Strange Family Folklore
Strange Family Folklore
No Longer Blue
Cousin Pleas "Blue" Wilson, son of Catherine and Pleas Wilson, interweaves his coming of age stories with older relatives who shaped him into the man he is today.
My great grandfather, Jesse Strange, was born a slave and freed in his 20s. His 12 children were born free, and referred to as “The First Freeborn Generation.” In this podcast series, I interview Jesse Strange’s descendants in order to document our stories. This is Strange Family Folklore.
Cousin Pleas “Blue” Wilson, son of Cathleen and Pleas Wilson, interweaves his coming of age stories with older relatives who shaped him into the man he is today.
Teresa Roberson
Thank you for willing to talk about your grandfather, Jessie. Your mother is a character too. So, if you want to talk about your mom, as well, because I know you got lots of memories. I hope this is not the last time you and I can get together. But I really want to prioritize, if you don’t mind, the first generation. You can go ahead and talk about this, because your mother is the second generation.
Pleas
Grandpa, he was always a character. He was the type of man that would go beyond whatever.
Pleas’ grandfather, Jessie Strange, was the second child of our Great-grandfather Jesse Strange, who despite the similar-sounding names, have a slightly different spelling.
He raised his corn, but he raised sugarcane too, which I always thought this field across from me, where I live at now, was a sugar cane field, but they told me it was corn, but it always looked different from corn. I always thought it was sugar cane, but he raised all that. He taught us a lot too. Grandpa, him and my mom, they always was butting heads, but nothing bad.
Pleas’ mom, Cathleen Strange Wilson AKA “Cat,” was the eighth child of Jessie and Mary Strange.
Grandpa would come around and say, for instance, that she had a cigarette, then she would go put it out. That’s the way she was with him. They got along great up in his older years, but Grandpa was always a sharp dressing man. He knew his Bible. He was a great man. I can’t say anything bad about my grandfather. He drove his truck until he was about 90-some years old. Actually, they had to take it from him because he would get in and go up the road. You won’t take it away from him. He would get in his truck and go up the road. He just got too old to be on the road with it.
Teresa Roberson
Is this a green truck that you guys would repaint?
Pleas
Yes.
Teresa Roberson
Gwen told me a little bit about that.
Cousin Gwen Strange is the daughter of Joe and Margaret Ann Strange and the granddaughter of Jessie Strange, the younger.
Pleas
We would have that truck. It sit out there in the yard for a long time, but he loved that truck. We all got spray cans of paint and we just painted it. He was happy with it. He was also, when we had our family unions, he was always sitting around. He wouldalways have this black skillet pot. When they would kill the pigs, they’d cut up the meat and have that pot. Nobody else could touch that pot. Nobody else could cook that meat, but him. The meat skin, everything out of that pot, now he made sure it was good and cooked and crackling. So, you couldn’t do anything as far as that pot goes.
Teresa Roberson
What was his specialty?
Pleas
Grandpa’s specialty was talking to fire out of people. He traveled up to DC and actually one of cousins had gotten burned. I think it was Barbara that had got burnt.
Cousin Barbara is the granddaughter of Ernest Wheeler and Marion Strange Wheeler. Marion is the third child of Jessie Strange, the younger.
So, he went up there. He had that gift. Not only that, before Barbara, he went to DC to talk out the fire of some special person up there. I’m not sure who it was. Grandpa, now he would get angry, but you’d never seen him as a mad person. Not to me, not to none of us. So, he was just a great person. He would sit outside. Sometimes, he would sit out at Aunt Cille’s house and he’d have his cane.
Aunt Lucille, AKA “Aunt Cille,” is the sixth child of Jessie Strange, the younger.
He would sit there with this tree. Always had some yellow jackets. So, they would just swarm and he’d just sit there with a little cane and he’d kill them. He’d just kill them with his cane. So, he would just sit there just as long as he could, but that’s how Grandpa was. He was a patient man. He also was a sheriff. We called him the sheriff in town.
Teresa Roberson
I didn’t know he was a sheriff.
Pleas
Along with Uncle Floyd. Floyd, my Uncle Thel. I think Uncle Joe was at one time, but that’s when they used to have, what they call “associations” like those days.
