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.
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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