The lesson I learn from her experience is that hope and common cause within a society are very powerful forces in the lives of the children of that society.  We can all take heart that if we make the current and approaching hard times a reason to work together, our children might benefit more than financially.

Mama's neighborhood in the 1940s was such a haven for kids that they actually had a reunion 60 years later, just to celebrate what a wonderful world it had been.  She wrote the following on that occasion and I am posting it here unedited.

My Life

by Sarahann Seymour Wilkinson

Growing up on Eighth Terrace   

    When my Dad sought advice about the best school district in Birmingham, Alabama he talked with the City School Superintendent who was a customer at his business.  Told that there was an excellent grammar school named Minnie Holman in the part of  Birmingham called Woodlawn Highlands, Daddy and Mama chose a house on Eighth Terrace and we moved from the west side of Birmingham to the east side - worlds removed from what was familiar in my life.

4925 Eight Terrace South, Birmingham, Alabama

    I became 6 years old at 4925 Eighth Terrace South and not only would I begin my education in one of the best schools in the city, I began a childhood of unbelievable joy and defining experiences.  This was a neighborhood straight out of central casting.  One found only in fiction, and if I had no fellow yea-sayers to testify on my behalf, it would not be possible for me to tell my stories without being taunted with “liar, liar, pants on fire”

   Forty-ninth street began at 5th Avenue South, passed 6th Avenue and at 7th Avenue turning at the usual 45 degree angle, continued on to become 8th Terrace. We had several honorary 8thTerries  At the corner of 7th Avenue and 8th Terrace, facing the Avenue was the Cato family - Lewis and Johnnie parents of Betty Louise (known to us a Boopy) and Virginia who we called Ginny. Even thought their address was 4900 7th Avenue South, they were officially  8th Terries, as was the family next door to them.  This was the Oliver family at 4902.  There were 2 girls, 2 boys and the parents Julia and Robert, given the divine honor of being known as 8th Terries, for the most part because of the parents friendship with ours.  The first son and the 2 daughters were not only older than me, they were Catholics and the children attended parochial school.  I always had just a speck of jealousy for their opportunity to go to that special place in those special clothes.  It seemed so ritzy to me and I wanted desperately to be included.  Alas, I was a Methodist and my chance of going to school with them was next to nil.

     One of the questions that has been asked is who was my  best playmate.  What a silly question!! On which day? There were Jacque days, Gay days, Martha Gene days, Dian and Patsy days, and on and on until you have reached the end of the street.  This is a very long list because the end of the street was at least the length of 5 city blocks.  Most of our days were not one on one days, but group days spent wandering from yard to yard, house to house, being fed and watered as we went.  One of us might drop out and another would join, someone would get sassy and be disciplined on the spot and often when an argument began it would be sorted out and someone would be spanked by the mother in whose territory the offence was committed  We flowed like a grazing flock of sheep allowed to drift in our world with unseen eyes following us, protecting us without imposing on us.  We were as free as it is possible to be and still belong to a given address.

   Our 5 blocks was a dead end street except for a very short gravel lane that lead up to 7th Court.  Eighth terrace children trooped up the sidewalk, gathering from house to house into small packs of ages and interests. At the graveled lane we took a left and, after passing the length of 2 house lots back to back, we turned right on 7th Court and almost immediately began to climb the wide brick and concrete steps leading up to the expansive front yard of our school.  This front yard was a forest of mostly Oak trees, 7th Court skirting at least four blocks around the campus from side to side.  An enormous area we seldom used during school hours but took advantage of after school hours and during our long, lazy summers.  Sometimes we played rock school on the steps, sometimes we gathered enormous acorns to take home to turn into things of our imaginations to entertain ourselves, many times we would lie down  in the leaves and tell secrets and dreams.  The street was seldom used because it was not a convenient street to use “from here to there”.  It just WAS.  It was for skating, for bike riding, for meeting school friends who lived on the other side of Minnie.  It was one of the few places that we could be unseen by those unseen eyes.

   The lower part of 8th Terrace was especially close-knit.  We lived in each others pockets and the parents were even closer than the children were.  The stay-at-home mothers were very much involved in each others lives.  This stemmed from the fact that they felt responsible for every child they knew and that they genuinely liked each other. We were family in every sense of the word.  Mothers did their housework then spent coffee breaks together, whether it was rainy or sunny, winter or summer.  Staying in touch was staying on top of things.  We all belonged to each other. Children’s spats were by and large ignored. In fact, if we were attempting to scalp each other and if there was no sight of blood, there was no interference.  Not a lot interfered with their sister-hood, and especially not petty squabbles between the children. After all, every child belonged to every mother and siblings must learn to work their differences out, mustn‘t they.  This could become very frustrating at times when you went to your own mother to tell that you had been wronged or snubbed by any one of the others.  I remember that mostly I got a blank stare from my Mom, as if to say “And your problem is?” You were wasting your time.

