Oklahoma Voices: Al Bostick

Description:

Transcript:

Interviewee: Albert Bostick

Interviewer: Dwe Williams

Interview Date: July 1st, 2007

Interview Location: Downtown Library, Oklahoma City

Transcribed on Saturday, July 3 – Sunday, July 4, 2020

 

Dwe Williams (DW) – Hi, I’m Dwe Williams and we’re here at Oklahoma City at the downtown metropolitan library and today is July 1st, 2007, and I am talking with my friend Mr. Bostick.

Albert Bostick (AB) - Hey Mrs. Dwe.

DW - What's up?

AB – The sky, the price of tea in China, up and down staircase, up up and away, upside your head, up the ladder to the roof. Those are all ups.

DW – Mr. Bostick! And see, where are you from? Let’s go back to the beginning.

AB – Well I like to refer to myself as a displaced New Orleanian. I am from New Orleans, Louisiana. Now living in the great state of Oklahoma.

DW – Oklahoma.

AB - When the wind comes sweeping down the plains, and there are no buildings to block it.

DW - Well, so you are from New Orleans?

AB - New Orleans, Louisiana. That’s right.

DW - I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and I’ve known you for a lot of years. When did I meet you?

AB - Well, we used to compete in the theatre conferences, all over the south there, let me think, what was that thing, NADSA, National Association of Dramatics and speech arts, so we were competing and still are competing actually.

DW - And I was in A&T State University.

AB - That’s right, and I was at Grambling [State University].

DW - And I was a theatre major. Were you a theatre major?

AB - Theatre major, I started out as an English major but knew all along that I wanted to be in the theatre, so I had to change my major.

DW - Well, I always planned to teach, [that] was my original plan, but it didn’t happen that way. I think I am a teacher; I think I always taught

AB - Well, you’re always are a teacher, I mean, you’re always put in this, in this teacher moment. You're teaching everybody.

DW - But somehow, I was protected from going into the classroom, the traditional classroom, cause I left A&T, and I went to graduate school, and when I got out of graduate school with a double major masters, they said its cheaper for us to hire someone out of undergraduate school than to pay you, so I was like, ok, so I started working for myself, piecing stuff together, and I’m now 54 years old, and I have never really worked for anybody else. I have always been self employed

AB - Well see I can’t make that claim, because I actually came to Oklahoma and when to the university of Oklahoma, but I had to leave there rather quickly.

DW - Why, did they burn you out of town?

AB - No, I think it was a mutual agreement because, as the only African American theatre major in their department, they just didn’t know what to do with me

DW - So what did they do with you?

AB - Well, they actually made me a stronger person, cause I worked not only in the theatre department, but I ended up worked in the dance department as well, and so it just kind of fueled what I always known as the sort of renaissance artist, so I went in and choreographed for the theatre department, sometimes did dance concerts for the dance department, and did my own shows, so I also ended up sometimes teaching them, because my strong, you know, my strong suit is the African Afro-centric theatre. They just weren’t quite ready for that at that university. So, I can to Oklahoma City and worked for the black liberated arts center. [I] Was their artistic director for about 15 years, doing at least 4 shows a year for them, held on to that for a while, and then decided, you know, when you work in a place that long, and there are not people with the same kinds of dreams you have, you do sort of become self-employed.

DW - Well, let's just back up, as a child, did you always know?

AW - Oh yeah, oh yeah, in fact my parents always said “he was going to be kind of a performer,” because if I wasn’t throwing a stick up in the air, if I wasn’t acting or dancing around in the living room, as a matter of fact, my mom used to fuss at me all the time because I split my pants every other day, kicking, you know, doing high kicks, and flipping off of things.

DW - You were a drum major, weren't you?

AB - Oh yea, in high school, in fact I actually stole that spot.

DW - You stole it? That sounds like you.

