Delta Chinese Reflections & Reunion As time marches on there have been many changes to this Delta we love. Lots of the things many of us lived, remember, and have fond memories of are gone forever except in our reflections. As it is with all generations in all parts of the world, our children & grandchildren will know nothing of these experiences, structures that they were built around, or way of life that has all but vanished down the river of time. Although these changes are the way of the world, life in Our Delta was and is different than anywhere else on the planet. The only way that the younger generation can know and understand what is lost is through our shared words, stories, and photographs of our memories and our histories of life as we knew it here in this fertile crescent of land known worldwide as The Delta. Many of the pages here on FB are aiding us in keeping alive these histories we share causing our memories to come alive with places, things, sights, and sounds that would otherwise be lost in the winds of change. I hope that some of the younger generation are reading these post. Many of the communities and towns that were thriving centers of our life are now no more than shadows of what they were if they still exist at all. Schools we attended and stores we shopped in are closed and torn down or vacant left in a crumbling state of abandonment with broken out windows and doors ajar surrounded by weeds and saplings. High School hangouts, service stations with “full service”, and picture shows are but mere memories. Vast fields of crops that now reach as far as the eye can see were once dotted with family homes, barns and sheds, and tenant houses. Even the very flow of the land with its ridges, low spots, drainage ditches, and turnrows has gone the way of reforming it into larger, flatter fields directing drainage from its natural course. One of the many things that has mostly disappeared from the Delta life we knew both in the small communities, towns, and cities is the local merchant’s stores owned and operated by a Chinese family. They all lived in the back and ran the store in the front and every little community and town had one. In the bigger towns and cities, there were often multiple ones generally located in or on the edges of sections of the community where African Americans resided. Most of these establishments have now disappeared with many of the families moving out across the world. The “Chinaman Store” in Schlater was owned and operated by Joe Chow & his family. The children went to school with us at Sunnyside Elementary and Leflore Co. High. They left Schlater and the Delta in ’67 headed to California. On the weekend of October 24th & 25th, there will be a Gatherin’ in Cleveland of many of the Chinese that have left here or their descendants, a Gatherin’ called Delta Chinese Reflections & Reunion. I wonder if any of the Chow Family is coming to it? I would love to know what happened to my childhood friends that left so long ago.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 21:30:06 +0000
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