A TRIBUTE TO SAMUEL WATTREE SR.

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

.

 A TRIBUTE TO SAMUEL WATTREE SR.

.

GRANDDADDY WATTREE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

.

"Eric, never let people know everything on your mind, because then they know everything you know, plus what they already knew. That makes them smarter than you."
.
I was your first grandchild, and I never felt so secure as I did when I would snuggle up next to you and watched "Gunsmoke." I can still remember how you would make fun of Chester's country accent - "Mr. Deollion, Mr. Deollion!" Sitting there next to you I felt safe from everything. I haven't felt like that since you died. You were one of those men who was the UNDISPUTED head of the family - the ENTIRE family, and that included everybody who married into it. And not only the family, but everybody in the neighborhood treated you with deferment and respect, and that included some of the most feared gangsters in Watts.
.
I can still remember how people like Hawkeye and Neal "ND" Davis would put out their cigarettes and try to hide their beer when we’d pull up to “George’s Corner” looking for PeeWee. One of them would slip into the club to give PeeWee a heads-up when

PEEWEE
(SAMUEL WATTREE JR.)

they saw you comin’, and the one’s outside would say, “How you doin’, Mr. Wattree? PeeWee’s inside.” And you’d say something like, “Man, how you keep from slidin’ out the bed with all that grease in your head?”, and they’d all fall out laughin’.
.
My father was also a street person and certainly not one to be toyed with, but he would tiptoe around you as well, because he knew that you took absolutely NO shit. You spoke to him like he was one of your kids, and essentially he was, since you knew him from birth.
.
But what I loved most was you wouldn't let anybody even raise their voice at me, including my mother, and I was always at your side – I even went to the store with you, and in the mornings you'd sprinkle water in my face to wake me up to have breakfast with you before you went to work.
.
Grandmomma said it was ironic, because I was born out of wedlock just before my mother entered nursing school, and you were furious with both my mother and father. So when I was born you said, "You ain't bringing that bastard to my house." But momma said once I was home you immediately began to crack, and before long, whenever anyone came around me you wanted to know what they were doing. It was like I belonged only to you. Val used to say, “That's what's wrong with you - Daddy spoiled you.”
.
And she was right, daddy. You spoiled me rotten, but she didn’t seem to

WHEN I WANTED TO BE A COWBOY
I GOT MORE THAN JUST CAP GUNS.
(PONY FURNISHED BY PHOTOGRAPHER)

have a problem with it once you started spoiling her. You bought her wedding rings, and you and momma started taking sides with her whenever we had a family dispute. I once tried reminding you that I was the one who was your blood, but to no avail. You knew and loved Val from the time she was a 14-year-old child and she was the mother of your great grandchildren, so that was that - daddy had spoken, which made it law. So my place was to just suck it up and get over it. I was a man now, and you didn’t pamper men. You said, it made 'em weak. 
.
Consistent with the times, however, you had many old fashion ideas about "a woman's place", but you also believed that a man had a responsibility to keep his woman happy, and in our relationship Val played on that belief to the max. Sometimes when Val wanted something from me, I used to watch her in action around you, and it made me want to throw up. You would have thought she was Donna Reed, and I was Simon Legree - and the worst part about it was Grandmomma Lealer would help her! So it was clear that the days of cowboy outfits and always having my way was clearly over, and I began to recognize how the rest of the family must've viewed me as a kid when I was always getting my own way. It was sickening, and Val ALWAYS got her way. I was a grown man, and had to worry about my wife "telling daddy on me" - and it was like that until the day you died. I imagine Val's all up under you in Heaven as I speak.

