Egypt by Jamie Robertson

Egypt by J.V.Robertson

Egypt

“...where the pavement ends... the red dirt road begins...”

Egypt, Leon County, Texas “Egypt is a ghost town in Leon County, Texas, United States” —From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia1

Driving from Houston to Dallas, passing numerous small towns, there is one that marks the halfway point between the two cities. With a population of only 903, Centerville boasts to be the Jerky Capital of the World. At Woody’s Smokehouse there are huge selections of tasty meats, preserves and deserts. Most people who travel interstate 45 know of this popular pit stop where they have bought Cranapple Jelly and Elk Sausage along with other things to complete their trip. This is not about Woody’s Smokehouse. Further down highway 811 and left on the ever-winding 7, there is another unincorporated community. Sitting way back in the woods, where the pavement ends and the red dirt road begins, there lies Egypt Community. Egypt is an isolated spot of land on the outskirts of Centerville. With rolling hills sprinkled with bales of hay, trees so tall they envelop the sky and vast green pastures, Egypt was once the residence of the African American families in Centerville. “Egypt was once…” is exactly right. When I searched for Egypt on Wikipedia, I only found eleven words “Egypt is a ghost town in Leon County, Texas, United States.” What happened to Egypt? Where are all the families that once lived there? Doesn’t it have a history? From its unsatisfying entry, it is certain that Wikipedia does not know.

1 ”Egypt, Leon County, Texas - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.” Main Page - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Egypt,_Leon_County,_Texas>.

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“Melvin...knows all about Egypt.” “ Yeah” “Ok, So the whole point of this interview is—that I was looking up online about Egypt Community...” “Know hold it Egypt Community?” “ Yeah in Centerville.” “In Centerville, ok” Melvin C. Lusk, an employee of the Houston Chronicle, knows all about Egypt. He grew up there. He was born May 18,1955 to Verna and General Lusk. I caught up with Melvin on a cool Saturday afternoon at a family barbeque—I failed to mention that Melvin is my uncle and my mother’s brother. While pork ribs, chicken,sausage links and salmon cooked on the pit I asked him questions about his childhood in Egypt and more importantly what did he think of the Wikipedia article.

“ ...and it was saying that it is a ghost town. So I am interviewing you because I wanted to know your thoughts on the article and also what was your child hood like growing up there.” “ Ok so you want me to elaborate on that?” “ Yeah so my first question is, what kind of (Egypt) community was it when you were growing up?” “ Okay, It was a great community. It was a great community, it was a lot of people… it wasn’t a ghost town… it was different families…everybody was in the same culture. It wasn’t different cultures because we were all black people…and you know after a few years the older people died. When the older people died the young people left and went to the city for better jobs. That’s what they came for, jobs.” “ So is that the reason you came to the city as well?”

“ How old were you when you came to Houston?” “17.” “ Was it hard adjusting to life in Houston opposed to life in the country?” “ No it really wasn’t that hard but— culture wise it wasn’t but physically, yeah” “ It was hard physically. How was it hard physically?” “ Physically it was hard because I didn’t understand a lot of the electronic gadgets.” “ Okay.” “ For instance, it was like I didn’t understand—let me give you an example…escalators” “ Escalators?” “ Right, I didn’t understand elevators…” “ Really? “ Yeah, Hell I had never been on an elevator.” “Tell the story!” At this point, our entire family had decided to sit in on our interview. My mother and grandmother, along with his aunt, daughter, son in law and grandson 7

Egypt

had all found spots around the barbeque pit under my grandma’s car porch.The huddled around us, sitting on my grandma’s eclectic patio furniture and the back of my uncle’s burgundy Chevy. I continued…

such as Louisiana and Arkansas. “ The Old South was like we dominate we do what we want to we feel like everything should stay like it was—the Revolutionary War, what you call the Civil War, they lost the war but they wanted to keep it like it was. They wanted to keep what they could preserve from the old days.”

“ I remember you saying something about being in Montgomery Ward…” “ I was in Montgomery Ward, and I saw an escalator, it was running and I rode it up and I rode it back down and I rode it back up again and I said it was a moving stairwell. And the security guard came and said ‘What are you doing?’ and I said ‘Man, look I’m riding this’, and he said, ‘You can’t do that’…” Everyone is cracking up at this point in the story. My uncle does have the reputation of being the comedian in our family.He continued with his story. “…So I said, ‘Okay, what I need to do?’ he said ‘You need to get on out of here or do what you need to do’… but I was I was just riding it up and down” “ So it was fun?” I suggested. “ Yeah it was because I liked stepping off of it because it was a moving stairwell” “ Wow, so what was the town Centerville like at that time?” “ It was like 1970...even though it was 1970 the town was still living like it was 1950. It was prejudice and they still believed in the Jim Crow laws.” “ Okay so was there a Klan (Klu Klux Klan) there? “ The Klan was present. The Klan was present, I don’t know who all was apart of the Klan but the Klan was present—it was all Jim Crow law. 8

“ Okay…so growing up in Egypt community, what are some of your memories growing up down there?”

