Thursday, January 23, 2014

We'll See You About 4:00, for Coffee

Lately, I have been remembering so many experiences from my childhood.  Most of the memories are concerning my preadolescent years, however a few of these bleed over into those later years of my youth.  Just as it is in my house now, if you lived in Edgewater Estates at 325 Eastview Drive, you used humor to deal with any and all of life’s situations.  Though on the exterior, my dad was perceived to be a quiet and reserved, tough man who was all business; the truth about my father is much to the contrary.  He was extremely bright, generous and was one of the most humorous people one would ever encounter.  He had a dry wit, more honed than that of a headlining comedian and with the patience of a big-game hunter; he would drop in a line at the most inopportune time for his quarry, and render the room speechless.  My mother, on the other hand, was inwardly and outwardly a gregarious, sharp-witted person who was always a ball to be around. Back in those years, people went to visit at other people’s homes.  I remember there was no exception to that at our house.  We had a formal living room with the coolest of 70’s décor, which opened right off a modest dining room.  A white sofa, dotted with a few throw pillows in earth tones on each armrest, faced the east where gold draperies hung behind a pair of green and gold striped straight-back chairs that sat on either side of the window.  A round occasional table from Merchiston Hall in Biloxi, decorated with nick-knacks from M&L Gifts in Edgewater Mall, sat between the chairs and was illuminated by a swag lamp that hung from the eight-foot tall ceiling on a gold chain. 

These rooms were mainly used when out of town family or guests came for meals or the holidays.  Sometimes, Mom would entertain there, but that was reserved for occasions like the Garden Club, Junior Auxiliary, or special parties she was asked to host.  Before Dad added on to our house in 1977, there was a small den that opened onto the back patio with a sliding glass door (yuk!) to the west and an eat-in kitchen to the north.  The 70’s theme of earth tones and dark paneling were ever present in this small but homey room.  “Mom’s chair” was an orange clothed wingback recliner, in which I can guarantee my mother never reclined.  “Dad’s chair” was an oversized-for–the-time, trendy brown Naugahyde armchair complete with matching ottoman.  Greens, golds, beiges and orange were present throughout the décor; as pillows, draperies, pictures and carpet were a testament to the style and color palette of the decade.  As Dad was a smoker until December 17, 1984, as were many men and women in the 70’s, ornate ashtrays of either colored glass or heavy brass were resident on each end and coffee table in the room.  This was the room where we spent most of our time as a family and also the room where the close friends would come to be entertained by the linguistic antics of my mom and her friends and the dry witted, deep commentary of my father and the other husbands. 

On most weekdays in the afternoons, people would come to our house for coffee and conversation.  In the early years, most times it was married couples with kids that lived in the neighborhood; Ralph and Marilyn Story, Bobby and Joann O’Barr, Pat and Virginia Thompson or Gerald and Brenda Stewart.   These couples were all about the same age as my parents and though my parents were older when they had children, many of these couples had younger kids that were roughly the same ages as my brother Charles and me.  While all of these people were considered to be in the upper middle class, none of the people in this crowd shared the same profession.  Of these five couples, including my parents, only the husbands worked.  Most of the men either owned businesses or worked for themselves; the only exception was Gerald Stewart.  He was a banking executive, originally from Magee, MS, with Hancock Bank in downtown Gulfport.  Mr. O’barr was an attorney in Biloxi and was a partner in a law firm on Howard Avenue.  Mr. Thompson was a real estate broker and developed many of the neighborhoods in West Biloxi.  Mr. Story and my father were both entrepreneurs who owned a few small businesses and worked just as hard on being doting husbands and fathers.  Not that these other men were not, but in their off time, my father and Mr. Story were always accompanied by their wives and many times in the case of my father, at least one child.  After the addition to our home, Dad closed in the front garage on our house and made a much bigger, much brighter den. 

At about this same time, as some of the original coffee crowd had moved out of the neighborhood or circumstances in family dynamics had changed, new people had moved into the neighborhood and into the menagerie of people who would come to visit.  One of these couples was Ron and Sue Durbin, whose son Todd and I had been friends since attending St. Paul’s kindergarten in Ocean Springs.   Ron, from Ocean Springs, owned Durbin’s TV and appliances in Gulfport.  It was on the north side of Pass Road, about a half-mile from Courthouse Road. Even though Todd was my same age, Ron and Sue, who I had always known as Ms. Carol, were younger than my parents and I remember Dad and Mom both commenting on how young and beautiful Ms. Durbin was.  One of the most entertaining and colorful couples that were neighbors and friends of my parents, were Ed and Betty McCormick.  They had moved in about this time from Texas, as I remember it.  Ed was from Alabama originally and Betty was from California.  I remember Ed being one of the funniest people I had ever met.  He spun hysterical yarns and told tales of his exploits that were the stuff of legends.  He was an entrepreneur, investor and a gambler.  His wife Betty was reminiscent of how you expected women of Hollywood lore to be in real life.  She was always fashionably dressed in the finest of clothes and jewelry and had a very unassuming and sweet demeanor.  She always drove a two-door Cadillac and her children, a daughter Toni and her son Darrin, were much of the focus where Mrs. McCormick spent her time.


The afternoon visits by these magnificent people to my childhood home were routine and Charles and I would often get to hear juicy bits of the grown-up conversation as we skulked about the front of the house.  As we were the products of over protective parents, we grew up during those years because many of the items we gathered from their conversations at the time, which nowadays are considered as commonplace as breathing air, were at that time considered scandalous.  We found out about the orthopedic surgeons wife who came home early and found her husband at home with his nurse; then proceeded to redecorate the headboard and canopy of the bed with an electric chainsaw.  We learned of the family whose father was involved in organized crime and was responsible for tons of pot being brought in to the coast on shrimp boats.  We even found out that two of the most uptight and religious women in our neighborhood, unbeknownst to their husbands, were secretly having an affair with one another and used being Sunday school teachers as a cover for their tryst.  Now all of the conversation wasn’t nearly as tawdry and revealing as this; in fact it was quite tame.  But back in the 1970’s, in a little neighborhood on a golf course off Pass Road in West Biloxi, along with comical stories about these intriguing characters who came to our house and the adventures of their families; the tales of gaming, bootlegging, and other illegal activities that became public headlines in the news of the 1980’s and 1990’s, had been quietly circulating about in conversations over coffee, in a three bedroom house on Monday’s thru Friday’s, at about 4:00 in the afternoon, for years.

1 comment:

  1. I remember that color palette very well. All those wonderful fall colors. It should not be considered any comment on the happiness of my youth, however, when I say that neither brown nor harvest gold nor any non-produce-related avocado will ever cross my threshold. I was looking at a house the other day that must have last been remodeled in the 70s ~ all avocado appliances. Gave me a chill.

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