn't help that the parents saw Frances as a bit of a snob, and Mother especially could be allergic to some of her "ways".

     Frances had a soft spoken, polished manner of speaking, for instance, which Mother perceived as affected.

     "Why can't she just say 'thank-you' like everyone else," I remember Mother complaining.  "Why must she always say, 'thank you SOOO much'?"

     The story doesn't really have an ending.  The four of them continued to enjoy each other's company all their lives, despite the friction that Frances sometimes generated.   Stanley became a widower in the mid-50's, but as far as I know there was never any serious talk of re-marriage.   He saw Frances periodically over the years, often with Mother and Daddy,  when he would invite them all out for the evening to a place called Hernando's Hideaway in a neighboring county.   Or sometimes for a weekend on the coast.

     Stanley died in 1975, not quite 30 years after the company had been created.  He left my father his part of the "sand pits", after which Daddy bought out the shares of Linwood and Frances.

With Frances, Versailles 1986

  
     Not too long before her death, Frances visited with me in Paris.  We always had a special relationship and were still close in our way.  I can't remember what provoked my question, but I recall asking her if Stanley had been the love of her life.  (She was a particularly discreet person.  I would like to have asked other intimate questions, but I wouldn't have dared, and at any rate I would have never received a straight answer.)

     "Such an impertinent question!" she said.  There was a harshness in the words, but she was smiling, and I am certain that my curiosity somehow pleased her.  "It was all such a long time ago, you understand ... and much too private."



Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

 Frances is also featured in "Goodbye Rose," Hotel Musings No. 61; and in "A Two-Dollar Hamburger Under a Silvery Dome," Hotel Musings No. 4  (to access, click on highlighted titles).

1 - Doctor Bowen and Janette

Doctor Bowen, Christmas 1973

      Doctor Bowen was the archetype of a country doctor: he was chubby, somewhat unkempt, and he seemed to perpetually have a wet, half-smoked cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  His bedside manner did not always include an excess of tact, and over the years he had his share of detractors as well as staunch defenders.  I never remember him having any kind of secretary, and his office was consequentially a mess, stacked almost to the ceiling with years' subscriptions of detective magazines and old medical journals.

      Janette was the daughter of Aunt Zadie, my paternal grandfather's sister.   Zadie and Janette and sister Louise and their brother Ralph (see Aberdeen Hotel musing) and their extended families all lived in particularly close proximity in various houses on the same block around Aberdeen's Main Street.   Janette was the only one of the Leach family who never married, and thereby lies the tale.

      Doctor Bowen had done part of his residency at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he had roomed with a Sandhills native.   When Moore County Hospital was completed in Pinehurst in 1929, his ex-roommate enticed him into joining the team as a resident surgeon.   He subsequently found himself one afternoon  at the Pinehurst Country Club in the offices of a certain Mr. Nelson, one of the village's millionaire movers and shakers, seeking advice about an appropriate place to live.    He had begun his employment living in the hospital, a situation he quickly tired of as he felt it too close to work to maintain any kind of decent privacy.

       It so happened that Janette worked as secretary to Nelson.   These were the early years of the Depression, her family had recently given up the Aberdeen Hotel, and she volunteered that her mother would be agreeable to rent a room in the family home in nearby Aberdeen where the new doctor could find a certain anonymity several miles away from the hospital.

      Doctor B. thus discovered both the Leach family and Aberdeen where he soon set up a private practice which he maintained for the rest of his life.

      I do not know if Janette and Doctor B. were already friends before he arrived in Aberdeen.   I suspect not, as the rather draconian rules of propriety prevalent in little Southern towns of the day would have certainly discouraged the bringing of a boyfriend into the bosom of the family, as it were.  Still, at whatever stage their friendship blossomed into something more, it appears in hindsight surprising that townspeople never seemed to raise the slightest eyebrow.

      After a respectable number of months living with Janette and her family,  Doctor Bowen purchased a handsome diamond ring and popped the eternal question.

Janette ... once a little girl

     Janette was a pleasant enough looking young woman, and she had not yet reached an age to be thought of as an old maid.   So it  probably never occurred to her that she had better waste no time in getting herself to the altar.  She was undoubtedly delighted with the ring, but proposed speaking with her mother before making any official decision.  There is no record of Doctor Bowen's response, other than that he acquiesced to await the family verdict.