Melvin Lusk in the 10th grade

“ So there weren’t any laws that said you had to hunt in season?

“So could you give an example of one of the laws in action?”

had been signed1. “ It took the town a while to get on board with integration?”

“ The laws were like if you were white and I am black then you don’t get together. No marriage, no togetherness anything like that. If you black, you white, you got a restroom that’s white, you got a restroom’s that black”

“ Yes it did, it took it almost three years because what happen was the actually president of the United States at that time said ‘Hey no more segregation anywhere’, and Leon County, Centerville, Texas was one of the last towns and counties to undo segregation.”

“ So it was still segregated in the ‘70s?” “ Right at the beginning of the 1970s, it was still segregated so we still had a black restroom and white restroom.” Honestly I wasn’t surprised. By 1968, four laws had been passed outlawing segregation including the well-known Brown vs. The Board of Education. In my opinion, Texas was always the last to regulate or inform its citizens about laws pertaining to its Black residents. If you don’t believe me research Juneteenth, a black holiday “commemorat[ing] the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas in 1865”, which was one year after the bill

“ Egypt, it was a great community. I mean the air was good; life was good, no traffic, and no crime. I do whatever I wanted to, I ran free. Played where I wanted to play, I hunt whatever I wanted to hunt

“ Why do you think it was one of the last towns? “ Because they were a mix up from the old South.” True. Centerville is nestled in the Piney Woods of East Texas. While Texas is a Southwestern state, depending on which end of the state you are on, the people and landscape change. Centerville being on the East had similarities to neighboring Southern States Juneteenth - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.” Main Page - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 19 Apr. 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth>. 1

“ Oh yeah I had restrictions on laws, as to what season it was, whether I could hunt deer, hunt coon, hunt rabbit. I had all those restrictions but I stayed within the law. I wasn’t a lawbreaker! Of coarse everyone under the car porch got a kick out that last bit. You couldn’t tell us a person nicknamed ‘Bad-Eye’ was never up to something. “ Okay, you have two sisters and you grew up with one of them the other one was in Buffalo. What was like growing up with your sister? What kind of stuff did yall do when yall were little? “We played a whole lot and I loved her a whole lot which I still do today,” he said in a reminiscent tone. “…But she was mean. She didn’t’ know at the time what she was doing she was small and would do physical stuff to me, like bite me.”

“ Never again, it will never be populated like it was before.” “ She use to bite you?” “ Yeah she would leave her teeth marks but it wasn’t anything permanent. It wasn’t anything bad but we overcame all that…” “ So just regular sibling fights…”

we all had to laugh. Yet like everyone else listening I was a bit confused.

“ Yeah just regular sibling ideals and such but I loved it all.”

“ Why not?” I asked.

“ Okay so presently not to many people live in Egypt right now.” “ No” “ Do you think maybe there will be a population shift to where people will move back or is it just going down hill?”

“ No, I would never move back down there because it’s boring and not only is it boring the people who were down there aren’t there anymore and that’s what I was use to when I was raised up there. So their not there and so it’s boring. And even if it’s not boring it’s dangerous.”

“ Never again, it will never be populated like it was before. Never again because people left to find good jobs in the cities (Houston and Dallas) and they did. They found what they wanted in the cities. They come back on weekends you know to have a place to retreat but once that’s over with and their done— in other words their lifetime, I think that the retreats might carry on with the people left but it will never be populated like it was before because right now its not populated like it was.” “ Okay so do you think you would ever move back down there?” “ NO!” he yelled in to the recorder on my cell phone. At this response,

Melvin and his sister Mira

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“ It’s dangerous? How is it dangerous?” “ It’s dangerous because it’s way back and it’s isolated and law enforcement covers it but not every day. It’s not patrolled.” “ So your saying it was the people that really made the community great?”

“Look, it’s not about big time, it’s not about big city, it’s not about big government, it’s not about big dollars. What it is about is being comfortable, feeling good, understanding your surroundings, understanding what you have, understanding who’s with you, understanding what the community is made up of. Understanding and being free.”

“ Yeah because people are the community.They are always the ones who build a community. No community comes up on its own it’s got to be the people. Everything that happens in a community its all about the people. See it’s just like the government and the democracy. It’s all about the people, the people rule. You understand? Whatever the people said that’s the way it is. And in Egypt community, at one time it was a lot of people and the people ruled. And the people were the ones who made Egypt community. Back then I loved it” “ So it’s really about the people and without the people its boring. So it isn’t because you came to the city and was exposed to new technologies that make Egypt look smaller?”

