{"id":2212,"date":"2019-07-16T21:46:44","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T21:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2019-07-16T21:56:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T21:56:46","slug":"hatties-view-the-village-hood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/16\/hatties-view-the-village-hood\/","title":{"rendered":"Hattie\u2019s View: The village-hood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
By Ellen Coffee<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hattie\u2019s View<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With exception\nof two elderly Grandpas there were no men on our block. The young fathers and\nhusbands were all deployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lived on the\n1100 block of Greene Street, at Lower Main, in downtown Columbia.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom, baby\nbrother Len and I, were surviving with the help of neighbors during Dads Naval\nassignment in WWII. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State\nFarmers Market straddled the median of the wide Lower Assembly Street. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Horses, mules,\npulled produce wagons up to the curb and stake bodied trucks filled the stalls\nwith watermelons, cantaloupes, fruits and fresh flowers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The produce\nvendors knew us kids by name. We often salvaged discarded, bruised, culled\nveggies and fruits for the families on our block. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Watson and\nChavis families were our upper next door neighbors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Granny Chavis\ncooked for many of us most of the time because she had the biggest pots. haha <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mom, a child\nof the depression era, never wasted anything. She even recycled the same\nhambone cooking it until it fell to pieces. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The eleven\nhundred block of Greene Street was more than a  neighborhood, it was our\nvillage-hood.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was as if a\nguardian spirit was assigned to our community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Families of\nmilitary were on both sides of the street. As I recall most families were related\nin one way or another. We even had a few Rosie the Riveters on our block <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those women\njoined the manufacturing and industrial workforce filling spots previously held\nby men now in uniform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mom, by\nadding a bed, turned our living room into a nice cozy living space for a\nmilitary wife stranded near the base. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems each\nfamily on our block converted a spare room to rent to another military wife of\na soldier deployed from Fort Jackson. We enjoyed our new friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If they weren\u2019t\nkin, they were soon assimilated into a family status. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our house was\nthird from the corner nearest the state farmers market. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad\u2019s older\nsister, Lessie, and her family, lived on the corner in a gray two story house.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her hubby, was a\nWWI veteran. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His name, Buford\nBarfield,  is on the World War I soldier’s monument in Olympia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Coleman\u2019s,\nlived in the second house. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dad\u2019s sister,\nCarrie and family lived next door, on the lower side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all there\nwere more than a dozen of us preschooler kids, several toddlers and two\ninfants on our street. We were under the watchful eyes of the neighborhood\npseudo Moms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene Street\nMethodist Church, on the corner, provided daily events and snacks for the\nchildren. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the upper\ncorner of Main and Greene Streets was a grocer, butcher, laundry, drugstore and\nice cream parlor. Coffee, chocolate, sugar, nylons, leather and other misc.\nitems were available only with ration coupon books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To accommodate\nus the grocer and the laundry ran tabs for our families, sometimes holding\nration books hostage, so none of us slept on dirty sheets or went to bed\nhungry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel blessed\nto have lived during that era. Those were good times with good folks in our\nvillage-hood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I\u2019m\nthankful for all of today\u2019s advantages, cell phone technology and all the\nwonderful things that come from Facebook posts, etc., I tire of nasty tweets\nand phony face book posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I admit I often\nthink of those folks who became our extended family during those bygone days,\nY\u2019all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hattie\u2019s View With exception of two elderly Grandpas there were no men on our block. The young fathers and husbands were all deployed. We lived on the 1100 block of Greene Street, at Lower Main, in downtown Columbia.   Mom, baby brother Len and I, were surviving with the helpContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-john-griggs","post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hatties-view"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gpstrianglenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Hatties-View_630x350.jpg?fit=630%2C350","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/2215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}