Baca Parties and Late Birthdays

by Dustin Gainey

When you were nine or ten years old, did you ever wonder what your grandparents were like when they were your age? Did you ever just want to ask them where they were born, or what their lives were like back then? Well, I finally got that opportunity. I sat down with my grandmother Mary Lee Locklear to ask her a few questions about her life, and what it was like growing up as a poor Native American in the South.

Mary was born in Robeson County, N.C., somewhere close to the Hoke County line on April 15, 1944, but she tells everyone she was born on April 23, 1944. Why does she do this? No one knows—NASCAR wasn’t even around at that time. Her mother’s name was Carry “Pat” Locklear, and her father was Bellton Locklear. Bellton and Pat were both from Robeson County. Mary had two brothers and five sisters, and they were all raised in Robeson County. When she was growing up, her family never had a lot of money because they were sharecroppers, but she said, “Mamma and Daddy might not have had a whole lot of money, but we never missed a single meal.” In her mind that made them a very blessed family. Her favorite meals were pork chop with corn, sausage with baked apples, and biscuits with molasses, but they had these only in the fall or winter because that was when they had hog killings.

The next few questions that I asked Mary were dealing with her education, and what her family did for fun when she was a little girl. Back “in the day” education wasn’t a “must have” like it is today. Mary attended school at Oak Grove Elementary School in Scotland County. Remember that segregation was still in effect at this time; however, Mary would go on to finish only the seventh grade because her family could not afford for her to continue in school. Now I understand why she has always encouraged me to do well in school; it was because to her it was a great privilege just to even go to school. For fun, Mary and her family would go fishin’, and on the Fourth of July they would go down to the river to celebrate our nation’s independence. Then in the fall of the year after the tobacco had been cropped, the whole community would come together and have a “baca party,” which was a party to celebrate the good crop they had that year. In the fall of every year, she said, “Daddy would always take us shoppin’, and let each one of us get one outfit and a pair of shoes.”

Mary’s life really started to change in the ‘60s. Her first job was in 1963 at the House of Raeford turkey plant, and it paid a whopping $1.75 per hour. Then in 1967 at the young age of twenty-three, she married Philip Locklear (whom she is still married to this very day). They have two lovely daughters, Joyce Gainey and Sophia “Nicky” Bryant, and five grandchildren. Mary’s favorite meal to cook is collards fried in hot sausage grease with fried chicken and cornbread. An activity she enjoys is to sit and watch older people. For about ten years she would sit with Miss Emma Neal Morrison, a very well-known lady in Scotland County. When Mary was asked, what are you most proud of accomplishing in your life? She said, “First is seeing my two girls get grown. Next, when I got saved; the last thing is when I meet Phil.”

After doing this paper, I have learned a few things about southern culture and a little more about my family history. One thing I’ll probably never forget her telling me is that she tells everyone that her birthday is a week later than what it really is. I thought most people wanted their birthday to come and go quickly. In addition, I had never heard of a “baca party.” I knew that the lifestyle in the South has changed, but I never had thought that it was so drastic. Also, I would just like to thank Grandma for all the cultural connection she has given me to the South. I have really enjoyed doing this paper, and most of all just spending some one-on-one time with my grandma.

Work Cited

Locklear, Mary L. Personal interview. 4 Sept. 2010.

Note: Dustin Gainey, who lives in Laurinburg, is majoring in accounting at Sandhills Community College.

Back Then

by Melissa Scott

Remembering the past can be bittersweet for some people; that’s what I felt when I interviewed my mother, a Lumbee Indian. She was born in Robeson County, North Carolina, and had nine siblings. The family lived in a two-bedroom “shotgun house” -- if you stood in the front door, you could see through the back door. The way of life was farming and sharecropping; when you were old enough, you moved away.

Living in a two-bedroom house with twelve people today would not be pleasant; however, back in the ‘40s this was normal. There were three beds in the children’s bedroom, and the baby slept in the parents’ room -- usually in a drawer because there wasn’t any cribs. Consequently, growing up with nine brothers and sisters got crowded when it was bedtime, especially when she slept in a bed with a ten-pound quilt laying over her. Getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom was out of the question. She had to hold it until morning or surprise the person lying next to her.