.
While it was hard falling into second place, it taught me that as a man

ME, KAI, AND LIL ERIC

nothing was given to me. I had to earn my standing in the world. But my wounded feelings aside, you started teaching me other lessons in life - lessons in manhood. You taught me to be an independent thinker. You gave me the confidence to stand firm regardless to what anyone said (unless it was you). You also taught me to absorb the knowledge and facts provided by others, but thereafter, to ALWAYS connect the dots for myself. So today, someone can tell me, "Well Martin said," or "Malcolm said," and my response will be, what does what Martin or Malcolm said have to do with what I think? So the bottom line is, you taught me to never give anyone else's ability to think priority over my own, and I want to thank you for that.
.
We don’t see family dictators like you anymore, who rule the family and all its branches with the iron fist of absolute authority – but that’s too bad. Because every family should know the comfort and security of a strong patriarch that they knew they could always rely upon.
.
You were an old-school Black man, the personification of competence and strength. A master mechanic by profession, you taught us the benefits inherent in the pursuit of knowledge and the value of love of family. While you weren’t one to hobnob, and you believed in keeping life simple (much like myself), you knew the future mayor, Tom Bradley, as Tom, who was a police officer at the time. You became friends when instead of taking PeeWee to jail, he would bring him home to you, knowing that you would handle the business that they couldn't - and you did! You were so brutal with PeeWee one night that it scared me, and the only reason you stopped was I started freaking out. I was so freaked out by the incident that I was actually afraid of you for several days. I was afraid you might do me like that. But you certainly made your point with PeeWee.
.
While many White families were struggling to keep their heads above water, you made it possible for our family to coast through this nation’s most severe hardships without ever being in need of a thing. And most importantly, whenever anyone in the family faced adversities in life, we knew we could always “tell daddy”, and you would make things right.
.
But it turned out that I didn’t know the half of it. After you passed Grandmomma Lealer would regale me with stories of your youth. She told me that when she got your attention as a young girl she knew she had hit the jackpot. She said you were never like the other boys, and she always liked you, but you were such a serious and distant person you didn't seemed to be interested. You were always in your own world and didn't seem to be interested in anybody. Then one day from out of nowhere you showed up at her door with a box of candy and she couldn’t believe it, but she said she was beside herself with joy, and all the other girls were happy for her (she had 6 sisters). 
.
Then once you got married a rich White family, essentially, tried to enslave her. She was working for the family as a domestic and the people's kids became attached to her, so the family wanted her to live there on the premises. They weren't brutal, or threatening, or anything - at first. In fact they were all syrupy grins, and spewing words of love, and talking about you all "becoming one big family" and with my mother growing up with their kids - but, of course, with momma doing all the cooking, cleaning, and dirty work. But they crossed the line when they wouldn't let momma come home. They insisted that you come and move into a backhouse there on the premises.
.
So you pretended to cave in. You packed up all your belongings and pulled up on the premises. Then when they came out to greet you, you pulled out a gun and told momma to get the baby (my mother) and get into the truck. Then you drove off, leaving Louisiana, and you kept going until you reached Los Angeles. That was in 1931 when my mother was a year old. Then once you got to Los Angeles you moved into a house a block or so from the renowned Dunbar Hotel, and started your new life.
.
That was during the Great Depression and people were starving to death, but you opened up an auto shop on Central Ave. keeping people’s cars running, and you were making a killing. So while everybody else was struggling for food and trying to stay off the street, you bought your first home.  
.

GRANDMOMMA LEALER

But momma wasn't telling me all of this for nothing, she was leading up to a point about being considerate and being a man. As usual, she was taking sides with Val in a dispute we were having. I was in college and I felt distracted and unable to study because Val kept the house full of people. Our house was like Grand Central Station with people congregating there 7 days a week, and I resented it. But  Momma told me a story that pointed out that you were very serious and was into your own thing as well, but you always found a way to accommodate her needs.
.
She said, she was young and she still liked to party, but you were such a serious person that you didn't party at all. But instead of depriving her of what she liked to do, you would stay home with my mother and drop her off at the

CENTRAL AVE.

Dunbar Hotel to let her party her heart out all night long – not once or twice, but EVERY weekend - and then you would come pick her up at the end of the night. She said it never crossed your mind that she might start fooling around with one of those "pretty men" up there, because you had confidence in yourself and trust in her. She said, that made her love you even more – and that you were right. She went on to say, “And there were indeed some real pretty men up there, but she knew that no man in the building could even come close to matching the man she had at home.”
.
Momma made her point, and it made me feel foolish that I was raising so much hell over Val wanting to have card parties and such AT HOME. After all, I did have a den. So I’ve learned a lot from you, even in death. You taught me to

DUNBAR HOTEL

keep life simple and enjoy my family instead of wasting my life (and my money) trying to be a bigshot to impress others. You said trying to be a bigshot is a hole that you can't ever stop diggin'. You had a rhyme you used to recite to me as a kid, and following the wisdom of that rhyme has allowed me to live a content and very happy life. You said, “All I want from this whole damn nation, is a pretty little wife and a good foundation.”
.
Well, you had that and more, and I’ve found that simple lyric to be the key to enjoying life. The best way to have money is not to wasted it trying to impress others with a lavish lifestyle, and no amount of money can ever come close to making you as happy as a loving home. Later I found that to be the difference between Barack Obama and Donald Trump. With all of his so-called money, Trump is jealous of Barack Obama and can never live up to what Barack represents - and ironically, Barack is the one who people look up to. He doesn't try to be a bigshot. He's just a good man who loves his family and has solid values
.