AB - Well, yeah, I did, I mean, come on, the drum major of the band put the stick down and walked away from it. So I picked it up and started working with it, all the majorettes, so me, doing what I was doing, went to the band director and said if he doesn’t go out for homecoming,

we gonna picket and protest. So, I ended up - the band director came to me and made me a drum major. That’s what I did in high school

DW - That was kind of the way it was for me. You know, my mom would say that I always had a speech, and even before they would give me a speech, because you know in the black church, you always had these little Easter speeches and these little Christmas speeches, and I could remember my first speech was, “what y’all looking at me for so for, I didn’t come here to stay, I just came here to say happy Easter day.” But long before that, my sister Betty was six years older than I am, and she was quiet, and she's still quiet, and she would go up to give her speech, and even before they gave me a speech, I go up right there beside her, and she would be giving her speech and I would due talking louder than she was, echoing her speech.

AB - Now, you know you still do that, you still finish everybody’s sentences.

DW -No I don’t.

AB - Yes you do, you shore do.

DW - Well I just started my sister's sentences cause I know she won’t go speak up. You know, I grew up kind of like a middle child, there were 4 of us, but when I was older like 15, 16 years old, I learned that I actually had a brother that was born before me that didn’t live. But I never, we never really talked about him, so we never knew much of anything about what happened. in later years, well actually in this last year, after my mother had a stroke, and so when I go home, I spend a lot of time trying to get her to talk and recall things. So I thought I ask her about this and slide it in , and she said that the child was called elevator boy because the child was actually born on the elevator on the way to the delivery room, but he only lived about 5 or 6 hours. But the interesting thing that followed that was that I was the next child that was born, and I was born on my brothers birthday, my older brother’s birthday, so 2 of us are 5 years apart, but born on the exact same day. Which is, who could pull that off but-

AB - But your family,

DW - But my family,

AB - But Mrs. Lily,

DW - But Mrs. Lily, so I have an older brother, and an older sister, and I guess at this point my sisters 60, she's the first one to hit 60s, and we got a 59, and I’m 54, and then my younger brother is 3 years younger than I am so he’s 51, so that’s the 4 of us, legal eagles.

AB - Yeah, I am from a family of 4 also, but I'm the oldest, see, and we have 1 girl in the family, 2 other boys, and of course like every family, we also have that 1 boy in the family we always called the black sheep in the family. Nathaniel, he’s the honorary one, so there the, mom originally wanted to name all of us with A’s, so we started out, we were going to be Albert, Adrianne, and Aaron, but for some reason, they changed in midstream, and became albert, Adrianne, and Nathaniel, so I think that’s what did it.

DW - That was a scam.

AB - Yeah, and then, of course we, Tod Bostick was the baby. As the baby of the family, he’s the one we’re most proud of, because he attended Notre Dame and graduated with honors.

DW - And I happen to know a little bit about how he managed to be able to afford to go the Notre dame.

AB - Well, you know, hey, mom said, the whole thing was he wanted to go, and of course, and like a lot of families, Notre Dame, you talk about the price tag, that’s a lot, so mom called and said, your brother really wants to go to Notre Dame, even though he has a full ride to Loyola University, and so I just don’t know if we should send him. Mom, that’s the only way he’s going to be happy, so send him to where he wants to be happy, and we’ll do what we’ll need to do. And of course, little did I know, that we was going to be me for helping in that way, and the one time that I remember was, [I] had just gotten back one of those income tax checks, and had already [gone] though in my head how to spend that, you know, new television for the dorm room, new stereo system, the whole bit, when the phone rang and my mother, “you know Notre dame had sent that bill here,” so I just signed the back of the check up, put it in the envelope, sent it home.

DW - Send it out... You know, so both of us grew up in the south.

AB - The south.

DW - The south. What was it like for you growing up in the south?

AB - Well, you know, the wonderful thing that I love about growing up, and I have to... sort of put a bookmark here because I actually left new Orleans when I was 3, went to Washington dc with my family and we live there cause my dad was in the navy, I lived there until I was 12 and we returned to the good ol’ south. When I was 12, the wonderful thing about growing up in the south, that, of course we miss a lot of that today, truly the whole village took care of the child, and that was amazing to go into a community where every neighbor knows your name, and every neighbor has the right to whip your behind if you do the wrong thing. So, you have the whole, you know, and in my block, it was my grandmother, and we lived with my grandmother in my grandmother’s house, but right next door was Mrs. Bertha, and Mrs. Bertha was kind of like a second grandmother. Right across next to her was Mrs. Dockers, and right off to her was Mrs. Elouise Buttler, who was my godmother. So, all these, look, I couldn’t blink crossed eyed, cause if I blinked cross eyed, I remember catching three whippings in one day for one infraction. And of course, people talk about that romanticism in the south, and truly that community was, it was very romantic, I mean, because you know what you had to do growing in that community. You had to give respect to every elder in that community. If you passed by them, I don’t care if you passed by 10 times a day, you had to say good evening, you know, good morning, good after- whatever it was.