Pleas’ Great Uncle Floyd B. Strange was my grandfather and the eleventh child of Jesse Strange, the elder. Walter “Thel”Strange and Joe Strange were the eleventh and thirteenth children of Jessie Strange, the younger.
We all would go over to this place. They had tents up, just like you do at the family reunion. They’d have the games. They have preaching, drinking, whatever, but they were sort of like the police over there when you didn’t have like our police now. They would walk around like they were the police.
Teresa Roberson
Was this only during family reunion time or special occasions?
Pleas
No. This was a thing that they called “association.” So, they had different churches coming in from different places or wherever. It was sort of like a family reunion. They had things you could buy. You could go and take pictures. Just be all over the place pretty much. Sort of like family reunions. They had food there, but it wasn’t like we do our family reunion like these days. Way we do family reunion now. This was like, they had everything there. They had different tents, different people. We all had a good time because we all went. We would look forward to it during those times. Those are some of the things that I remember about going at a younger age, during that time. Actually, my mom would take us over there, and just load up the car, dress us up and take us over there. That was a good thing. Pretty much like going to a fair or amusement park.
Teresa Roberson
Now, you say “load up the car,” tell us how many siblings you have?
Pleas
I have six sisters. Five by my mom, but we have a sister by my dad. Actually, we found out about her. Well we knew about her, but we didn’t know who she was at that time, but we came together. Finally, when we did everything is good. So, she’s a part of our life. At the age that I really went to see her was round about 18. When I first turned 18, we went to see her. I got to New York. She lives in New York. I got up there and I said, “Well I’d turned 18 now so, I can get into clubs.” So, when I got up there and getting ready to go in the club, and the man wouldn’t let me in. I was like, “I’m 18 now!” “Naw, you got to be 25 to get up in here.” I still couldn’t get into clubs. We left there.
Teresa Roberson
You have a baby face anyway. At 18 you probably still looked 12.
Pleas
Probably, but they wouldn’t let me in even though I had my ID. They still wouldn’t let me in. Plus, I still wasn’t old enough.
Teresa Roberson
You were the only son?
Pleas
Oh, yes. I was the only man in the house at that time, but I had to take care of Mom. My mom was something else. She always kept something up. She kept something going. She was just hilarious sometimes. She was a strong mom. She didn’t play. She didn’t take no stuff off of nobody. She was somebody that you would want to be around. Your uncles would come up to the house like Olander and Clarence.
My Uncles Olander and Clarence were the second and third children of my maternal grandparents, Floyd and Beatrice Strange.
Those two right there, stayed up at the house. They always was gonna make sure they came to Cat’s house whenever they came to town. They were best of buddies. We always, would respect them, but my mom, they respected her. She was a tough woman far as having to raise all six of us by herself. So, Mama do some wild stuff sometimes. She would cut her hair and she know I don’t like, for her to cut her hair, but she would do it just to rattle me sometimes because she would come back and she’d have it fixed up. She’d go to beauty shop. Now she used to fix hair herself. She used to fix a lot of people’s hair. One particular time, she went to the beauty shop and she knew when she got back, I was gonna say something about her cutting her hair. When she got back, she go, “How you like it?” I’m like, “Well, I mean you done cut it now, so what can I say?” But she did a lot of people’s hair. She did hair on her porch. She had this little lantern thing which had the, a little, eye, they call it.
What Pleas calls a “lantern” is also known as a “thermal stove” or “heater stove,” an open-ended elliptical shaped metal canister that heated up on the inside to heat the metal comb and curlers, used to style Black natural hair.
She had the curlers and curling irons and stuff like that. So, she did people’s hair back in the day too.
Teresa Roberson
Well, she had so many daughters. I mean, that was just practical.
Pleas
Yeah, she fixed their hair too, I guess. Mom was smart, though. She was smart for what she had learned in school. They didn’t go very far in school, but she learned a lot. She knew a lot with the little bit of education she had. She was a hard-working woman. She really was. When she got to a point that she like, “I’m tired. I’m ready to quit work. I’m ready to go.” At the time, she was ready to retire. I said, “Hey, when you’re ready, go for it.” And she did.
Teresa Roberson
What did your mother retire from?
