Oh, yeah. A whole lot. I used to get a great kick out of it, because I
knew everybody on that hill, at one time. I knew the names of every
child I had, and I knew the names of most of the dogs. And the dogs all
knew me, too. I could walk around in that place, and they'd come up and
wag their tail and I never worried about getting dog bit, because they
thought I was one of the family, in the neighborhood. And night or day,
you'd go in.
But I'd go in, and I knew which woman was fiddling around with which one
of her neighbors. I knew which one of the women that her husband was
fiddling around with. And it'd happen sometimes that one of them would
pick up a venereal infection, and I knew exactly where she got it from.
Then the mate came in with it, and . . . I knew that he'd caught it from
his wife; but he wasn't sure, because I knew some of the other ladies
he's fooling with, and a few that should be in. We didn't have this
business of reporting the disease, in those days,
and the Health Department would go out and run everybody down, and
control it. Lot of times, when those patients would get in that fix,
they'd let the women come on a Tuesday, and the husband would come in
Thursday, and make certain it would never be that they'd meet each other
in there. I figured that if they wanted to tell each other, that was
their business.
We doctors, going from people's homes, we know lots and lots of things. I
told my father one time, I says, "You're a minister, and I'm a doctor,"
I said, "but you just don't have any idea what goes on, among the
members of your church." I says, "You go in, and this lady meets you at
the door with a smile on her face, and invites you in, and children all
come in, husband; and ask you to have a prayer with them when they
leave. But a doctor knows of four nights before that, there's a big
drunken party around that thing, and trading wives and husbands. And
somebody got hurt, and he had to go out there. He knows what's going
on." But I said, "When they see the preacher coming up, they run up the
front room, get the Bible, and dust all the dust off it, and straighten
the place up, and grab the old whiskey bottles off, and hide 'em back in
somewhere. And we walk in, it's all sitting out on the
tables."
That wasn't too unusual a sight, when Preacher Swinney first started out
there, and Glen Hope Church. I'd see it, and I knew about it, but we
never . . . never mentioned it, even the next door neighbors, because
those next door neighbors don't know it, it's not my business to tell
them. And that way you keep people's confidence, because they know that
you're not go going to betray them. Preacher Swinney was that way, too.
He'd set down and talk to them directly, and personal, and tell them all
about it. But he didn't go out and tell anybody
else, and call them by name, or any of that sort of stuff. That's one
reason he had their confidence. Another reason, he had empathy with
them, because he'd worked in the mill, too. He knew what it was.
After I came back from World War II, and came to Greensboro to practice,
I was down in Burlington one Saturday morning, and I was coming back
about noontime. There was a gentleman who was [UNCLEAR] on
the highway, walking. I stopped and picked him up. (I recognized him.)
And I said to him, "What are you doing now?" Says, "Well, I'm working in
the mil, but I'm preaching on weekends." I said, "Where do you preach?"
Said, "Do you have a church?" Said, "No, I don't have a church," said,
"I don't have education enough to talk to people in a church," says,
"they would make fun of me. But I have the biggest church in the world:
the sky for a roof, and the earth for the floor."
He was headed to Greensboro to a place we called "Hamburger Square." You
ever hear of Hamburger Square? Hamburger Square is an old part of
downtown Greensboro, that used to be sort of an elite hotel there, and a
nice place, down by the railroad tracks. But as time passed it by, they
got two or three little Greek hot dog stands down there, and beer
joints. And that's where all the winos hung out. That elite hotel I was
telling you about—it was a small place up over the stores—that's where
the prostitutes did their business. They'd pick them up off that street
down there. That's where the roughest part of town that you can go to,
where the drunks and that kind of mess was going on.
He'd head up to that street, and right in the middle of them, and open up
his Bible-standing on the sidewalk. And he had a loud, loud voice.
He'd start reading the Scripture, and take his
text, and start preaching. And the folks would gather around him, over
around—so forth. And he says, "You know," says, "that's the only people
I understand, 'cause I've drunk enough whiskey to float a battleship."
Says, "I know what that guy's going through, and what his problem is."
Says, "I've been there. And I take a poor prostitute, and we go up by
her room, and I sit and talk to her," says, "I'm too old for anything
else. And get her down on her knees, and we pray about it; and she quits
that kind of messings, becomes a decent woman."
He says, "Now, the man who's got a big church, is no way that he can
reach those people, because they not going to come to him. And he can't
go to them." He died a few years ago, too, but he was one of Preacher
Swinney's protégés. /pause/
But we had an old lady who was a midwife, down in that area.