      Aunt Zadie was of another era.   She had some doubts that the young doctor's financial means would quite come up to her expectations, and she counseled that it might be in everyone's interest to slow down, to wait another year or so before taking the final plunge.   Janette rather obliviously reported back that she was pleased to be engaged, but that she and her mother felt it best to put off making any hasty, precise marriage arrangements.

      Doctor Bowen, who had been exceedingly patient up until this point, reflected briefly on the turn of events, then retorted : "So be it.  Wear the ring as long as it pleases you, we will be engaged, if that is your wish. But make no mistake about it, it will be a cold day in hell before I ever ask you to marry me again!"

      There was of course no cold day in hell, he didn't, and they didn't!

      From that day on, Doctor B. and Aunt Zadie maintained an at-best polite, often frosty cohabitation.  He nevertheless did become a permanent fixture within the household.  By the time I came along (he delivered me, as he did my twin brothers) I never questioned why he was there or quite how he fit into the family.     

     The Leaches changed houses a couple of times over the years, always in the same neighborhood, and Doctor Bowen made the move along with the rest of them.   In later years, he bought the neighboring house of Ralph (who moved with his family a few doors down), but never lived there.  It just sat empty until he decided a few years later to rent it seasonally to a Danish sea captain.

      Little Polly was Ralph's daughter and Zadie's grand daughter.   Her family lived next door, and as a child she would regale me with tales of Doctor B's eccentric behavior.  She used to laugh about watching him pace back and forth in his room clad only in  boxer shorts, with the ever-present cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  But most memorable for us children was the fact that he always seemed to be counting a seemingly inexhaustible wad of paper money which he would then stash  in boxes and drawers around the house.

      (My grandmother's family had owned the local bank which in 1934 –along with many depression-hit monetary institutions across the country-- closed its doors, never to reopen; and to the best of my knowledge no client's money was ever recuperated.    So it was hardly surprising that those with a steady income like Doctor Bowen in the 1930's would harbor a lifelong suspicion of banks.)

      By the time he died some 40 years later,  nothing had basically changed. Janette never removed her engagement ring, though in later life she would voice to family members her humiliation in wearing it throughout the decades, and she once confided that she felt the need to turn the gem side inwards when they occasionally traveled out of town together.

      At the end of his life Doctor Bowen had only one remaining relation, a nephew to whom he intended to leave a modest bequest.   However, in the days following the funeral, no will had been located, and Janette saw fate just about to deal her yet another slap in the face.

      My main source for this part of the family history is Little Polly.   In her recounting, pieced together over the years, the surviving nephew from South Carolina was virtually in the driveway waiting to claim the inheritance while Ralph ordered the house turned top to bottom until the will could be located.  Janette had seen the artisanal document being written, and the family knew it had to be there somewhere amidst the piles of memorabilia and boxes full of cash and general rubbish.   Rugs and carpets were pulled up, mattresses up-heaved.   Janette, who in later years had developed a penchant for bourbon, was in a state of both grief and confusion, but her brother was fully in charge and determined to protect his sister's (and by extension the rest of the family's) interests.

     The will was ultimately located, inexplicably hidden under someone else's mattress, and Janette was declared  beneficiary of the considerable estate.   A lifetime of unfulfilled dreams of a certain officialization of her situation was finally realized, even though it was too late coming and undoubtedly offered her little satisfaction.

TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY ...

     

Doctor Bowen at his office circa 1955

    My mother never dared ask other family members if they were billed for his services, for fear of calling attention to the fact that we were not.

     For whatever reason, he never charged us for a lifetime of medical attention.  Mother would periodically go into a kind of heavy anxiety, fearing he was going to wake up and send us a bill.   That he or his survivors might one day present an invoice for all the years of office visits, house calls and various operations (Doctor Bowen was considered an exceptional surgeon) for our family of five !

     In those days it was just another example of living in a small southern town where intertwining family ties created privileged codes of behavior.   Like many things growing up in Aberdeen, they were thought best left unspoken.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Doctor Bowen is also mentioned in "Linwood and Doris" from Musings and Meanderings No. 14 and in "A Date With Dephie" from Musings and Meanderings No. 17; Aunt Zadie and the Leach family are also featured in  "Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run" from Hotel Musings No. 26; Little Polly is mentioned in "The Caldwells Come To Paris", Hotel Musings No. 57  (to access, click on highlighted titles).