Howard Middleton, Melvin’s uncle standing in Egypt’s cotton field.

Good Food. You had Pork, Beef, chicken, squirrel, greens, beans, peas, okra, squash, corn whatever you want to call it we had it. The thing is just because we were way back in there didn’t mean we didn’t have good healthy food. We had it all; tomatoes—we had it all we grew it all.”

He looked me square in the face and said, “Look, it’s not about big time, it’s not about big city, it’s not about big government, it’s not about big dollars. What it is about is being comfortable, feeling good, understanding your surroundings, understanding what you have, understanding who’s with you, understanding what the community is made up of. Understanding and being free.”

“ Even your own meat?”

“Okay.” I said very humbled by my uncle’s response.

“ Like with a knife and scrape it off?”

“ That’s what it’s about being free.”

“ Yeah.”

“ What was the food like?”

I knew a little about the messy process of slaughter, thanks going to family reunions in Egypt and

“ OH!! Let’s talk about that. Food.

“ Yeah we killed our own pork and cured it and all that stuff and did it for ourselves.” “ That’s a lot of work. What all did you have to do? “ Clean chitterlings, gut a hog, take the inners out, and take the fat off. Before that I had to take its hair off.”

of coarse Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations on the travel channel. “ Before that I had to build all the fire and everything…” “ How old were you when you first started doing all this?” “ I was about 12.” “Now I remember my mom saying yall use to pick cotton.” “Yes, we picked cotton.” “Why were yall picking cotton?” “ For money.” my mom answers matter of factly. “Cotton was one of the resources at the time and one of the best ones you could get money for,” my uncle replied. “My grandmother and her sister and her brother, they got together and leased this land down at the bottom, the bottom of the community and they decided to raise cotton. And it was a lot of it, believe me; it was like 100 11

Egypt

Left: Melvin’s Grandmother,Maggie Lee Middleton, with her brotherin-law Right: Construction of the Lusk home in the 1950s

Maggie Lee along with other residents of Egypt Community.

to 200 acres. It was everywhere. They planted all this cotton and my daddy, your grandfather, he worked it and plowed it and after that he went somewhere and worked construction or where ever while it grew. My grandmother and my auntie what they would do is hire all the people in the community to pick cotton. They’d put ‘em all on the back of the truck, just like Millicent and ‘em sitting right now, at seven o’clock in the morning and take ‘em down to the field and say hey get you sack and get you a row and go down the row and pick it all out. Pick it all out; bring it back to a trailer. Just before you put in the trailer—they had a scale…” “So you could weigh it?” “Yeah, you could weigh it. And they would write down how much you put in.” “So it was black people planting the cotton?” “Yeah and it was black people picking it! Now this is what is going’ get you, a lot of the time it was only 12

thirty or forty cents a pound.” “Are you serious? For cotton and cotton was one of the biggest cash crops?” “ It was five hundred dollars a bale.” “Five hundred a bale, so how much does a bale weigh?” “Well at that time it weighed—well it still does, about 250-275lbs.” “That doesn’t seem like it add ups.”

and I don’t think they would say the place they lived had good memories like yours.” “That’s right, but that was in the 1950s. I remember I picked twenty pounds and I ain’t even get a dollar.” “That’s not right.” “No” “Was it because yall were black?”

“No, it doesn’t”

“No, I was working for my own grandmother.”

“Now I could be off on my numbers a little bit.” My uncle suggested.

“It just wasn’t making a lot of money…”

“Regardless it wasn’t what yall were owed?”

“You don’t think it’s a lot of money but back then it was. See back then you could go to the store and buy a pound of flour, bacon, sugar, a loaf of bread—this is 1963. You could buy a six pack of soda.”

“Yeah it was like…” he paused to recollect his thoughts. “If you picked cotton all day and you was really tired and you came home in the afternoon and you might have made about a dollar.” “There are people in third world countries who make a dollar a day

“And how much was all this stuff?” “Two dollars and seventy five cents.”

“For everything? You can’t do that now.” “But at

that time two dollars and seventy five cents was a hell of a lot of money. If a person made a hundred dollars a week, they were rich. A hundred dollars week compared to a thousand dollars a week today meant the same thing.”

“ Okay, so while you were down there were you going to school? Or were you home schooled?” “ Oh, I was going to school. I was going to public school. I was going to the Centerville Independent School District.” “ What was it like going to school in Centerville?” “ Centerville ISD supplied everything they could have possibly supplied for you at the time for whatever their budget supplied you for.”

