Devotional by Carter Wheelock
When I was nine years old, the Depression was in full swing and my family had fallen into relative poverty like most other people. An uncle of mine was an expert machinist, and he invented a new kind of automobile jack that he wanted to manufacture and market. For some reason Kansas City, Missouri, was the place to do it. He and my father went off to K.C. to set things in motion, leaving me, my mother, and my sister to be transported there by two of my father's distant cousins, who were investing money in the venture. One was named Clarence and the other Russ, and Russ brought along his wife Mira and their three-year-old adopted daughter Jane Anne. There were seven of us crowded into one car. A trip of that length in those days was slow and boring, and it took ingenuity to stay entertained.
Clarence and Russ knew how to do it. They were old buddies, a couple of overgrown boys, products of the Roaring Twenties, quite familiar with bathtub brew, and they didn't seem to take anything too seriously. A typical activity on the trip was this: when we overtook and passed another car, Clarence or Russ--whichever one was on the passenger side--would lean out the window, point excitedly at the front wheel of the other car, and yell something like "Hi, neighbor; hope you have a good trip." As we sped on down the road, the driver of the other car would always stop and get out to see what was wrong with his wheel.
Once we did that to a fellow driving a big, new car--a Packard, I think--looking proud and sassy. When we stopped down the road at the only roadside cafe for miles around, we knew that the sassy guy would do the same in about 30 minutes. So Russ engaged the cafe's proprietor in conversation and told him about a smart aleck we saw in a big Packard who was amusing himself by pointing at cars and telling them, falsely, that there was something wrong. He asked the proprietor, "What would you do with a guy like that?" The proprietor said, "If I see him I will probably shoot him." Then we drove on. That kind of thing kept the trip from being too boring.
I don't know what made Russ and Clarence and Mira enjoy pulling strangers' legs, as if life were one big practical joke, but I can say that their satirical view of life and society had its virtuous side. Bear in mind that what follows happened in Oklahoma in the middle 1930's. Russ and Mira were childless until they adopted Jane Anne as a baby three years before. I don't know whether they knew she was black or not, but as she got older it was obvious. She was a beautiful little girl with dark-olive skin, slightly kinky hair, and big black eyes. Once when we stopped at a roadside restaurant, we all went in for a quick supper and left Mira in the car because she was sleepy.
We all sat down at the counter, and you could feel the dozens of eyes staring at us as we sat there with a little black girl. The sign on the door said "Whites Only." The waitress kept coming close to Jane Anne to look at her, and then at Russ. Finally she couldn't contain her curiosity and said to him, "Is this your little girl?" Yes, said Russ. "Where's her mother?" said the waitress. Out there in the car, said Russ. The waitress wandered over to the window and looked out, but she couldn't see anything in the semi-darkness. As we paid the check and were leaving, she came right out with it: "I want to see that girl's mother." Russ took her by the arm and marched her to the car and said, "Look in." She saw Mira sitting there, whiter than a new cotton sheet, and said, "Are you this child's mother?" Mira said, "I sure am. Is there a problem?" The waitress hesitated, looked embarrassed, and said, "She sure is a pretty child." Mira sat there smiling like the Mona Lisa and said, "I know." Russ and Mira and Clarence didn't take life very seriously--or did they?
Jane Anne grew up to be a beautiful woman, married a medical doctor, and had a fine family. As for the manufacturing enterprise in Kansas City, it fizzled out, and within a year we were back on the road to Texas, still laughing and having fun.