Open Door Interview (10-08-26) - Topsy Durham

Well, was that, did he keep a lot of that away from you or was there a lot of, because I know, you know, that was a lot of the racism was coming in and it was after the war.

There was a lot of changes going on in the music industry and jazz and all.

that?

Well, it's not that he kept it from us.

My father was 50 when I was born.

He kind of retired to...

He wanted a lot of children and he wanted to raise them.

And so, I mean, you don't just like, okay, you have children and at some point you start talking about what you used to do.

And it's a whole nother era of from what your kids are growing up in.

Like we grew up in the funk era, you know, funk music and the Rolling Stones and that kind of stuff too.

So he would tell these tall Texan tales about rattlesnakes and, you know, living in Texas and his father being the town fiddler and, And he would do it on the train, really loud.

We would almost be embarrassed.

My father was quite the character, I'm telling you.

But anybody who knew him, he told them the same stories over and over and over.

I

know that my mother was

a character when I was out.

And there was the times that she would embarrass the heck out of me.

And he just wanted to go, Mom, please, no.

And I can

understand that.

But it was like a normal life to him.

Yeah.

And he didn't, you know, like it's not, that's not normal stories to most people.

But we grew up with these kind of stories being kind of normal to us.