The family raised its own chickens, hogs, and vegetables and didn’t have a cow since they couldn’t afford one; therefore, she didn’t drink milk. Water was pumped from a well. When they killed hogs, they ate everything but the “grunt.” Out of the hog, they made sausage, pudding, and lard; soap was also made from hog's skin. From the corn kernels, corn mill was made to make flour bread and biscuits. The vegetable field grew peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, and potatoes. In addition, on the farm were tobacco, cotton, and corn, and the boys plowed the fields by mule. The boys were also in charge of sweeping the yards with reeds, the older girls would cook and take care of the baby, and the others would clean. After the work on the family farm was complete, the family would go work on a white man’s land and farm; his name was Mr. Humphrey. The worse part of working on his farm was that it kept Mom from attending school. “His kids went to school, and we didn’t get to go to school -- except when it rained,” Mom said. Surprisingly, on the white man’s farm, they were treated fairly well. They weren’t as bad as some people had been treated. The Humphreys allowed their children to play with Mom and the other siblings, and his wife would cook everyone dinner after work in their field was complete. “We would talk, eat, and play; she was a kind woman,” Mom said with a smile. When she became a teenager, my mom helped work in tobacco on another person’s farm and made $3.00 a day. That would buy shoes, pants, and a top, she recalled.

Mom never felt mistreated because she was taught from a child where to and not to go. The downtown area was the most racist -- more so than out in the rural “country” because most people in the country were poor people: white, Black, and Indian -- it didn’t matter because everyone was poor. An Indian or Black could go into a store and buy drink or ice cream, but they had to go outside to eat it. The Indians and Blacks were treated the same, even though Indians and Blacks didn’t associate with one another. Mom acknowledged, “When you went anywhere in town, you knew what you were supposed to do. You didn’t know any differently. If you were Black or Indian and went to the movies, you went upstairs to watch.” She knew the restaurants she wasn’t supposed to go into. Mom mostly went to an Indian restaurant that served hot dogs and hamburgers.

Mom remembers, “When television came along, people would come from everywhere because we were the first to get one. Every Saturday night we would have a crowd of people watching The Ed Sullivan Show. When Elvis was on TV the first time, we saw him. The men would come over to watch wrestling as well.”

The family stopped farming when Mom was about the age of fifteen because the boys were older and left home. “All that was left were girls, so Daddy got a job building bridges and moved out of the country into town, Ma got a job at a chicken house, and the girls who were old enough moved to Baltimore,” she recollected. “The oldest sister got married just to move away from home. When she had children, she called for Mom to come help take care of the children.”

The first hired job Mom had was in Baltimore. She worked at a clothing store owned by a Jewish family mainly in the warehouse with various clothing goods. At Easter, she made Easter baskets in the warehouse to sell in the retail stores. This brought to my mind all the incredible Easter baskets I received as a child. One of the unforgettable occasions while working in the store was when President Kennedy was shot. She stated, “I remember that as if it were yesterday. The owner closed the store until the day after the president was buried. It was a depressing time for everyone.”

When Mom moved back to North Carolina in the late ‘60s, she worked at the Converse Shoe manufacturing plant for thirty-five years until they closed the factory. She was one of the first to be hired. “I worked on production line sewing shoes,” she replied. It was hard work, but she enjoyed it.

I always knew that my mom had an excellent work ethic, and now I know why. Looking back over the past thirty-something years that she has been my mother, I understand her a little more. She has always been a great mother and did everything to make her family happy. I learned a lot from this interview and I think it helped her, too. Memories can make you laugh, cry, or sometimes help you realize how far you have come on the journey in your life.

Work Cited

Locklear Stone, Vivian. Personal interview. 9 Sep. 2010.

Note: Melissa Scott, who lives in Pinehurst, is majoring in nursing at Sandhills Community College.