Can anyone provide any more information about these people beyond what's on this web site?
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The Jackson Whites
http://www.netstrider.com/documents/whites/
From The Introduction:
My parents moved the family way, way out in the country, after my baby
brother was born, to a little tract house in the middle of the Preakness Valley in Passaic County, New Jersey. The valley was open and green and filled with Dutch dairy farms and Italian truck gardens. It lay snuggled between the Ramapo and Watchung ridges. Our family was one of the first to move into the new neighborhood between Old Man van der Veen's dairy cows and Mrs. Capodimaggi's vegetable garden. One day in mid-summer, not long after we'd moved in, a new kid showed up at the baseball diamond the us kids had carved out of one of the still-vacant lots. His name was Willie G. Mann, Jr., or, just "Junior." He became one of my best friends for reasons I didn't understand until many years
later.
I was a fat kid. I was usually the last to be picked when the kids chose up sides for baseball. I could hit OK, but I couldn't catch worth a damn and I couldn't run fast either. More often than not, I'd wind up in the middle of a fight over whose team I'd made lose the last time - until Junior showed up.
The kids on the block thought Junior was "weird-looking" and said so. His
complexion was almost bronze. He had sparkling Blue Plate Special blue eyes and jet black, curly hair. He looked for all the world like an Indian to me. To the kids on the block it was clear he wasn't "one of us." He was lanky and athletic, though. It almost seemed he could hit a home run with one hand tied behind his back, catch a pop fly blind-folded or round the bases in a blur and slide into home without a drop of sweat on his brow. He was a natural, and that was all that mattered to them.
Junior's folks had moved into a little house up the block from mine. Their
old home in Mahwah was just a few miles away over the mountain in Bergen County. We didn't know it when we first met Junior, but the Manns belonged to a group that the farmers' kids called the "Jackson Whites." There was bound to be a fight when one of Old Man van der Veen's boys called Junior "Bockie," "Jack," or "Whitey." Junior won all these fights. This meant that he soon became captain of
one of the neighborhood baseball teams. They called Junior's team, sort of half as grudging recognition and half as insult, the Jackson Whites, but only behind his back.
Junior would pick me first for his team amid jeers of "Oh, no! Not Fatso, again! Jeez!" I'd take my place at his side, ready to defend him against the jeers of "Hey, Jack! Bockie! You nuts?" that followed. I couldn't run very fast, but when I got someone down and sat on him, he stayed down. It became a routine as comfortable as an old shoe. I didn't mind the jeers anymore and the fights
became less and less frequent. Together, Junior and I could take on the world, and did. Apart, the farmers' kids could get the better of us, and did. We won our fair share. That's all.
Before long, Junior and I became inseparable. We went everywhere together. Junior had almost an innate knowledge of the hills and trails around the valley. He knew the names of plants and what they were used for. He'd tear up a stalk of touch-me-not, rub it on a mosquito bite and the itch would go away. He knew how to sit patiently and wait for animals to come close. We could watch them, motionless, as they went about their business. We did all these things on long hikes into the hills in warm weather. We wouldn't make it back home until way
after dark sometimes. At first, my mother didn't approve of any of this, but I guess when she saw the good it was doing me, she gave up and Junior won a place in our extended family.
Junior and I often wound up on top of Old Baldy, the biggest hill above the valley. It had a beautiful glacier-scoured serpentine barren at the top that the local people called a "bald." That's how it got its name. You could see the whole skyline of New York City clearly from there on a good day. Junior had never been there, even though it was less than thirty miles away. He used to love to listen to my stories about trips I'd taken into the city to see Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or the Rockettes on stage at Radio City Music Hall. He could scarcely believe what he heard. You'd have thought I was describing Xanadu, or something. Junior knew about the mountains. I knew about New York City. Our worlds met on Old Baldy.
One day, after Junior and I had finished a lunch of crayfish poached in a tin can, we discovered a small, rusted steel pole barge, nothing more than an old cement trough, really. It was chained to an iron stake at the edge of Franklin Pond at the foot of Old Baldy. It was made for kids. It called out to us like God-damn Bali Hai. Junior picked the lock and in no time we poled the thing silently out into the middle of the pond through the sweet flag and water lilies at its edge leaving a fragrant wake behind us. To this day the smell of sweet flag yanks me right back to Franklin Pond.
We spent a long, lazy afternoon floating on the pond watching bullfrogs,
snapping turtles, sunfish, dragonflies, and whatever else happened by. When the sun got low, we poled the barge back toward the shore where we'd found it. Junior locked it back up. No harm done, we thought. But on the way back up the hill a woman came screaming after us yelling "Stop, Nigger! Stop!" with two men close behind her. I'd never heard the word before. I knew instantly, from Junior's reaction, that I never wanted to hear it again.
We ran, but the men caught up with us and tackled Junior. The woman arrived shortly. She grabbed me and spun me around. "You should know better than this, Mr. Ralph!" she screamed into my face. "I've called your father and he's on his way here now. You're in big trouble, young man," she informed me. I was terrified. How did she know my name? She looked familiar but I had absolutely no idea who she was.
Meanwhile, the two men were wrestling with Junior and trying to subdue the kid amid a fusillade of epithets I mostly couldn't hear and didn't understand anyway. It was clear to me, though, that they hurt Junior as much as or more than the pummeling. One of them finally got him up, twisted an arm roughly behind his back and marched him down the hill toward where the woman and I stood. Junior was in a lot more trouble than I was, that was clear. But why? I didn't get it.