His response told that maybe the district didn’t have a lot of money.“ Okay…” I replied.

were invisible or were they pickin’?”

“ But at that time they were still in a prejudice type mode. Ok to where when I first started it was still segregated. We still had two schools. One school was the white school and other school was the black school. And if we wanted to go to the white school we could. And if you wanted to go to the black school then you stay at the black school. It was only five who went to the white school.”

“Did they call you a picaninny?” My mom asked sort of half serious with a smile.

“ It was only five?” “ Yeah and I was one of the five. I was the only one in elementary at the time.” “ So How was that? Did they treat you any different?” “Yeah they treated me with prejudice, like I wasn’t suppose to be there, like they didn’t want me there, like I wasn’t as good as they were.” “ So did they treated you like you

“ Pickin’! ”

“They called me Nigger!” My uncle yelled in a serious tone that bordered on comedic. “So were you fighting the white kids?” his daughter, Millicent asked. “ Black and white.” “Why were you fighting the black kids?” she said confused. “ Because a lot of the time the black kids wanted to be with the white kids so the white kids would put the black kids up to fight you.” “ They were playing yall against each other.” I stated. “ That’s right.” “ And that was in what grade?”

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“ 6th.” “ That’s crazy that you had 6th graders doing that whole divide in conquer.”

I went through a Hell of a lot in school. A lot of people don’t go through that. A lot of people have never been through that, you understand? Sometimes I had to fight to

I later found out that in high school, the number of black students rose to fifteen.

get to the class room.”

“Growing up in a small town, I grew up with my grandmother. She didn’t keep up with times so I didn’t. I was happy I had a good life.”

“You had to fight to get to the class room?”

“ There is a lot space up there. How far are you neighbors?”

“And then when I got in the classroom, the teacher told me ‘You late’.”

“ Two miles.”

“

“Growing up in a small town, I grew up with my grandmother. She didn’t keep up with times so I didn’t. I was happy I had a good life.”

“ Did the teacher know you were fighting?” “Yes.” “ The teacher saw the whole thing?” “ Yeah because the white boy I was fighting she didn’t say he was late, I was late!” “ So it was kind of like the five of you that were there were on your own?” “ Yeah.” “Tell her about Douglas.” My mom said. “ What is Douglas?” I asked. “ Douglas was the all black school before integration. It was grades 1-12.” “Oh ok.” “ Remember Egypt is a small community and Centerville is a small community so you could build one building and fit everybody in there. The 12th grade might be

fifteen students and the 1st grade like nine. My first five years there was good. You know we had our little difference you know I fought there too.”

Melvin in the Summer of 1976

“ Did majority of your family come from Egypt or did they come from other towns?” “ My father was raised there; my mother came from another small town called Jewett.” “ Were there any other ethnic groups in Centerville?” “Sure, Hispanic, White, Black. Dominate white though.” “ What about Native American?

Melvin and cousin wondering down CR122

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Were there any?” “ No. No.” I was a little confused by this because I just always assumed that there were Native Americans living amongst them but there wasn’t. “I asked because our family has Native American blood…” “ Bloodlines yes…but actual Native Americans to say ‘I’m Cherokee and this is what I am’ no.” “ So in regards to the Wikipedia reference, it just had one sentence about Egypt, do you feel like it really defines Egypt Community?” “ No it doesn’t…because it’s not a ghost town. The reason they define it as a ghost town is because at one time about thirty years ago there were more people in Egypt then in Centerville.” “ So why do they call Egypt, Egypt? “Some of the features you know like the grass, the trees the way things grew in the ground they felt like it was a biblical type place.” “ So do you agree with that?” “ Not really.” “ Why not?” “Because when hard times come like we have now with the weather changes and environmental changes, everything changes. It not like everything changes around the world and it leaves Egypt alone.”

Special Thanks

Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe (even though she may never read this) for making a forgotten culture known Uncle Melvin, for being so cooperative and insightful into my research Verna Lusk and Mira Robertson, my grandma and mother respectively, for encouragement and all the stories about life in Egypt Most importantly, God, for giving my niche

I have always enjoyed learning about different cultures as well as my own heritage and family history. My artwork has been greatly influenced by African and Latin American cultures as of late and this assignment is no exception. After viewing Jeanne Moutoussamy-Asheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photographic essay on Daufauskie Island, I was inspired by her documentation of the last remnants of Gullah culture of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Her documentation, of the last years of the islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s community, inspired me to investigate another lost community, Egypt. My family comes from humble beginnings in rural East Texas, which is ever so present in our speech, actions and traditions. I love my family and I am grateful for them. I dedicate this project to my family and the memory of my Pawpaw, General C. Lusk.