So now I’m “daddy” (or "Poppi" in my case), and I try to stand strong. But remnants of the child I once was still lives on in me, although I do my best to try to hide it. But that child greatly misses your strength, competence, and the wisdom of your guidance. I often yearn for the days when I would snuggle up next to you and watch “Gunsmoke”. Some nights I lie in bed and wonder did you ever feel that way. But somehow I doubt it. You were always your own man. You always looked forward and never one to looked back. So as hard as I try to be the man that you were, I guess they just don't make 'em like they used to.

LEGACY
.
Neither scholar nor the head of state,
The most common of men seems to be my fate;
A life blistered with struggle and constant need,
As my legacy to man I bequeath my seed.
.
More fertile, more sturdy these ones than I,
This withered old vine left fallow and dry;
The nectar of their roots lie dormant still,
But through their fruit I'll be revealed.
.
Eric L. Wattree

.
November 22, 1906 - 1983
.
You’ll always live on, through me, and the Wattree Clan
.

REST IN PEACE, DADDY.

YOU'LL ALWAYS BE MY MAIN MAN.
.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
.
The six plane factories of the Douglas Aircraft Company have been termed an industrial melting pot, since men and women of fifty-eight national origins work side by side in pushing Americas's plane output. S. O. Porter, Douglas director of personnel, recently declared that Negros are doing an outstanding job in all plants. Samuel Wattree works in the El Segundo plant of the Douglas Aircraft Company.

• Digital ID: (digital file from intermediary roll film) fsa 8e01292
• Reproduction Number: LC-USW33-028630-C (b&w film neg.)
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
• http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8e01292/

SAMUEL WATTREE
MASTER MECHANIC

Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, ANDINDEPENDENT THINKERS
.
Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

Sphere: Related Content

RACISTS DON'T REALLY HATE BLACK PEOPLE - THEY FEAR WHAT WE REPRESENT

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

RACISTS DON'T REALLY HATE BLACK PEOPLE - THEY FEAR WHAT WE REPRESENT

.

A Discussion On Race Between Interracial Peers  

DURING SLAVERY THE ONLY BLACK PEOPLE WE KNEW WHO SPOKE
"PROPER" ENGLISH WERE HOUSE SLAVES, AND MANY OF THEM
LOOKED DOWN ON FIELD SLAVES. AS A RESULT, MANY OF US
EQUATE INTELLECT WITH "TRYING TO BE WHITE," SO WE HAVE AN
AVERSION TO, OR REJECT, OUR OWN NATURAL INTELLIGENCE.  

Let's keep it real and stop trying to emulate our oppressors. The BLM movement needs to tone down their militant rhetoric because they don't have the resources to back it up. Black people are only 13.2% of the population, so if they turn off the rest of the public and find themselves without allies, they can't win one battle alone.  In addition, the modern Black man doesn't have a heart for laying his life on the line. That's why we've been abused for the past 250 years. 
.
But there's a reason why we're no longer warriors.  It's because the adversity that we've endured over the centuries have made us MORE rather than less, and we've evolved into the people of the future. The murder and mayhem of battle is an animalistic, brain STEM activity that lower animals used prior to developing a cerebral cortex, or higher intellectual brain function. They all had the instincts of a snake. They didn't have the ability to think, so their first response to any problem was to attack.
.
But again, due to the adversity that Black people have endured over the centuries, we've evolved and adapted to overcome that adversity. As a result of having to deal with both overt and covert racists every day of our lives, we've developed an intellectual muscularity that has made it possible for us to out-think our enemies. 
.

What we refer to as "Soul" is Black creativity straining to burst forth and be utilized. The very same creativity that goes into the making of a Ray Charles, an Areatha Frankiln, or John Coltrane, can easily be redirected toward math, science, politics, and engineering. That's why racists hate Barack Obama so passionately, because he's using the knowledge that he's gained from the Black experience to make them look like idiots. You see, he's utilizing a source of knowledge that they can't obtain at Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, and Black people as a whole have got to learn to draw on that unique source of creativity as well. We've got to get away from the brain stem mentality and limitations of our oppressors, because racists are the people of the past, while we're the people of the future. Our history lies before us.
.

BLM  IS MAKING THEMSELVES LOOK LIKE
THE BLACK COUNTERPART TO THIS GUY.  DOES HE LOOK
LIKE SOMEONE YOU'D WANT TO TAKE SERIOUSLY?

Racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them." 
.
That's what's driving radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they're so determined not to allow President Obama to be successful, even if it means destroying the country - and international corporatists are using the social division inherent in those sentiments to lower the standard of living of the American middle class. 
.
Thus, this entire nation, and the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusions of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if the country has to be sacrificed for that cause, so be it.
.

