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My “Black Joe Story”….The painting and this story are from “my memory” when I was 4 years old in 1945.

I was living in the Deep South…Chattanooga, Tennessee.  At that time in history not all families had the same beliefs as mine.  I grew up in a family with no racial prejudices, after all my mother was German which wasn’t popular during the war.

Since I have grown up, I have wondered how my daddy went from being a poor farm boy to being the first in his family to go to college and become a city man.  To the relatives he was “Charlie”…big daddy and highly respected.   We lived comfortably just on his “sales commissions” while daddy quietly helped people…mostly blacks. He bought them food, medicine, clothes and paid their rent, and sometimes doctor bills.  How he did all the good for so many with no base salary…just his commissions, is amazing to me!

Since he grew up on a farm and loved the farm life so much, it was natural that a huge garden was his favorite hobby.  This is where Daddy and I spent a lot of “our special time” together and he would create his wonderful stories…yarns!

Every Spring Joe, the biggest blackest man I had ever seen, would come and prepare the garden until it was like face powder. Joe couldn’t pay daddy back the money he owed him so this was Joe’s way of repayment.

I was about four years old when momma introduced me to Joe and after momma left, he said “Miss Mary Lou, please call me Black Joe”.   I was Joe’s water runner.  Later in the summer when Daddy’s garden would bloom and produce veggies, Joe would come and weed. I would take sandwiches, a bucket of water, and the saltshaker; then, I would sit with Joe and we would eat lunch together. One afternoon it was really hot and his black skin was shiny with beads of sweat that made him glow in the sunlight, and I asked, “Black Joe why are you so black and shiny?” He looked embarrassed but laughed and said, “Miss Mary Lou, you say the darnedest things!”  I was only 4 but I must have realized I said something “bad” from the expression in his eyes so I got up and walked to him and with him sitting and me standing; our eyes were the same level.  I placed my hands on his cheeks, kissed his cheek and said, “Black Joe…I think you are beautiful”.  Then, I hugged him …he tried to look away but I could still see the tears in his eyes.  When I was four, my first love was my daddy, my big brother Charles and my friend “beautiful Black Joe”!

…..by Mary Lou Brewton