Beginning a career at Minnie Holman

   Do you remember your first day of your first grade?  Do I!!  My Dad took this occasion to be a part of my education - he drove me to school.  In order to ride to school you had to take a circuitous route down 8th Terrace; right onto 7th Avenue and up the long hill covering about 5 blocks; right onto a short street that had no name that I recall (because no house faced that street - only side yards). This led to the back yard of Minnie which consisted of a small parking area and several playgrounds, each set apart with imaginary boundaries for different activities.  For the girls, under a stand of trees was our Kick Ball / Dodge Ball yard.  Out in the open gravel area was plenty of room for Crack the Whip, Red Rover, Red Rover and other “choose me!” games that made you feel that you were a “fit in” or, being the last one standing alone, a “left over” which meant that you had to be taken.  We all experienced the highs and lows of both these extremes from time to time. Any feeling of discrimination was short lived, because we weren’t into orchestrated rejection in my childhood.  You had obviously offended someone and amends must be made - go figure.

   My Dad left me on that first day beside a little black coupe.  I had tears in my eyes and fear in my heart, and felt tethered to the ground without a hope in the world for much of a life ahead of me.  The bell rang, signaling school is beginning, and yet I couldn’t move.  I was rescued by one of the “Office Teachers” who asked my name and how old I was.  My name is Sarahann Seymour, I say, and I am 6 years old.  That’s S-a-r-a-h-a-n-n, one word, S-e-y-m-o-u-r.!  You see, I knew at a very young age that no one could spell my name correctly.  Come with me, she says, and I am ushered into the nearest of the 2 back doors and down the hallway to the proper place for a new person to begin to be educated.  In this throng of chattering children who were seeing each other after 3 months of vacation time, I saw only a maze of faces that seemed a blur to me and I found not one to recognize and soothe my terror.  Even though we 8th Terries were spread into a spectrum of ages but were melded into one on our street, at Minnie age mattered.   I was on my own again and this environment was full of many strangers, tables with chairs that actually fit me and only one adult who was nobody’s mother. Hello, my name is Miss Brittain, she says.  With that she went to the blackboard and with a brand new piece of chalk she began to write M-i-s-s  B-r-i-t-t-a-i-n.  Like me, I said to myself, a name that nobody knows how to spell

   My world had just mushroomed .  My day turned into a mixture of terror  and joy   We were assigned chairs at a particular table, told that we would start each morning seated with the same little people each day and so began the next 8 years of my life.  This was the beginning of  the expansion of my world to include the whole of Woodlawn Highlands.  Throughout those 8 years there were fewer than 10 children who moved into or out of our class, or for that matter any class in the  entire school.  You were set to spend your years at Minnie with these same people that you would grow to know backwards and forwards and up-side down and inside out.  Warts and all - your own included.  This upped the unseen eyes that were watching you, which narrowed the chances that you would pull off any shenanigans at or after school.  Eighth Terrace was my family and Minnie in the Highlands was my world. And Miss Brittain was my mother once removed.

  My recollection of that year is the learning experience of getting along, do what you are told, listen carefully and don’t make excessive noise. Twenty children making excessive noise was an affront to the dignity of Miss Brittain. That last “don’t” was my downfall; a problem I suffered from throughout my matriculation.  I never quite got “be quiet” and especially if I found something to be funny. I dissolve into hysterical laughter that cannot be curbed.  I laugh until my sides are splitting, until I am in pain, until I can’t catch my breath, until I am near exhaustion and then I laugh even more. There is one outstanding episode in the first grade that to this day puts me in stitches of laughter.  We had a round table, chairs circled around it and a large pot of molding clay in a crockery pot sitting in the middle.  This clay was used for entertainment, and for learning circles.  We learned to count by rolling peas sized balls to line up and tick off 1,2,3,4,5,6,7.  We learned shapes by pounding a round ball six times into a square; pound 1,2,3,4 and you had a triangle. We learned add and take-away and we learned to clean up our messes with brown paper towels that that were tough enough scrub the hide off an elephant.

  On rainy days we used this clay to go where imaginations help children to go.  It could be a baby doll and then a car and then a monster and then a frying pan without ever leaving your hand.  Imagine!! Then on one particular day when we went to the crock to retrieve our big blob of imagination we found it GONE. Good grief, Hannah!!  Who was the thief? One member of our group, who shall remain nameless, thought this was terribly funny and when he smiled there was the unmistakable shade of slate red clay in all the crevices of his teeth.  Well!!  The little thief had either swallowed it or decided that the taste was not to his liking and hid it somewhere, never to be found, and I became hysterical. I cannot think of his particular name to this very day without laughing and that is a very long, long time to hold one picture in your mind - but not impossible.

