Chapter 9
Bubba Vandi was born in the South Carolina area and attended both elementary and high school in Warrenton the county seat of Coldwell County. His family lived in a three-room shack five miles off the main highway about 15 miles south of town. It was one of the several houses that accommodated the remnant Geechee families living in the area. Bubba’s great grandfather, Hamilton Vandi, inherited three hundred acres of prime cotton farmland that had been in his family since before the civil war. It was an anomaly for a black man to own such large acreage in the area at the time. It was even more of an enigma that the Vandi property had remained undivided for so long.
When Hamilton Vandi died at the age of 90 years old, he was one of the last of the people who were born during the civil war. In his early years, the social and economic ravages brought on by the events of the time left Hamilton no alternative but to serve the white plantation owners. It was accepted practice for entire families to submit to the subterfuge of the often evil and unjust social infrastructure. But fortunately, a few of the British aristocracy who landed on the shores of America in the 1700s were principled men.
Hamilton Vandi’s ancestors were lucky enough to have fallen into the hands of one such plantation owner named Zem Bolen. When King Charles II sent his governors to the New World to promote England’s expansion of the new frontier, he made Lord Caldwell the Proprietor of several thousand square miles of South Carolina. The area was located mostly in the low marshy lands southwest of Charlestown. Bolen knew there were little chances of producing commercial quantities of rice, the staple of the day, without large numbers of laborers. He learned quickly the best way to make the large number of slaves productive was to select a few special slaves from their ranks to lead the others. Then he would substantially reward a faithful and effective leader. Molina Vandi, Hamilton’s grandfather, turned out to be one of Bolen’s most faithful and enterprising black leaders. He was loyal to his master and learned to efficiently grow and harvest rice and a small amount of cotton on the highest ground of the swamp. As a result, his master became enormously wealthy and was among Lord Proprietor Caldwell’s elite.
As the mid to late 1700s turned the colonist attitude towards independence, the extended families of both Zem Bolen and his slave enforcer, Molina Vandi, grew. Then in 1750, there was a slave revolt among the Geechee and Gullah slaves in the low country of South Carolina and Georgia. This resulted in the slave owners taking a different tact with their slaves. They promised each family an opportunity to sharecrop as much property as they could handle. Much of the property in the region was divided into forty acres per head of household plus an additional forty acres for each male offspring over 16 years old. By now, Molina Vandi was well into his 80s, but one of his sons, Sauna Vandi, Hamilton’s father and his devoted wife had eight children. They were all boys. The youngest was twelve years old. Bolen, also in his waning years, made another promise he never expected to fulfill. He promised his sharecroppers if they planted and produced a good harvest every year for ten years, the head of the household and his family would become free, with all rights and preludes of a landowner. This included a legitimate title to the property he and his children had been tending.
Bolen had title to over 2,000 acres of property by the time of his death. Before his death, a small settlement near the center of the property was established. Over the years, it became known as Bolenville. During his younger days, Bolen was a dedicated British Nobleman. But it was plain that his dedication to Briton would do him no good as most of the rebellious colonists severed their ties to the motherland. Coming to American in his early twenties, he had grown to respect the hard working slaves. As he promised, he eventually made his slaves free men and transferred the title of all his property to those he once owned and who had made him a very successful entrepreneur. In the time of hostility among every segment of men, he realized the colonialist would probably contest the title to the legitimate ownership of the property after he died. Never the less he decided to do what he thought was right and let the chips fall where they may. It was fortunate for the once slaves, the lowland was of little value for anything but growing rice. Because of the conflict with the mother country, rice was not in demand. The colonialists never contested ownership of the property Bolen left to his slaves.
As Bubba drove up to the old shack on the outskirts of Bolenville he stopped and looked casually around. Memories flooded his mind. He was born and raised here. His father was born and raised here. He was the most recent Vandi of a long line of ancestors that had lived, suffered, and had happy times in this spot. Bubba walked up the steps and through the door hanging by only one hinge. He looked around in the first room. Cobwebs hung in every corner. His mother, father, and two siblings slept in this room. It was no larger than twenty by twenty feet. He walked through the second much smaller room where his grandfather and grandmother, and before them, his great grandfather had slept.
As he entered the kitchen, he was able to visualize the old wooden cooking stove that used to sit on the right side of the room. Some enterprising thief had probably salvaged it long ago and made a good penny on selling it as an antique. At the end of the small room was a fireplace with an opening of no more than three feet wide and about the same height. At the age of six, Bubba would crawl up onto his Great-Great Grandfather’s lap, who usually sat beside the fireplace in a rocking chair reserved for only him. Hamilton Vandi was in his nineties and remembered his own grandfather telling him stories about the African homeland.
Bubba liked the stories and never missed a word.
“Papa,” Bubba would ask, “Was you a slave?”
“At one time my child, but I was lucky, I had a good Massa. My great-grandfather worked hard and helped make the Massa a rich man. He gave old Vandi this land to work.”
“Did you know lots of slaves Papa?”
“Oh yes, almost every black man was a slave. Only a few of the Geechee people in and around Bolenville were freemen.
“Why weren’t you a slave Papa?”
“Oh, it’s a long story, but the real reason is that way back when my great grandfather worked for Massa Bolen who owned the whole plantation and was the plantation overseer. When Massa Bolen died, he willed my great grandfather his freedom as well as 300 acres of land. It is the land where this house sits and the property all around it. That’s what happened, BuhBuh.”
“Papa, my name is Bubba, not BuhBuh.”
“Oh, it is too? You see the Geechee word BuhBuh means little boy. You really are BuhBuh, Bubba. Little boy Bubba.”
A shuffling of debris in the attic of the old house interrupted Bubba’s mental sortie into his childhood. Glancing up he saw a black snake feasting on an unfortunate rat on the rafters above. He walked out of the house leaving the environment to continue its deterioration of what was left of the Vandi homestead. The sojourn into his childhood was a therapeutic respite.