Pleas
She’s retired around age 62. She retired at 62. She traveled where she needed to go. My dad had a Cadillac when he passed away, so she got a 442. Those things was pretty, pretty souped up. Sherman was in the military at the time that she had got hers.
Sherman Adams, AKA “Shorty,” is the son of Clyde and Lucille Strange Adams.
When he got out the military, she had a green one and he had a gold one. So, he ended up going getting a gold one like hers. Those two cars was very fast. We drove that and grew up in that car for a long time. Finally, she decided she was gonna get her another car. So, she finally got her a Delta 88 Oldsmobile. Those were the best cars out there. The thing that she wanted on the car that she wanted everything electric. So, by the time we got up there to get the car, the one seat was electric the other seat wasn’t. Finally, she took it back and told him that she didn’t want the car unless it came loaded. They had to take the car back and get her what she wanted. She wasn’t the person that she went for cheap. Anything that she bought, she bought the best. Furniture, she was gonna get the top line regardless. She won’t rich or anything like that. The thing of it is, she just wanted the quality. That’s the way she was. She won’t go and settle for something that next thing you know is gonna break down. When we were going to school, she helped Sherita buy a Vega.
Ok, so here’s the birth order of Pleas’ siblings and himself: Cheryl, Sherita, Kathy, Pleas, Jerine, and Jacqueline.
Sherita drove it. When she came back home, because she had moved to Washington, but she came back home, bought this car and she went to college, went to school with the car. After Sherita went through school with the car, she got married to Lawrence and the car stayed at the house, so Kathy drove it to school. She drove it ‘til she got out of college. By the time Kathy got out of college, I drove the Vega. Jackie drove it. Jerine drove it. The car stayed there. We had put about two motors in the car, but the car lasted forever. Finally, we sold it, and it ended up on ‘58 somewhere. We had sold it to somebody. It ended up on ‘58. I never seen it anymore.
Teresa Roberson
That car was a hand-me-down car through everybody.
Pleas
Everybody. That was the only car that we had, that actually was hand-me-down. It went through all of us. But it was a good car. But at that time, you had tree mechanics. They called them “tree mechanics.”
Also known as “shade tree mechanics,” they fixed cars with minimal equipment.
They would work on a car. They could put it back together. Those type of cars that you could put back together, but now these days, that’s just the difference between now and then when cars were made.
Teresa Roberson
Cars today are very computerized.
Pleas
Oh, yeah, definitely. Mom was like I said, she was a person that people loved being around. They would always come in, from work on second shift. Sometimes, they would go to see my Aunt Jean.
Barbara Jean Strange Clark is the twelfth child of Jesse Strange, the elder.
The funniest thing was Ma had...they had already gone up to Washington. My Uncle Joe, he wanted to go up there as well, but he didn’t get off work until late. I’ll never forget the story. Now, my Uncle Joe was something else. He was one of our uncles that, hewas kind of a tough guy. He was one of the guys that just didn’t take no junk. He really didn’t. He was going to DC one day. I was small. I can’t think how old I was. Maybe I was around about...maybe 15. He would say, “Pleas, I’m getting ready to go to Washington. You can go with me?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll go with you.” So, he had this Volkswagen. He said, “Well, I’m gonna leave at such and such a time. I want you to go with me and be ready. Okay?” I said, “Okay.” So, we get in the car and we take off to DC. He had this little bottle beside him. He said, “Now, every time,” and it was a little glass he had, “every time I tell you pour me a shot, you pour me a shot.” And I did. By the time we got DC, that Volkswagen, I mean, he had that thing in the wind. By the time we got there, he had put it in the shop because he had drove that hard. By the time we got up there that car ready to go in the shop.
Teresa Roberson
Do you know what you were pouring for him?
Pleas
No, I didn’t. He just said, “Pour it.” I don’t even know what it was. He just said, “Every time I tell you to pour me one, just pour it.”
Teresa Roberson
Because he used the word “shot,” I’m thinking alcohol.
Pleas
Well, he knew what it was. I didn’t know what it was because like I said, I didn’t do no drinking back at the time. So, I didn’t know.
Teresa Roberson
Right. I just know among our family, moonshine was very popular. I was wondering if that was a shot and moonshine that he was asking you to pour.