   During this first year we learned to print our letters. These were called our case letters and were little a’s and BIG A’s all the way to little z’s and BIG Z’s, after which we then learned that we called that lower case and upper case.  We were becoming a fountain of knowledge.  We read our Dick and Janes and learned to take a word apart and put it back together in tiny bits called sylables and there you were - PHONICS.  Now isn’t that easy?  Well, to some of us it came easier than to others and we were once again divided up into groups according to who fit better with whom, gathered around the round table and progressed at our respective paces. We did our numbers and drew spirals to get us ready to learn cursive writing and used up tablet after tablet becoming learned, leaning over with our tongues stuck out in concentration in order to get to go up a grade to Miss Bishop’s class - grade TWO.  Whew, I made it, in spite of the fact that I still needed work on keeping my mouth shut.  Report card says I pass but “Talks too much.”  School’s out!!

  Three whole months of back to 8th Terrace. Unimpeded hours of laughing, running, whispering, learning to balance ourselves on our Union Hardware skates to go clickety,  clickety, clickety across the cracks in the sidewalk, seldom daring to go out into the street.  Not yet!!  Run home, eat your supper and get back as fast as you can - meet you on the side of Jacque’s house.  Hurry!! Staying out in the dusk to catch “lightning’ bugs” to put in a jar and when we became brave enough, pinch the light off of the tail while it was glowing and put it on our fingers as fancy rings given to us by someone special.  Never mind that it stunk to high heaven and made your fingers sticky, it was a jewel from a prince.  Once it became dark and the street lights came on we were really into serious games.  Kick the can, hide and go seek and many others until you were worn out and decided to sit down and talk.  Sitting on the curb, with your chin on your knees, you could be anything or anyone you had the imagination to dream up.  “When I grow up ------” and everyone else had such outlandish wishes, you didn’t dare laugh at theirs for fear they wouldn’t take you seriously.  Front porch lights would begin to click off and on.  Time’s up for today, and at first we would yell “just a minute” and then again the flicking off and on, only a little faster and you knew it was time.  “See you tomorrow”, “Not if I see you first” and on and on, up the driveway and into the house with a bath waiting for you and sweet sheets for you to sweat on and radios for you to listen to in the dark.  Life was so very good.

The Second Grade and the Whole World Changes.

   One year older and you had to start all over again.  We were brown as little berries, tough as nails and had the scabs on our knees to prove it and this time we weren’t the First Graders. This time was with Miss Bishop and she meant serious business.  No more adds  and take-aways.  Now it became arithmetic.  No more little letters and BIG letters. Now they becaame sentences.  New words to learn and starting to spell.  Dick and Jane were put behind us and we met new friends to read about. I missed Puff and Spot but I loved new characters and I loved not being in the first grade, no more the little one just starting out.  I didn’t cry because we had to go back to school - it was time to see the people that I had missed during the summer.  What a joy it was to see the missed faces.  We 8th Terries had often grown weary of each other during the 3 months, causing an occasional spat that might last as long as it took to walk home and rethink the matter.  

   School  started the Tuesday after Labor Day, and in the South, still steaming, we squirmed and wiggled and sweated  and tried our best to concentrate.  We tried to catch the eye of those we hadn’t seen for 3 months, we turned in our desks to look over our shoulder and tried to whisper with our mouths “Hello, again”.  Play period was catch-up time.  Talk to friends that you hadn’t seen for a quarter of a year!  Eternity for a seven year old.  Miss Bishop was very nice but she was no Miss Brittain.  She seemed to want to tell us that it was time to toughen up.  We began to have homework and that cut into the time spent on the street.  

  Most of us remember exactly where we were when the news of WAR reached out and became our daily mission.  I was in the Alabama theater after having attending church service.   I don’t remember the name of the movie, but I recall clearly the sequence of events.  The Alabama was one of those older theaters that were Moorish in décor, with mezzanines and balconies and nooks and crannies that were very exotic.  The restrooms were enormous and plush, with couches and chairs for conversations and vanity areas for freshening your make-up.  Children loved the restrooms as much as the movies  and made at least two trips per movie just to wallow in the luxury.  We also rambled around the hallways which had benches for those who needed a break for a cigarette or were waiting for a child to watch the cartoon just one more time.