FELLOW AMERICANS, DON’T LET OUR IGNORANCE DESTROY US

.
The racist animosities that are running rampant among ALL segments of the American people are playing right into the hands of the those who are our most insidious enemy – the global corporatists. These people are intent upon enslaving us all. The only difference between literal slavery and what they have in mind for us is we'll have to provide our own housing.
.
These people are no longer Americans; they are now globalists, and America is just a virtual cotton field to them. And as long as they keep the poor and middle class fighting and hating one another, we’ll be powerless against their social and political manipulation. So "illegal aliens" and others are far from the biggest threat to the American way of life – the global corporatists are. 
.
If Al Qaeda represents a rattlesnake in America's garden, the corporate/GOP alliance represents a python under our bed. Al Qaeda can only destroy buildings, but the corporate/GOP alliance wants to destroy our entire way of life and replace American democracy with a system of corporate feudalism, where corporations, literally, control the nation. So it is essential that every man, woman, and child who is a part of the poor and middle class begin to recognize that fact, put our petty hatreds aside, and come together to fight our most insidious enemy - the global corporatist.
.

Suzette Sommer

AMEN. Damn, Eric, you covered so much TRUTH!
.
I grew up in a tiny racist town with Sunset Laws... I grew up with people who hated non-whites and gays and anybody "different."
.
I escaped at 18 - ended up in LA, and finally began to know the real world - a multi-racial multi-cultural world.
.
I am almost 65 so I have watched our society go through a lot.
We are making progress though not nearly enough. The younger people give me hope!
.
But more and more what I notice is the brilliance of our Black citizens... and I have been thinking the same thing: the reason some whites hate blacks so much is they do not want to compete with them because they know they will lose.
.
Not only in sports and feats of coordination and strength, not only in musical or performing talent, but also in feats of mental brilliance - look around and see how many are outstanding despite every obstacle society puts up - given even a tiny opening, so many black Americans reach and achieve. Just read that black women are the most educated segment of our society now.... and we now see leaders - black leaders and achievers everywhere.
EVERYWHERE.  Science, medicine, business, space, media, ballet, arts, engineering, on and on and on. It is no longer "rare." All from 13% of the population and despite how many in poverty? And I agree, the strength comes from deep in the heart and soul.

*

Wattree

Thank you so much for this, Suzette.
.
With you're permission I would love to use your comment to compliment this piece. You present a powerful and inspirational message that I think many young people need to hear. They need to understand that "God" made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. Thus, the essence of our being is what we THINK not what we look like. So our true brothers and sisters are those who THINK like we do, not those who merely LOOK like we do. In short, you're much more my sister than Clarence Thomas is my brother. Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, and Sarah Palin are of a different breed than we are, and it goes much deeper than just racial attitudes. You, myself, and Donna, who commented above, are the same kind of people. The color of our skin is superficial.
.

Absolutely fine with me. I mean every damn word.
.
I adore President Obama and only wish he COULD have a third term. I also consider Michelle our first truly modern First Lady - and I remember Mamie Eisenhower.
.
I have almost always lived on the Left Coast... it has only been these last several years of being on FB - making friends all over the place, that I have made friends in the South and TX and slowly begun to get insights into how horrible life in those areas really is for anybody who is not well-off and white.
.
The debacle in Ferguson MO was a huge eye opener. The shake down of a whole town by white people.
.
Due to social media, I have learned to see what privatized prisons are all about, what our "war on drugs" is really all about, how we will never have "equality" in this country until every damn neighborhood has equally GOOD schools, how there truly is a war on black people, non-white people and homeless and poor people of any color by our police... And how many people are beaten down by all of that.
.
Yet how many black Americans are rising up to great success and raising beautiful families despite it all. Things are changing. And the haters are being left behind. They are being exposed, outed, shown. They are raising hell right now.
.
But we are at a tipping point. Injustice is being seen. Really seen. And yes... BLM has pissed off some white people. But some of us listen to the rage in it and understand.  Because some of us have been feeling the same way about the police violence in particular: How can this go on!
.
I am still in shock about so many events - and they do just keep coming... and it has to stop. We will stop it. Just as in Nazi Germany... "First, they came for the Jews." Corruption touches and endangers us all.  I really do think a lot of white Americans get that.