Pleas
It was definitely that.
Teresa Roberson
It sounds racy today because of drinking and driving, but that was so common. I bet y’all weren’t even wearing seatbelts.
Pleas
We wasn’t. Drinking wasn’t my thing. That wasn’t something that I wanted to do. I’ve seen too many people drunk and I just couldn’t.
Teresa Roberson
Here’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you, but never got around to it. It was the longest time for I realized that your name was “Little Pleas” because I grew up knowing you as “Blue.” Where do you get that nickname from?
Pleas
People called me “Little Pleas” because I was named after my dad. It’s just “Pleas.” I named my son Deontae. But I actually gave my middle name. I put LePleas: L-E-P-L-E-A-S. LePleas. So, it’s more of a French name, I guess you would say.
Teresa Roberson
French sounding, at least. But where did we get “Blue” from?
Pleas
Blue came from the kids, Cascade kids, like Perry and Shorty and them.
Perry Adams is the son of Clyde and Cille Adams.
Teresa Roberson
Even Shorty is “Sherman.”
Pleas
Yes.
Teresa Roberson
Took me a long time to know that Shorty’s name was “Sherman.” I think I was an adult when I learned that.
Pleas
The name “Blue” came from the kids in the neighborhood really. That’s something that they gave me because of my color. I had a, I guess a shine of blue. Kind of shine, as they call it “black-blue.” That’s what they always called me. It just stuck. I wore it and carried on through high school and everything else. Coming up as “Blue.” I had it on my jacket. I had a jean jacket with “Blue” on the back of it. Anywhere I went, they knew me as “Blue,” but they didn’t know me as “Pleas.” A lot of my classmates didn’t know me as “Pleas.” I mean, they knew it, but they just called me “Blue” because they didn’t call me “Pleas.” As I got older, and started getting in church more and our pastor was teaching, how to actually talk with your brother or talk with your sister and he was telling us how to greet them in a way of Christianity. He would say, when you meet this person, you would say “mister,” or “brother,” or something like that. So, my Uncle Clyde always called me “Uncle Skeet.”
Clyde Adams was married to Lucille Strange Adams.
I don’t know where he got that from. He always gonna give you a nickname, but he never called me “Blue.” He always called me “Uncle Skeet.” Why? I don’t know.
Teresa Roberson
I’ve never even heard that. You’re teaching me something today.
Pleas
When that Christianity kicked in, and they was saying going to call everybody, start calling “Brothers and Sisters.” Brothers, sister so and so. I said, “You know what? My Clyde always called me ‘Uncle Skeet,’ but he will not call me “Brother Blue.” I won’t be called “Brother Blue.” I said, “I might have to start changing this.” People will say, “Wow, I’ve been knowing you as “Blue” all my life. So why are you changing now?” I said, “Well, I grew up. That was just my childhood name that people will call me.” It’s still a lot of people call me “Blue,” but now they call me “Pleas” more now than they do “Blue” because I will say it’s time for me to start taking on my name instead of calling me by my nickname.
Teresa Roberson
I agree. It wasn’t any religious conversion that came over me. I just felt like I outgrew “Tweety Bird.”
Pleas
Oh, yeah. It’s true because a lot of cousins now, like Uncle Percy’s children, a lot of them had nicknames as well. I didn’t know who they were, because you just called them by their nicknames. When you got to call them their real name, we didn’t know who they were. So, I had to start learning their real names, so I’ll know, not to call them, by their nicknames, because I think people deserve to be called by their real names. That’s just me.
Teresa Roberson
In our family, though, it’s more of a term of endearment than anything else. So, you’re right. It’s in childhood and then we all grow up. And usually, we drop it. I don’t think Shorty minds being called “Shorty.”
Pleas
He don’t. I called him “Shorty” and I catch myself. Instead of calling “Shorty,” I call him “Sherman.” I don’t call him “Brother Sherman.” My dad passed away at the time. Sherman was in the military. So, I took him on as my mentor, my father figure at that time. So, he was there when he come out the military. When he was in the military, I was like a kid at the candy store when they would say, “Sherman’s on the phone!” He was over in, wherever he was at. They’d say, “Sherman’s on the phone!” I’d run from my house, out to Aunt Cille’s house just to talk to him on the phone. He was my father figure after my father had passed. I followed him pretty much everywhere he went.