  My Mom and my cousin Johnnie and I began to hear a low murmur and it grew into a buzz and then into people talking loud enough to disturb the sound of the movie.  Mama sent Johnnie out to see what was going on and when she returned she was excited and began to tell what she had heard.  I remember my Mom saying ”what do you mean bombed?” and words were spilling out of Johnnie’s mouth as fast as Mama could ask questions.  Suddenly the movie stopped and the lights came on and the murmuring became understandable and people were both quietly stunned and then loudly distressed.  We began to make our way out of the theater and onto the street where we found  lots of people telling each other what they thought they had learned - there were many stories and variations of the truth.  The three of us walked up to my Dad’s business, which was about 2 blocks away to find daddy out on the street talking to people walking by and going back into the store to hear the radio and back out to report the latest speculation.  Everything was up in the air and we would find things that way for days on end.   

  On Monday we anxiously went to school.  None of us knew what to make of this “war news” and we hoped that someone could explain it to us.  The teachers were as confused as our parents and like the parents, all they knew to do was to keep things as normal as possible.  We whispered to each other, shrugged our shoulders when someone asked if we knew what was going to happen to us, and felt an uncomfortable fear of not knowing.  At the time we hadn’t a clue that things as we knew them would never be the same.  After December 6th,1941 our togetherness was as if written in stone.  Unquestioned and accepted as though we had taken an oath, we became a band of civilian warriors.  Eighth Terrace shared the work of getting through this “time of need”. Joining the troops, we were signed up for duty along with the parents and with them we had a stake in our own destiny not imagined on December the 5th.  Thus began the formative years of our lives with the rationing, the different “drives” and the accumulation of stamps to lick and stick into our Bond books.

  Our mission - to round up all the paper, tinfoil, scrap metal and useful items to turn in that we could find.  I would not doubt that the competition became so stiff that there were household items turned in by overly zealous kids that mothers wondered where the waffle iron , etc. disappeared to.  We all wanted to own a wagon to haul our cache in and knew that the wagon must be guarded because it was itself a part of the booty.  On our school grounds there were piles of each of the commodities that we were in search of, and they would be loaded up and hauled away often enough for us to regain the urge to forage again.  We especially found our garages chocked full of things we thought fit into the category of “wanted”.  Often I would hear “where do you think you are going with that?”  I thought my parents knew where I was going with “that “ and why.  It was me that didn’t understand that they didn’t put the ice cream freezer in the category of needed items.  Nor the car jack or the push mower that only needed a new handle.  Back then you didn’t  put the broken items out on the street to be picked up with the trash and go out to purchase another.  There were hardware stores which had sections of handles to replace There were replacement parts for just about everything used to keep a home running.
 
  In fact, you didn’t run out to do anything.  .  Dads began to take public transportation because the gasoline was needed for the war effort and you were issued stamps to receive your allowance each month. You planned your trips out, even those to church on Sunday.  Families had 1 car and that was used for the fathers to get to work and soon  Dads began to take public transportation because the gasoline was needed for the war effort and you were issued stamps to receive your allowance each month, along with your shoe stamps, your sugar stamps, your meat stamps and it seemed like stamps for water would be needed because I can remember my Mom saying “don’t stand there letting that water run down the drain” more times than I care to remember.  I still can’t let the water faucet run with abandon - not to save my soul.

  If your car battery ran down, could not be recharged and your car didn’t have a hand crank, you had a real problem.  My dad was a watchmaker, the timing inspector for the railroads into and out of Birmingham and was considered a top priority worker, so we had the necessary gasoline stamps for enough to get to work on Sundays as well as the week days, which meant that we had no car to get to church on those Sundays.  We are Methodists and in the minority on 8th Terry, therefore we would hitch a ride with the Darby family to Avondale Baptist and make the best of it.  Talk about your religious tolerance in action!!!!!  To be honest I don’t remember a lot about what I was being taught in Sunday School because I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention.  These were not the kids I was used to or comfortable with.  However, I must have been getting the basics and I wasn’t traumatized by the experience, which speaks well for the American way.  One of the things that stick in my memory about those Sunday mornings, other than my Mom calling out “hurry up, we don’t want to keep them waiting”, were the times that their battery had gone dead and after we had all piled into the car, someone had to get out and turn the hand crank to get us started on our way.  What a great memory this is for me!

  The collection project that I liked the most was the search for tin foil.  So many of our consumer goods were wrapped in a paper that was laminated with a thin piece of tin to preserve the freshness.  We had no chemical preservatives other than salt and sugar that I can recall.  I still remember the thrill of coming across a piece of paper laden with tin and taking it to a hard, level surface to rub and rub until it was as flat as possible. Then began the process of trying to take a corner and tenderly separate the tin from the paper and begin to peel them apart.  You would try your best to get bigger and bigger pieces in strips, trying to surpass yourself.  After admiring all the strips that you had collected this time, you rolled them onto the ball that you were creating, making it ever larger until you were obliged to part with it when the tin foil was being collected at school.

Minnie Holman 8th Grade Class, 1947-48

Mama is first on left on bottom row.