DW - And everybody who wasn’t a blood relative, I guess I didn’t even understand what it meant to be a blood relative, because everybody was aunts, whether they were blood relatives or not.

AB - Right, and you, you know, and when you did work, not only did you work for your family, but you worked for everybody in that community. If whatever they needed done, you know.

Cause I could remember learning how to wax floor because I had to wax Mrs. bertha's kitchen, and wax Mrs. dockers’ kitchen and wax my grandma’s kitchen.

DW - That’s how you learned. You know, one of my- you were talking about how ye had to answer to everybody, one of my earliest stories, cause you know, I always have a story to tell, like as you do to-

AB - Yeah always.

DW - was about growing up in Brookston. That was the name of my neighborhood. The first day I went to school, and I got in trouble, I was in Mrs. Grant’s class, and she kept me after school, and all of my pose that I usually walked to school with and back home with, they left me. Which I could not believe they left me!

AB - Of course.

DW - So I had to go back home by myself, and I could remember, my mom, well I just had to turn around and do it backwards, you know so I can remember what it's like, go up a church, and we had this thing where we had to point out our finger and crook it back, and hold our breathes as we pass a cemetery, and I had to pass the cemetery, and I had to pass the stale, candy store, and then we got to smoky joe’s house, and smoky joe was the dog. It seemed like he had lived forever, cause when I was young before I went to school, I knew about smoky joe, I remember I went to lime park for 6 years, and for those 6 years smoky joe was around chasing after us, but that day when I got back into that neighborhood, as I passed the houses, it was like, you know, Mr. Rogers would ask you know, why you so late, Mrs. Maid, why you so late, everybody, why you so late. And I end the story with saying, Lord they raised us... he is the raised us... Oh many contra whippings, oh that what I got, but I got back home, cause I had no business talking back to that teacher. And many a head bowed, pray. Cause what they didn’t do to you dead switch, they prayed it on to you.

AB - Oh no, you see, my grandmother different form that. My grandmother would tell you to go cut her a switch, but on those rare occasions, she’d say cut her three.

DW - Three?

AB - I couldn’t figure out why you gotta cut three. You know, and she said make them nice and long. So, we cut three, and she braided them. And she left three leaves on the top, and so one day I just got, in my mind, ask her why she needed three leaves on the top, and she said that’s for the father, son, and the holy ghost, and you need Jesus. So you know, you got your whipping that way, you know, so understanding that discipline was that important thing. You were talking about the cemeteries down there, you know we buried people above the ground-

DW - Oh that’s right, y’all sure do.

AB - Yeah, well a little below sea level, so if you dig down 6 feet you gonna strike water, and you know it was green, you know. And I could remember going to many a funeral in New Orleans, particularly the jazz funerals, cause we did the jazz funerals, and all of the symbolism that goes with all of that, cause you know, we do the second line which was you dance to the cemetery. Actually when you going to the cemetery, you’re supposed to weep when people come

into the world, and you rejoice when they leave cause they going to a better place, so they would play the funeral dirge and you march to the cemetery very slowly, but once you put the people in the ground, or above the ground in their mausoleum, then they would strike up the jazz number, and you would open up these umbrella, and you just dance and wave these handkerchiefs, you know, and these umbrellas represented the dome of heaven, and that handkerchief you whip in the air saying farewell to the spirit, so the handkerchief is farewell to the spirit. So I can remember doing all of those wonderful things, and trying to figure all of that out as a kid, because, you know one Sunday afternoon you be sitting on the front porch, and you know, we buried people on Sundays in new Orleans.