*

David Snyder

One of the earliest white people to get it [regarding Black intelligence] was Mark Twain, regardless of his use of the word "nigger." He realized that once in a while, if he or she trusted you enough, he could get wisdom and insight from black people that didn't exist in whites. A former slave once said to him "You tell me where a man gits his corn pone [cornbread] from, I'll tell you what his '[o]pinions is." After thinking about it, he realized it was one of the most insightful things anybody ever said to him about the human condition.
.
Over the years, I've gotten myself into trouble and it's been non whites that have always had the best advice and explanations for me of what made my adversaries tick.

*

Wattree:
.

When I was a child my grandfather, Samuel Wattree, Sr., gave me some of the most insightful advice that any person could ever get, and it was especially designed to address adversarial situations just like the Black community is facing today. 
.
My grandfather was run out of Louisiana after a rich White family, essentially, tried to enslave my grandmother. She was working for the family as a domestic and the people's kids bonded with her, so the family wanted her to live there on the premises. They weren't brutal, or threatening, or anything - at first. In fact they were all syrupy grins, and spewing words of love, and "family" - at first. But the bottom line was, they wouldn't allow my grandmother to come home, and they insisted that my grandfather come live in a shack there on the premises.

.
So my grandfather pretended to cave in, and packed up all their belongings (including his gun). Thereafter, he pulled up on the property brandishing his weapon, told my grandmother to get the baby and get into the truck, and they drove off and kept going until they reach Los Angeles.  That was in 1931. They moved into a house a block or so away from the Dunbar Hotel. At that time my mother, their first child, was one year old, so I was born in Los Angeles. 
.
But by the time I was a little boy, my grandparents were doing pretty well and they could afford to go back to Louisiana once a year to visit (my grandfather was a master mechanic). I was attached to my grandparents at the hip because while my mother was in college they essentially raised me (My mother and I were more like sister and brother). So every year when my grandparents started packing to leave for Louisiana, it was all the way on. I raised hell from the moment I caught wind of the fact that they were leaving, until an hour after they walked out the door and the car was out of sight.  We went through the same ritual every year.
.
On one of such occasion, however, when I was about nine years old, my grandfather decided to use the occasion as a teaching moment and drop a little wisdom on me. He said, "You're right, you're not a baby anymore, but there's another reason we can't take you to Louisiana with us now - you talk too much and you could get us killed. You've got to learn to listen to what's on everybody else's mind, and never let anyone know what's on yours, because if you tell the next man everything that's on your mind, he'll then know everything you know, plus what he already knew, and that'll make him smarter than you are. So that's why you have to stay home - because we can't afford to let those White folks down South know more about us, than we know about them."

.
And that's the primary problem that I have with BLM.  They talk too much, and too recklessly. They don't seem to think things through, and they tend to shoot from the hip. They also seem to have far too many people among them who are so anxious to gain their ten minutes of fame that they're falling all over each other to jump in front of the cameras.
.
They're missing the point. The point is to gain America's support, and thereby, enough political allies to give us the clout to obtain our objective, not to shake our fist at the American people. That's a losing battle. So all they're doing is flapping their lips and giving the White establishment the ammunition to demonize the entire Black community by portraying us as a raging and reckless beast, a threat to America, and potential terrorists. 
.
Some may say that's ridiculous, but the more thoughtful among us recognize that the White establishment are experts at demonization - ask any American Muslim, or ask the parents of Trayvon Martin, who's son the White establishment converted from a child who simply went to the store to get some candy, into a violent gangster with a ravaging case of the munchies. By the time they were done they had demonized Trayvon so thoroughly that they convinced the jury that George Zimmerman had performed a public service to America by stalking, and then killing, a perfectly innocent child. They claimed that Zimmerman simply acted in self-defense, but how could he be acting in self-defense when HE was the stalker?  Trayvon was being stalked on a rainy night by a strange man who had a hundred lbs. on him. What about Trayvon's right to stand his ground?
.
George Zimmerman should be in prison today, but the simple facts above are the kind of things that get lost in the shuffle when everybody is screaming and hollering and nobody's thinking. So BLM needs to learn a lesson from that, a lesson that informs them of when and how to speak, about considering what they're going to say - BEFORE they say it - and when to keep their mouths shut and simply listen. And just as important, they need to learn to NEVER attack an ally. If the USSR and the United States hadn't learned that lesson during WWII we would be goose stepping today.
.
So as I've said many times before, while I agree with the overall objective of protecting Black lives - in fact, protecting ALL lives - the BLM is going at it like a raging beast without a brain, and by letting emotion trump serious and logical thought, they're going to end up causing even MORE Black lives to be lost.

*

WHY I LOVE BEING BLACK

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-i-love-being-black.html

Eric L. Wattree 
http://wattree.blogspot.com/ 
Ewattree@Gmail.com 
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA) 
.

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

Sphere: Related Content