The Brick mason and Rance Allen (Monroe, Michigan)
by MEGAN GOINS-DIOUF
in Fall 2022
Karim Brown, from On Being a Child, 2022
Here, is a written appreciation and so, to her grandfather and father, are reminiscences shared with his daughter.
Part I. The Brick mason
He was a brick mason. I worked for him as a brick mason helper.
And you know he really, I don’t know if he did it any other way because I only had seen him lay brick, him and Uncle Jim. When they used to, when they had a building that they’d build downtown, or where shoppers were, passing by, they’d put on like a minstrel show. I never saw it after I saw them, I don’t know if I saw anybody do it after I saw them.
A minstrel show?
It’s reminiscent of the shoe-shine boys, you know, when they shine shoes they have a rhythm to the shine, they pop the rag and they do the dance, and they shine, and, yes, they do it around the back, and they do it that way.
He'd lay brick like that.
And people used to, white people (because that was all that’s in Monroe), they’d put up a barricade because people would stand and watch him, and they’d put on a show. It was good for his business, because they’d wanna know, “Who's that guy?”
I don’t remember exactly what it was, but they used to tap the end of the trough at the same time, tap, and then they’d make the exact movement when they laid it with the trough. And you lay in one direction and the other person lays in the other direction on the wall, and get to the end of the line, tap the trough and walk back, and start all over again.
And he did a little skip-dance.
And he’d do something with the mortar, he used to, my Dad did, with laborers around, he only showed me once because he didn’t do this stuff around me.
He made a mound of mortar with the trough, and then he put a little slit in it. And he’s shoveled it in the mud, and it looked just like a vagina.
Part II. Rance Allen in (Monroe, Michigan)
I saw him at the funeral. And they played that over and over and over again. You watched Rance Allen’s funeral? Who gave it to you?
It’s 5:15, a quarter after. Do you want to start with Rance Allen?
Rance Allen, he could sing since he was six.
And you’ve known him that long?
Yes, we lived in the same area. Rance lived one, two, three blocks from me.
You were on Clark Street. He lived down there on Elmira. He lived three blocks from me. He lived down on Elmira.
So, you go from my house up the street, another street, turn, and then you’d see Rance’s House. I’m pretty sure he was raised on a dirt road.He’s got two brothers, two of his natural brothers. They called one Man and Stevie, and they were raised on a dirt road.
And you’d go over there and Rance would be out on the porch playing the piano, yea, you’d go down the street, with two of his natural brothers. They called one of the Man, and the other was Stevie.
They built the house eventually, when I became a teenager, they built that house, and they were raised on a dirt road. You’d go over there and Rance would be on the porch playing the piano, you go down the street to Uncle Jim’s house.
He lived across the street from Mother’s house. Across the street from Uncle Jim’s house. Aunt Bee’s house was around the corner and across the street.
And Rance was right across the street from her. They are the same people. Yep, Rance, Man and Stevie. He was light-skinned, he was smaller than Rance and Man. Man was a big guy.
I brought Mom this big plant, it had big leaves like this, and it grew bigger and bigger and bigger. That was a cool plant, it took up that whole front room. That was Mother’s house. It was huge. It was too big to grow, but I grew it anyway. Somebody has a big picture next to that plant.
On every holiday, every Mother’s day, Rance would have a party. He’d have a party every mother’s day, and he’d pull out the piano. And he’d play on the porch and everybody would gather around his house. They’d gather from all around town to watch Rance play. And he’d sing. He can! He can sing.
It was mostly him. And he’d sing, and then Man and Stevie. And the three of them could sing. And they’d stand there, play and sing. And they’d play and sing all day.
Everyday around this time of year is when they’d pull out their stuff and start playing on the porch and singing. And that happened.
And Rance’s mother died.
She was an old lady. But you know you wouldn’t recognize her as being a part of their group because she was big, she was a big woman. She’d come out on the porch and holler at you, from the kids around there. Because it was really me, Jim, Millie; and she’d holler at us for hanging around.
Daddy must have built a porch on uncle Jim’s house, but I think he didn’t finish it. He didn’t finish the porch. It was made of brick. Daddy didn’t finish the porch, and Uncle Jim stopped paying him.
I remember Chris, Chris who was their son, he used to threaten Uncle Bill, and he was really violent. Not his biological son, they had adopted him and his brothers from Pittsburg.
He was good, Chris served a lot of time in prison. He was over there at Aunt Bee’s.
He was mean, Chris was mean. He was still just a kid to me. But he used to jump on Uncle Bill, until Dad gave him a rifle. He was in the Marines and he wouldn’t use guns anymore. He would not shoot him. Chris was mean, he’d jump on you, but he wouldn’t shoot. Everybody thought he should have shot him, but he wouldn’t shoot him. He eventually gave the rifle back to my Dad; my Dad would have shot him.
Then one day, after my Dad died, Brian, who was a sneak’s thief. Brian was a sneak thief. And then after my Dad died, for a long time after that, he’d break into Mom's house and just steal everything she had. That’s when she had married John, and John didn’t want to shoot him either. Mom told John not to shoot him. And one day I come home from lunch, and he’s up on the porch, and I’m calling him, and he walks off the porch to the car, and I hit him. And I knocked him down, and the police came, and I left.
And there was a period of time when I wasn’t over there, I was over at Aunt bee’s, and I was telling the police the entire time, someone had been going into K-Mart, and they discovered that someone was knocking people out at the door.
Somebody would sneak into K-Mart and he’d knock the person out. And everyone was wondering who that is. And I knew that.
Brian had picked up his stuff and left, and no one has seen him since then. About three years ago he got caught in a store in Toledo. He had gone off and robbed someone, armed robbery, and he left.
When we were little, it was a holiness church. I’d go by his church at night, and listen to him play and sing.
I used to open the door and listen to him play and sing holiness songs. Dancing. Playing. I’d never go in. I was afraid. We were Jehovah Witnesses at that time, but he could play his butt of then. Rance could play his behind off then. But you’d never know what he was playing, because it was holy music. On the spot, he could play or he could sing.
Megan Goins-Diouf is a substitute teacher in Toledo, Ohio.