Mr Joe

Pop-pop Joe was the local number man. I remember getting excited everyday as he would answer the phone at noon, three, and six for each number as it came out.  I remember that we used to go collecting the money twice a day too.  

Everybody called my Pop-pop Mr Joe.  They never called me by my name.  I was Mr Joe's Lil Girl.  None of us kids could understand because Mr Joe was black and I was anything but black.  But it was what it was, and local culture said to just deal with reality.  That was back when neighbors stuck together around Jewtown.  It really was a tight knit community. 

Mr Joe also worked in a box factory and would bring us home boxes to make clubhouses with.  He'd bring his bicycle tools on the front step and get all of our bikes out.  Then he'd fix everybody's bicycle problems while he was out there watching us and talking to his friends.  One of them was a white man by the name of Mr Max.  He looked like a hood version of Santa Claus, so he would convince all the local kids that you'd never know who Jesus was walking down the street, but He's always watching you.  Santa too, checks his list twice. We never quite knew what to make of him, so until we were old enough to bust his lies, we were careful around Mr Max.  Personally, I wondered about him and how he came to love pigeons so much.

Mr Joe was a kind and quiet man. He had a gentle spirit that could soothe almost anybody. He cared for everybody and people respected him for that.  But he was also the controversial and lone black man on the white side of a racially divided family.  It never bothered me much when we were with the black side of the family because we kids really didn't understand the racial issues yet anyway.  We used to ask each other lots of questions about the other color.  What I found to be the most weird was how we used to compare households and I found out that ours was just completely different. I couldn't pinpoint how.  Years later, I would call that the infusion of several different cultures on a limited resource level.  This meant that we didn't know enough of any one culture to really do much, so my family would fuse a party into an Irish Southern Black Luau that served Korean food and featured a "China Doll" for entertainment.  That was always me because I can pass for any race.  But we weren't taught anything about that because they didn't know what to teach us, other than to hide our identities like the Jews.  We were always pushed to mingle whiter and preppier as well.  This was the only kind of people who were accepted into society.  No more questions, just follow protocol.  We could only be ourselves behind closed doors and that was a lot to keep up with.

Our home was very loving and open to others.  As time goes on, I will add to this one, but for now, thanks for getting to know Mr Joe.