A Free Tutoring Service: Preparing For the Future
Oprah..Page 11
USAF Colonel Aubry McAlpine (Ret.) and Vice President of a leading Aerospace Company, is an example of will and determination! Aubry, at age 6 above, is already anticipating how he will become a USAF Colonel and a Vice-President. He is shown here in front of his Fairfield, Alabama home, doing what his father...and me, asked him to do. Notice the dusty, unpaved streets of this tiny "steel town" (back in the day). Aubry went to the all-Black Fairfield Industrial High School and then to Tuskegee Institute. His father and mother were somewhere near poverty level, but they still managed to send this gifted student off to college. Aubry gives back to his community by donating his time as a Tutor in the Free Tutoring Service, as well as make financial contributions. That is what it is all about: "Tutors teaching future Tutors!" The sign blocks out my little sister, Patricia, because it was ruined with time. Patricia also graduated from Tuskegee.
Isn't it amazing that a man, my extremely hard working father, only went to the second grade, yet managed to send several of his 7 children off to college? Freeman attended Tuskegee and I got a one- year scholarship for my "straight A efforts" (in all grade levels) middle and high school, to a local Black College (Miles Memorial..."straight A" there, too), and then it was off on my own to the University of Illinois at Chicago in Chemical Engineering......it was then a grand and glorious struggle for me to obtain as many units as I could! It was a most tortuous journey for an extremely poor student....and it still is! Thanks to my father for giving me an "undying will" to educate myself! He was completely exhausted, and sick with a lung problem from all of those hard years of breathing the smoke and fumes at the "steel mill" at my completion of my "free year" at Miles Memorable College in Birmingham and asked me......."Now what do you intend to do?" That meant a job at the local "steel mill" that I despised and detested, because it was the only place for Blacks to work! Jim Crow in full bloom.....you know!
Please read this story of my youth...... A History Lesson "The Scrap Iron and Rag Man of Fairfield."
By.... Cleophas Mike McAlpin...copyrighted
How were we supposed to know why the old man with the horse and wagon collected scrap iron and rags? Happy didn't know, and he was the oldest. Chock and Buster didn't know and I certainly didn't know, or care for that matter. I only cared about the few pennies I would make when I heard the familiar cry of "Scrap Iron and Rag Man!"
"Scrap iron and rag man!" was the call that sent all of the Fairfield, Alabama Black youth into a frenzy. Not even the stick horses with the perfect branch tails could hold our attention as we jumped off our neighing horses and scurried off in search of our stashes of treasure that would be offered to the old man with the wide brimmed hat, dark shades and a pair of blue overalls. Sometimes we even forgot to say, "Whoa horse, don't kick up so much dust", or we would forget to tie the horse to a peach tree or a "Chinaberry" tree or the banister of our front porches.
I never forgot to tie the long sleek stick to the tree out in our front yard. I was deathly afraid the horse would bolt and run away. He was nothing like the old horse of the Scrap Iron and rag man's. He was not dark brown or had blinders on his eyes and he never swiped his tail at the flies like the old horse with sores on his rump. He was nowhere as lazy as the Scrap Iron and Rag man's horse, either. My horse had come from one of the finest trees I could find. There were just the right amount of leaves on the tail to make sure that the dusty sixty first street would be made more dusty when I rode along its five or six blocks with the sounds of "Get up, horse" shattering the ears of the 6000 Black residents.
"Scrap Iron and Rag man!" was all the old Black gentleman said as he walked besides his horse with a stick in his hand. He seemed oblivious to the little boys who ran off frantically in search of a piece of metal or a piece of cloth that would earn them a penny or two. The old man just took the merchandise and inspected it for a few minutes before reaching into his pockets and coming out with a load of cash. He never paid any attention to the grimaces on our faces when we handed him five railroad spikes and got two pennies for the rusty pieces of iron. Heck, that was just enough to buy three oatmeal cookies from Mr. Claud's (Our resident Italian storeowner, and the only White man for miles around) store. I would have to go along the railroad tracks for another hour if I wanted to add a few jawbreakers to my goodie list.
"O.K. horse, you wait here. I'll be right back. Hide over here so that Buster can't see you. He stole my last horse, you know. Rode him until all of the leaves were gone from the tail. Oh, Oh, here comes the snotty nosed rascal, now."
"Hello there, Sam. Nice horse you got there. Ain't you going to leave him so that you can sell something to the Rag Man."
