'THE DARKEST THING ABOUT AFRIKA IS AMERICA'S IGNORANCE OF IT.' OCTOBER 1978
VOLUME NO.2. ISSUE NO.1
WE CALL HIM "UNCLE REGGIE" by Rodney Phillips
On Tuesday, September 12, 1978, I had the pleasure of interviewing a most inspiring person, Mr. Reginald Watterson. Mr. Watterson is special in many ways. He has lived through the terms of thirteen presidents, two depressions, two World Wars, the Vietnam War, the Harlem Renaissance, and numerous other events that were significant in the making of this country. A man who prefers to call himself 86 years young, Mr. Watterson has a keen sense of recall, for at one point in our talk he told me of an event that occurred when he was five years old. Hopefully, you, too , will be able to enjoy reading about Mr. Watterson, as much as I enjoyed chatting with him. Reginald Watterson has done it all, and plans to keep on "getting it on." I guess that's the way to be when you're UNCLE REGGIE IN THE GHETTO.
Question-Mr. Watterson, where were you born? Watterson-I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee , in 1896. We lived in a little log house on the side of a road . There were six boys and three girls in my family. Q. What kind of parents did you have: were they strict. or the moderate type? W. They were very straight. My father .. .you might say he was a minister. He was a Seventh Day Advt'ntist Minister. He was also a sharecropper. There's one thing I have to say .. l'm happy that I got away from there. I didn't get a chance to go to school with us share-cropping ... You had to give half of what you made to ihe landowner. That meant that at the end of the year we didn't get any thing but a pair of shoes , a couple pairs of overalls, a shirt and that was it. Q. SO you're saying that you got the essentials and no more. W. Well, we only got a chance to go to school/or two months out of the year 'cause we had to work. The landowner had us kids working, or he would complain, so that's what we had to do. I started
working on the farm when I was about eleven or twelve years old. I'd get up in the morning, get the two oxen, put them in front of a sled we had made, and fetched water in barrels so we could water the plants. This started at about four in the morning. Q. Wouldn't you say that growing up this way made you a better person? W. It certainly did ... 1 tell you that the experience ... 1 had a lot of experience. A lot of people come to me and ask how I remember so much without going to school. Well, I had to remember ... everything I know I got from experience. Q. When did you come to Dayton. Ohio? W. I came to Dayton in 1913, and stayed here to 1926 ... the first time I came. Here's how I first got here. Me and my brother hoboed in here on a freight train from Cincinnati that was going to Cleveland. We got off on the other side of the (Miami) river ... this was right after the big flood ... everything was torn up, mud was everywhere. I had a nickel and my brother had a dime ... and we walked into a bar on Sixth Street where they used to give a big bowl of stew beef and a big glass of beer for 15¢. So we went and asked the man if he could split one of those bowls of stew beef and a glass of beer, telling him that we just hoboed in here. He said he'd have to ask the manager ... the manager's name was Roberts .. .He said "What's the matter, boys, you hungry?" We said yes and told him how we got here. So he told the waiter to give us the deal we asked for, but full portions, not to take our money. From there we started up the railroad tracks .. .ready to catch a train going to Cleveland , and a foreman named Lester Love ... he was a boss at the Station D freight house. He called and asked us where we were going ...we told him. Next, he asked if we wanted a job ... naturally we said yes. He said he'd start us at $2.10 a day, starting that day at ten minutes to four.
Q. SO you stayed in Dayton for 13 years-anything speCial happen? W. Well, in 19181 entered the service and fought in WWI ... I didn't stay long. I returned and got ajob at the Gibbons Hotel, it's now called the Dayton Inn. Here's something that happened to me while working there. One Sunday night I had a late party ... me and a fellow I was working with got off the Service car just before you cross the river. We made a turn to go the other way and bamm! ... a shot went right past my head. There was another shot and it caught me in the left shoulder ... it ricochetted and went completely through my left lung, pushed my heart over two fractions , and it's still under the right side of my ribs. It knocked me down, and I was as close to the moon as I am to
you almost...so I decided that I'll grab the moon and break my fall. Prettiest moon you ever saw. I was on the ground anyway ... everybody else was running down the street and not at me, so I got up and went in a club ... 1 called the police and told them that a man had been shot. On my way to the hospital in the police car, I was told that I only had a powder burn. When we got about 5 blocks away from the shooting, we hit a big rough spot in the street... I thought I was going to die ... 1even told myself that when I got to the hospital. I had 9 doctors examining me, all specialists ... when they left I asked the nurse what they said, and she started crying. I told the lady I wasn't going to die, those doctors were lying . You see, I had a punctured lung, my heart had moved over, but there was no internal bleeding ... 1 asked the nurse to give me something to read, and after ten minutes or so, I gave out the hardest cough I had ever. With that cough, the air that I took in filled my lung and pushed my heart back in place. The doctors were still hesitant to send me home for a few days ... 1 finally got out on a Monday, and the following week I was head waiter at -the Gibboris- Hotel. Thanks to the Good Lord I'm here able to talk to you today! Q. SO. Mr. Watterson, after you left Dayton in 1926, what did you do? W. Well , I worked on the New York Central Railroad for 42 years ... 1reti red in 1968. I worked in the dining car. Q. How did you like the travelling? W. I loved it...that's where I got most of my education and experience. Our train went from New York to Chicago, and I got to meet all the big stars ... all the Barrymores, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and many more. I came back to Dayton in August of 1976. Q. Mr. Watterson. as you know, a large number of U.D. students live in this area. What is your relationship with them? W. Well, all the students around here come to visit me ... everybody on the stfeet knows me. I go to their parties and they are all very nice. This is from year to year ... a lot of students left last year and told new students about me ... 1 mean that makes a person feel gOOd. There's nothing I can say to them ... 1try not to insult them ... 1try not to offer information that may be wrong. All the kids you see around here are really fine ... no trouble at all. Q. It really seems like one big happy family around here. W. It really is like one big family around here to me ... lt's not like you living some place and people walk by putting their head up high in the sky and don't speak . I've never met a bomb of people that were so nice ... 1never hav.e had to give them any advice, they know 'what to do.