Teresa Roberson
You never followed him into the military, did you?
Pleas
No. He tried to talk me into going into military, but when I was in high school, when I was ready to actually get ready to graduate, and I just turned 18 too. So, Mom says, “Pleas when you get out of school, you got to register.” I told her, “I’m not registering for nothing. I’m not going to the military.” She said, “Well, Pleas, if you don’t register, they might lock you up.” I’m like, “No, I’m not going to register. I’m not going into the military.” At the time, there were a lot of people that tell me, well you’re the only son, so they’re not gonna actually send you into the military. But by the time after I was turned 18, they had called off the draft.
Teresa Roberson
I was about to say, you shouldn’t be young enough that there wasn’t a draft at that point. What year did you graduate from high school?
Pleas
They had called off the draft sometime after that. I did it because she begged me to do it, because she said you need to do it.
Teresa Roberson
You registered, and then later on, they called off the draft?
Pleas
Yeah.
Teresa Roberson
What year was that?
Pleas
What year was that? I graduated in ‘79. So, I was about pretty close to 18-19. Somewhere in there. Yeah.
Officially, the US draft ended in 1973, but technically, Congress can call up a draft at any time. Men still have to register with the Selective Service.
Teresa Roberson
That sounds about right. I remember being a child and seeing it on TV about having to register.
Pleas
Right. But no, I was determined. I wasn’t going to do that. Some funny thing I will tell you about my mom. When I first started driving the Vega, I was dating then. I was dating Debra during that time. Debra’s my wife. Instead of saying, “Coonie,” I call her “Debra.”
Teresa Roberson
As soon as you said, “Debra,” I thought “Coonie,” but yeah, everybody with their nicknames.
Pleas
I had just got my license and going seeing her and everything. I’m thinking, “I’m the stuff now. I can drive.” I got the Vega out and I go out and do I want to do, right? Here I am, I’m staying out late now. Before I got my license, Perry taught me, between Sherita and Perry because Sherita kind of taught me on the car, how to drive, but Perry actually taught me how to drive on the road, on the highway. We ain’t have no license. No license at all because Perry was always said, “Pleas, I’m going out and anything happens, if I get tired, sleepy, you got to drive.” I knew all the back roads. So, we didn’t actually get on the highway. We, I mean, got on the highway, but we didn’t go on the main highway. We always took back roads. Learned all the back roads to go through. So, that’s how I learned how to drive then. Long as I was out with Perry, if him and I was out, we could stay out as late as we wanted to. I was about 14 years old. I don’t care where he went, he would take me with him, or whatever. Like I said, As long as I’m out with him, I’m fine. If I’m by myself, no, it ain’t gonna happen. When I got to drive myself, and I’m coming in the house, and I come in around about three o’clock in the morning. Well, when I did that, guess who waiting at the door? Mom’s waiting at the door. She going, “If you come in this house one more time at three o’clock in the morning, you will not drive again.” I gotta listen. I wanted to able to drive some more. I had to say, “Okay, yes, ma’am.” She was tough. She didn’t take no stuff off nobody, especially us. She taught us well. She really did. She gave us everything that we could possibly need far as a mom to give us.
At this point, emotions well up in Cousin Pleas.
Teresa Roberson
Take your time, Pleas. This is one of the reasons why I love doing these interviews and sharing it with the rest of the family. We can all remember. I like to share a funny story about your mom. This is one of the stories that my mother told me because I was born in Japan because my father was stationed in Japan with the Air Force.
My parents are Karl and Velma Roberson. Velma Strange Roberson is the sixth child of Floyd and Beatrice Strange.
I didn’t really grow up with you guys. When your mom met me, I was a little toddler. I could barely walk or whatever. We were in the living room. It’s really common when you’re around little children, you just pat them on the butt. You’re not spanking them. My mom said, your mother reached down pat me on the butt, just smiling and I looked at her and I could barely walk, but I tried to run away because she pat me on the butt. No one ever played with me like that before. But that’s the way in the country, you play with little kids. You’re not really hitting them. You just patting them on the butt. That’s one of the first story that my mother loves to tell about when Cat first met me when I was a toddler.
