Jefferson Part Two: Amazons and The Smartest Man in the World

 

I was surprised by the Google Earth view of the Jefferson neighborhood.  All the gardens behind four of the houses seem to have been combined into some sort of park, and the house that would have been on the far right, which was the home of The Smartest Man in the World, and one other, has been replaced by apartments.  But the house on the left, which was the home of the Amazons, is still standing.

703 West Jefferson was not like the other houses on the block.  For one thing, it had architecture.  That little curve of the roof over the front door was unlike any other house on the block.  It was separated from the house next door by an impenetrable privet hedge.  When I lived on Jefferson, there was a garage facing Culberhouse,  not Jefferson, so that the house had really very little communication with the rest of the block.  And, what seemed most unusual to me, the house was inhabited entirely by women.

I don't know quite why I found that strange.  My great grandmother lived with two of her daughters, but somehow things that happen in one's own family just are and don't beg for explanation the way things in other families do.  Besides, my great grandmother was semi-invalid, and needed help around the house.  But neither Aunt Laura or Marie, the mother of Lucinda and Melisa Garcia were invalids.  In fact, Marie was the receptionist for my dentist.  There had been a father at one time, perhaps a husband, but I don't remember the details.  Neither Laura nor Marie seemed the least bit interested in remarriage, and having been married myself, I understand.  But neither Lucinda nor Melisa were conceived immaculately.  (That was a trick of the Gibson girls, who lived between the Garcias and us. Anyway, I found the Garcia household rather exotic, being all women and having a hispanic surname and being catholics besides.  The Garcia girls hardly ever played with the other five of us kids on the block.  The privet hedge was a kind of boundary, but we did sometimes get together.  (In high school I spent a lot of time with Melisa, because I was dating one of her best friends, and she was dating one of my best friends.  A complicated story which perhaps should be told much later, if at all.)

One time I did get together with the Garcia girls was to tell them that they should go with the Gibsons (707 West Jefferson) to church.

The Gibsons belonged to a rather enthusiastic and evangelical church.  They didn't believe in women wearing shorts, so Mrs. Gibson wouldn't speak to my mother.  They certainly didn't believe in sex before marriage, which is why the older girls seemed to have practiced immaculate conception.  And they were always inviting me to go to their church.  One Sunday night I went.  It was very much a performing preacher, not a liturgical, church, and I was amazed that the preacher hopped from one end of the stage to the other, in what seemed to me to be like a popular dance on television at the time, the bunny hop.  I was so impressed that I told the Garcias and we all went the next week.  I hope the Gibsons didn't realize that we went not out of religious enthusiasm but to see the hop.

The Gibsons became a sort of Amazonian household while we were living on Jefferson, because Mr. Gibson, an over-the-road truck driver, was killed in an accident, leaving his wife with three daughters at home.  But they were never more than semi-Amazonian; there was a steady stream of boy friends Although in general I found spending time with the Gibson girls less interesting than exploring creeks and such with other boys, who were just a bike ride away, I did learn a lot from them.  They gave me my first formal sex education lessons in one of the abandoned outhouses, and they taught me to weave potholders on little metal looms with loops.  We sold the pot holders door to door.  They also were partners with me in the walnut business.  The two big trees on either side of our house were walnut trees, and we would collect, sometimes hull, and sell the nuts.

(Later, Mrs. Gibson went to work in Fomby Barnett's bookstore, which will appear in a later episode, and Kathy Gibson, who was often my first mate on the Nautilus, would be very helpful when I was selling off the contents of my mother's house. )

At the other end of the block, in a house now gone, lived The Smartest Man in the World, Mr. Sammons. These days we would say that Mr. Sammons--I never knew his first name--had ASD.  Butt then he just seemed exotic.  I didn't meet him for a while, but his brother, who seemed to do nothing except sit on the porch in his undershirt displaying his tattoos, was quite an amusement for us kids whose families certainly didn't have any tattooed people.  (Cue 'the times have changed'.)  In those days Mr. Sammons hardly left the house. In fact one didn't meet Mr. Sammons.  He would just show up with pencil and paper in hand and start explaining the complex numerological coincidences of some historic person or event.  One of the things I admire about Jonesboro is that I never heard anyone say anything disparaging about Mr. Sammons.  Instead, people talked about how smart he was.  Later he had several jobs with the city.  I don't know the circumstances of his house being torn down to build apartments.  He had lived for a while in the garage behind the house, but the last I heard of him he was living in a container--an early advocate for tiny houses?--downtown and the police department made sure he had food and other necessities. 

Indeed that block of Jefferson Avenue was home to all sorts and conditions.