"Naw, Buster. I ain't got nothing to sell today."
Of course that was a lie, since I had saved a good amount of dirty rags and had a few soda pop tops in my pockets to boot.
"I'll watch the horse for you", said the crafty youngster of six. "I just sold all of my metal and got five cents. I'll give you a penny if you let me ride him for a few minutes."
I seriously thought about that proposition and unwillingly turned over my prized horse to the little boy who drove him so hard that all of the leaves left the tail when he jumped him over some of the ditches in the middle of sixty first street.
"Don't ride him too hard", I pleaded as I took the penny and stashed it away in torn jeans.
I had to make sure the pocket didn't have a hole, because many a penny had found its way into the dirt of sixty first street when I rode my horse along some of the large trenches. I saw the Scrap Iron and Rag man stoop to pick up a penny one day and I swear that had to be the one I lost.
"I know where there's some railroad ties," said Buster before mounting my horse. "Over by the street car line."
"Them ties are too far in the ground. I tried to dig up a few, but them ties are just too long."
"Not if you follow the tracks into Madison. Them kids down there don't know about them loose ties."
"You wait here, Buster. I think I hear the Rag man over on sixty second street. I think I just might have something to sell."
I avoided the sneaky eyes of Buster and went around to the coal box and pulled out a tiny bag of nails, soda pop tops and rags. I walked along the littered alleyway until I saw the Rag Man's old horse make the turn onto Avenue D and hurriedly caught up with him.
"What ya'll got there, boy?"
Those word shocked me because the old man with the long black beard rarely said anything. He only took my merchandise, inspected it for a few minutes and then put it on his scale. He never smiled and he never said a word. He just handed me what he thought the merchandise was worth.
"I gots a few nails and a towel my mamma threw away."
"Is you sure your mamma threw this towel away? It look new to me."
"Naw sir. She give it to me yesterday. Said the White lady where she work give it to her."
"Hmm. Where your mamma work, boy?"
"She works for Miss Whitaker down in the White section. She say Miss Whitaker a nurse. She gets them towels from a hospital."
"I bets them towels come from sick peoples, boy. You tell yo' mamma that I can't buy any more of these towels."
"Yes sir."
"I'm going to buy this one, though. You don't wipe with that towel, you hear."
"Yes sir."
"I ain't buying no more railroad ties from you boys, either. The 'lectric street car jumped the tracks down in Bessemer and they thinks you boys is the reason. They told me I could not buy any more ties from you boys."
"Who is they, sir?"
"Don't they teach you boys anything in dat element'ry school? Why, they's the White men down at the scrap iron and rag yard. They the men who buy this stuff from me."
"What do they do with it, sir?"
"They send the iron somewhere to make bombs, I think. I don't know what they do with the rags."
"I don't know what they do with the bombs", I said.
"Them bombs are loaded in planes and dropped on the Japanese."
"What's a Japanese?"
"They's the enemy over there. We fighting a war agin' them."
The old man wiped his brow and shook his head. He gave his old horse a friendly swat and continued his trek along the alleyways and narrow, unpaved streets of the little town near Birmingham, Alabama." Scrap iron and rag man...scrap iron and rag man" was all that he said as he moved slowly along his way.
I left the Scrap Iron and Rag man and was totally confused about everything he said. I didn't have the foggiest notion about a World War and an enemy. I only knew that I had to continue my relentless search for the pieces of metal and the pieces of rags that would end up on the large heap in the Rag Man's wagon.
Never in a million years could we have known of the devastation wreaked by the little morsels of iron! Never could we have realized that those innocent offerings were turned into bombs and grenades. Some poor soul on some distant battlefield could have had his head blown off by some of our metal.
I can see the bombs bursting all around and men screaming and hollering because of our oversight. I can see intercontinental ballistic missiles hurtling through the vastness of space and see men peering into radar screens for the blip, blip of a weapon of atomic destruction. And know that in some small way, I have contributed to this madness.
I will pray for forgiveness of my inconsideration and hope that somewhere in the midst of man's inhumanity to man, I will not hear the sounds emanating from the dark recesses of my past when I hear that old man's voice cry out... "Scrap Iron and Rag man! Scrap Iron and Rag Man!"
Cleophas McAlpin....February 22, 1995: Dedicated to a loving Brother, Aubry.
A copy to Marci Williams Volunteer Tutor and schoolteacher.....August 1999.