Pleas
I remember when y’all used to come. Your mom, I tell Renee and them this story all the time. She took us, all of us, me, her and Carla and took us to the movie.
Renee and Carla are my two older sisters.
Treated me well. All those times that her and my mom hung out. Those two hung out all the time, too. Mom’s house was always open to people because they felt comfortable. They felt at home. She made them feel at home. I can’t talk about my dad much because it can be too emotional to talk about right now because I can’t.
Teresa Roberson
I understand.
Pleas
At a younger age, I used to have to go help Uncle Thel pull tobacco and Uncle Joe and also I’d help Aunt Bea, Herbert.
Herbert Strange is my uncle, the fourth child of Floyd and Bea Strange.
When Herbert actually...you know the little green building down there?
Teresa Roberson
Yes.
Pleas
Well, the little green building Herbert came and he was cutting hair, and every time I go down to the shop, he had the shoe shiners back then. He didn’t have nobody to shine shoes. So, he asked me, “Do you want a job?” I said “yeah.” He said, “Well, do you know how to shine shoes?” So, he put me to work of shining shoes. I learned how to shine shoes in that little shop. It wasn’t but so big, but he still, got all that stuff in there. I’d shine people’s shoes while I was in the shop. Pretty much worked from that time on. Then going through middle school, I got a job at the school when I was in school. I worked during that time as well because it was a program that back in those days that if you were in school. I guess it was kind of like low income at that time because my mom was single. We could work. I worked in the schools, cleaning the hallways, and after school program, stuff like that. Pretty much been working ever since. Went to college for about a year. I didn’t finish college at that time because I was working third shift, the kids to baseball practice, morning school, Debra was in school, I was in school, so all of us in school. I’m still trying to manage everything else. I just had to let something go. So, I had to let that go. But I did it. I got them to school, through college. That was the main thing. My kids have grown up to be very intelligent fellas, grown men, dads and husbands. They have really been good to me and my wife, Debra. She went to school. She finished school. It’s been great. I can’t say anymore. God has blessed us. I didn’t say that at the beginning, but He has. He’s bought us through some of the roughest times. He’s been good. That’s all I can say.
Teresa Roberson
Thank you so, so much for taking time.
Pleas
I’ll tell you one thing about my uncles, on my mom’s side. They were great men. They taught me a lot. They showed me how to farm. They were stern men. Like I said my Uncle Joe, he was one of the ones that I feel like it was the toughest one that you’d want to see. But my Uncle Thel was one that if he wanted that work done. I always called my Uncle Thel the richest Black man in Cascade.
Teresa Roberson
Why is that?
Pleas
He was. Well, Uncle Thel was well-known. Uncle Thel was very well-known with his tobacco and everything that he had. Uncle Thel could go into a store, and get whatever without even having a dime. He could get it. He was one of the first ones around here that had those buck barns.
Teresa Roberson
Yes, he explained what a buck barn was to me.
Pleas
We had the slides and stuff like that. When they came out with those buck barns, he had them. To me, I always called him a rich Black man.
Teresa Roberson
Who taught you construction?
Pleas
Sherman. Sherman was skilled at a lot of stuff that he do now. He taught me how to build anything that he could do. I can’t build it like him, but he taught me some things, how to build. My brother-in-law, Bill, taught me how to work on cars. After him and Cheryl got married, Bill came in and he taught me how to work on cars. I learned a little bit from everybody.
Teresa Roberson
That’s what amazes me about...I refer to you guys as my “country relatives,” but you guys are very self-sufficient. Very self-sufficient. You know how to grow food, make food, build your house, work on cars, like a lot of different skills.
Pleas
Yeah. I always tell people at the time that you could work on cars, change your oil and change the plugs a lot easier than you can now. So, changing a plug wasn’t nothing back then, but now I wouldn’t even attempt to go out and do it. Even change my oil. I wouldn’t even do that no more. It’s a whole lot convenient to just take it down to the shop and let them do it. Like I said, I’ve been blessed for a lot of things that God has allowed us to do and just took us through a lot of things that He’s been there for us through whatever. I give God all the praise, so I can’t thank Him enough.