Dummie

Dummie was all that I ever heard him called. As a preschooler, I sometimes would see a large black man in our neighborhood. I say large because everyone was large to me, but I used my father as the standard. If someone was taller than my dad, he was large. Anyway, my mother told me that the man was called Dummie because he could not hear and therefore could not speak. That, in itself, was a new revelation to me.

I suspect that Dummie did yard work for some people, but I never saw him except when he was walking in the street by our house. He always had a big grin on his face and would give a wave. Shortly after I began school, Dummie seemed not to be around anymore. One can hope that maybe he went to The Tennessee School for the Deaf, but I doubt it. In this day and time, his life would have been very different.