"Let's go boys." she said, to the men that had Junior. The woman led me off by my ear reminding me now and again of the awful trouble I was in. I went peaceably. The two men with Junior followed behind, struggling with the kid all the way. If Junior was going to go, he wasn't going to go without a fight. Every so often I'd hear a crack as one of them cuffed him again. It seemed like it took forever but we soon arrived at the woman's house behind a copse of trees close to the pond. The house was huge - almost a mansion, I thought. Then I saw my mother standing with arms on her hips on the large flagstone patio behind the house. She was watching us come down the hill toward her. She didn't say a word to me or to Junior.
My mother held up her hand as if to say "Stop." and motioned us two boys into black wrought iron arm chairs arranged around a low table. "Sit." she commanded. We did. Then she motioned to the woman and the two men to follow her up a way toward the house. "Stay put!" she commanded Junior and me. We did. My mother, the woman and the two men moved away and had an animated conversation in whispered tones above which floated, from time to time, words like "Nigger" and "Trash." I glanced over at Junior and was dumbfounded to see him crying. I'd never seen him cry before, no matter what. But he was sitting slumped over with tears running down his cheeks. He looked up at me with those amazing blue eyes. They said, simply, "See?" I saw. I saw instantly. I will never forget that moment. I will never forget the absolute contempt and hatred it made me feel for those people. They had hurt my friend. I learned disrespect that day.
We sat there just looking at each other dully until the adults had finished their argument over us. The woman nodded and went inside after motioning the two men away. They went around the side of the house and disappeared from my life forever, but, unfortunately, not from Junior's.
My mother turned and began to walk toward us. The woman stopped when she'd gotten to the screen door at the back of the house and turned, also. "Just make sure that half-breed stays away from here, Amy!" she yelled after my mother. She held up a hand without turning toward the woman to indicate she'd heard. Her eyes were on Junior. She raised a single finger to her mouth and made the "Shhhhh!" sign. "You shouldn't let your boy associate with that kind of trash!" she screeched. My mother's hand came down and she turned to face the woman who was halfway through the door by now but still shaking a finger in our direction. "You just let me worry about that, Miss Dijkstra" my mother said, raising a hand in a kind of peace sign, and turned back toward us. Junior and I looked at each other in shock. Miss Dijkstra?!?!!! Oh, my God! the school principal.
"Boys, come with me," my mother said and held out a hand to each of us. We got up and walked toward her. She turned at the same time and put her hands on our shoulders. All three of us rounded the house and moved toward my father's Studebaker which was parked in the circular drive in front of the house. She ushered us into the back seat together and started the car. I could see the drapes in one of the stone-framed windows move aside as the woman watched us leave. My mother pulled the car slowly out of the driveway onto Valley Road and pointed it toward home.
None of us said a word all the way back over Old Baldy to Junior's house. When we got there my mother turned in her seat, reached back and opened the rear door so Junior could get out. A shaft of light came from the door of Junior's house where his own mother appeared in silhouette. Junior looked at her for a moment and then back toward my mother. They exchanged one of those "Oh boy!" looks. My mother tousled Junior's hair. Then she pointed a finger at our noses in turn and said, "For Heaven's sake, boys, stay away from Miss Dijkstra's house from now on, will you? You promise?" We nodded vigorously. "Thanks, Mrs." Junior said and stepped out of the car.
We watched until Junior went through the door where his mother stood, a wooden spoon clutched in the hand resting on her hip, ready to go. The tale of our adventure had obviously preceded him home. Junior was in for it, that was for sure, and so was I. My father was not nearly as amused as my mother by the day's events. He took great pains to demonstrate this to me through the liberal application of a hair brush from Stanhome Products to my rear end. It didn't last long and it didn't hurt too bad. Besides, the bonus was that I had a great war story to tell to the other kids on the block. Miss Dijkstra! for crying out loud!
After this watershed event Junior and I became the fastest of friends. He'd spend a lot of time telling me about his family back in Mahwah while we were fishing in Old Man van der Veen's pastures. There was a widening in the brook there under the elms that Junior dubbed "Randy's Favorite Pool" in my honor. This was our domain. Even Old Man van der Veen's kids stayed away when we were there.
That's how I first came to know who the Jackson Whites were - from Willie G. Mann, Jr., my first and best friend. Junior told me stories about these shy, gentle, reclusive mountain people. They kept mostly to themselves. A lot of the townspeople in the valleys below their homes called them names because they were afraid of them or thought themselves better. Among Junior's many cousins, some were albino. Some had extra fingers or toes. Some had webbed fingers or toes. Some were a bit slow-witted. Some knew Indian medicine. Some spoke proudly of their Tuscarora or Hessian or Dutch blood. Some spoke "Jersey Dutch," an old dialect that the newer valley people couldn't understand. Some people said they came from runaway slaves or black whores. Some said they came from traitors and turncoats. Some people called them "Jacks." Others called them "Bockies." It really didn't matter. They were all wrong anyway.
Junior and his people took the name, "Jackson Whites," more often as the phrase, "Jacks and Whites." It was just as sharp and cut just the same either way. His parents had moved his family across the mountains and away from their home because they hoped they wouldn't have to hear it ever again. They were wrong.
Junior was drafted and went to Viet Nam in 1965. I remember thinking, "For once he goes without a fight and it's got to be now?!?!" He thought he was defending America. I didn't. I resisted the draft. I thought I was defending America. He didn't. I marched on Washington. He marched into a land mine. They sent him back home less than a year after he'd left. On a glorious day in the fall I stood with his people and his friends in the hills he loved and wept with them over his grave. I hoped I would never have to do anything so hard again. I was wrong.
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