Briggs Stratton Short Blocks

Dickenson: Lunch with Mister Anderson

When I was a young boy, I spent summers visiting my grandmother in Abilene. In the eyes of a 6-year-old Abilene was an oasis of green lawns from the sparse patch of dirt in my hometown about 90 miles west. And the greenest lawn around the block belonged to my grandmother. From early spring until the first frosts of autumn, Granny's hand watered succulents St. Augustine grass covering his forehead and the back and the additional lot she owned next door. He had plenty of grass for a widow of sixty-years, something to manage. Granny took care of the water all right, but Mr.Anderson took care of everything else.

Every Friday at 7 am Mr. Anderson, my Granny's lawn man, came off the grass. At the age of sixty-something old, he was a little too old to lawns in the heat of summer thought, but Mr. Anderson never complained. He spent two hours or more, pushing his old, green, Sears Roebuck & gas mower along row after row. Then, with only a short break to drink a glass of water hose, he started two hours of exhausting work really, the hand-shearing edges along the sidewalk, flower beds and a dozen mesquite trees if enormous.

Around 11 hours, My grandmother would call me Mister Anderson and dinner. You see, Texas back in the day, lunch was called dinner and dinner was called supper, the teachings of Mrs. Vanderbilt notwithstanding.

Friday dinner always consisted of chicken fried steak, potatoes, green beans, lettuce and tomato salad, sliced ​​bread and cream sauce. After washing hands and face with a garden hose, Mister Anderson would take off his hat and enter through the back door and stand in front of his establishment.He was always the same, the absolute right to the salad fork, salt and pepper shakers, gravy boats and white linen tablecloth, put on my sewing table grandmother in the locker room just off the kitchen.

As we all bowed our heads, Mister Anderson say thanks and then its up to the sewing table as Granny took my hand and led me off into the kitchen to eat our meal. I once asked why we could not sit together to eat our dinner. She told me it was just the way things were and she gave me a stern look that suggested I did not ask that question again.You see, Mr. Anderson was black, my grandmother was white and it was 1962.

From time to time after helping clear our dishes, I would slip out of the mud room and sit down with Mister Anderson Granny while storing leftovers. He told me everything about St. Augustine grass, gasoline engines Briggs & Stratton and everything I was curious. Once he let slip that my grandmother was the only white customer who would feed him, let alone leave his house.

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