Shared Stories: The Vacation

As a young man, Dwight Chambers had what most people would call a life-changing experience – but he didn’t let it hurt the ones he loved most.  Shared Stories is a weekly column featuring articles by participants in a writing class at the Norwalk Senior Center.  Bonnie Mansell is the instructor for this free class offered through the Cerritos College Adult Education Program.  Curated by Carol Kearns

By Dwight Chambers
In 1972 I was 21 years old, doing good going to Cal State University at Northridge and working at Montgomery Wards.  I had a girlfriend named Linda.  I must have been still living at home or somewhere in Pacoima, California.

It was vacation time for me.  Linda’s parents lived in San Antonio, Texas, so we decided to go to Texas and visit them.  I loved Linda’s Mom and Dad.  Me and Maw fought like cats and dogs. She had that Indian blood in her and I was hard, so we went at it every time we met.

Somehow my mother got wind of my vacation plans and asked if she could go along.  She said we could then go to Houston, Texas, and meet my godmother Edna Milburn, whom I had heard of often as she was my mom’s best friend back in their day.  They kept up with each other through phone calls and writing.  I said, “Okay, fine.”  That was the plan.  We were going to Texas.

Mom and I dropped Linda off at her mom and dad’s house in San Antonio and continued on to Houston about an hour and a half away, driving..  We were talking and everything seemed fine.
Once we got to Houston I could see my mom was different for some strange reason.  I know my mom.  We are like twins.  I’ve spent more time with her than anyone else, so we are close and I could feel something was going on.

As a child I felt different from my other bothers and sister.  They were like chocolate and I was red.  My mom and dad treated us the same.  No stepchildren in the family, but on occasion when visiting relatives, I would hear rumors, jokes, and tidbits that I was a stepchild.  I wasn’t raised like that so I never questioned it.

When we got to Houston, there were two carloads of people to meet us in this exclusive neighborhood.  I thought, “Oh, my relatives got money.”

After the meet and greet we all got back into our cars and drove to Acres Homes, the city my godmother lived in.  We went to a juke joint named the Back Street.

This juke joint is a place I would later call home.  It had a pool table and seating.  They sold barbeque, beer, and bootleg half-pints of whiskey.  There was a trailer home next to it.  

My mom started looking funny again.  Once we were inside, all the people were staring at me. I was just having fun and meeting people.

After meeting everyone, Mom asked me to go outside.  She started crying and saying, “The man you met inside, the one they call Pluck, is your dad.”

I said, “Oh well, it is what it is,” and we both went back inside.  My birth father Pluck came over and we shook hands and hugged.

I now have three families – the Chambers family, the Edison's (my birth father’s family), and my godmother’s family, the Milburn's.  Her brother was Amos Milburn, a famous singer.  My birth father Pluck was Amos’s driver.  It was on a trip through California playing night clubs that my mom met Pluck.

When I got back from Texas, my Ol’ Man, the man I’d known as my dad all my life, asked me if I had met Pluck.  I told him no.  I was letting him know, “You’re my only dad.”  We never discussed that again.