DW - Costs too much around

AB - *singing* and then you go running across the field and you get to dance right there with them, right on the cemetery. Go away from you home and get lost, and where am I supposed to be, because mama and grandma gonna be like “didn’t I tell you not to leave that front porch.”

DW - Shouldn’t have left. Shouldn’t have left. I know when I got to Oklahoma, people would ask me what was it like growing up in the south, the deep south, I guess it was considered, cause I grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and it really was not a negative experience for me in the most part. I mean I can remember as a teenager going with a friend of mine, and her name was Caroline Prescott, and she was white, and I was black obviously, and we were going to look for the remaining bathroom in Durham at a gas station that had the doors marked colored and white, and I could remember when we got to the place, it was like now what do we do, and it was like, well what do you do in a bathroom? So, we both went and stood in the bathroom, and we’re like ok, now we did it, and then we ran out. And that was my experience.

Ab - Well that's your adventure, and of course for us, we knew that there was this whole thing about segregation, as a matter of fact, I remember this auditorium, if you go, into the old auditorium, now they built a new one, but the old one, you could still, for many years, they had white washed over the sign, but you could still see you know, colored and white, in the the restrooms down there, because there was a time you couldn’t go, and you know, course new Orleans is known for its Maude Graw, so it was definitely segregated, and when I was a kid, the carnival balls were segregated, so you could, if you were lucky enough to be able to go, you had to sit on the balcony an look down on all of the revelers down there. But yeah, you couldn’t participate in that, as a matter of fact, the carnival crews were segregated, there was the white carnival crew and the one black carnival crew, which were the Zulus, and the Zulus have their ball, but the oddity of that is that the Zulu, when I was a kid, they had to literally blacken their faces in order to parade in the carnival.

DW - What? Well you know, I went to a, you know, a black elementary school for first grade to six grade, and after sixth grade, schools were integrated, so I went to an integrated middle school and an integrated high school, and after that I went to A&T State University, and A&T, is you know of course of those traditional land grant black, historically black colleges. And as a theatre major, I know not in retrospect, there is no other place that I should've been. Because for three years, I was best university actress, and when I left A&T, at A&T everything we did was black, even if it was European material, it was still black. So, we didn’t have the same issues. And I had a lot of lot of lot of experience on stage. And then I left there and went to southern Illinois

university at Carbondale, where I was the only black theatre major in the graduate school program, and you know, I got to be little Douglas, but I had the arrogance of having been trained by Dr. Kilimanjaro first of all at A&T, and I got to SIU, and there wasn’t anything for me to do, there weren’t any roles. Well luckily, I was in children’s theatre, and I thought children’s theatre is the most forgiving place, they’ll let you be black and be something else perhaps in children’s theatre, but past that, people aren't really willing to take those chances.

AB - So well yeah, and again at Grambling we had the same sort of thing, Dr. Alexander Marshall was my mentor there, and of course he knew dr. Kilamanjaro really well.

DW - And you know, dr. Kilimanjaro's name was really Marshall, and he he changed it to Kilimanjaro, and he had a daughter named Africa.

AB - Oh stop.

DW - The Continent and the mountain.

AB - So you do those kind of things and they do teach you, and Dr. Marshal was the same way in terms of that he used to tell us all the time, yes we’re going to do black things, but we need to learn some Chekhov, we gotta learn some Shakespeare, we gotta do all those kinds of things. So when I did decide to go to university of Oklahoma, they weren’t prepared, because they thought that I was, in fact, my acting teacher did tell me that “you was a very good black actor, and I am going to make an act out of you,” and I asked him, “what does that make the rest of the people in the classroom,” and he goes “what,” and I was like, “well you identified me as a black actor in the classroom, understand that you have to identify the rest of us in the classroom also because you gonna make them good white actors, what you gonna make them, you know,” and then there was this teacher who was doing Chekhov and he asked me if I knew who he was-

DW - So they were not prepared for the fact that your thing is really Shakespeare.

AB - I love Shakespeare! But see with Chekhov, because he, I remember him asking me do you know who he is, and I said, oh you mean, Chekhov, the Anton Chekhov, the man who wrote the Cherry Orchard who I laughingly referred to cherry torture because it is three hours too long, and that the breaking the bell like a string was the 2nd act, certainly indicating the fall of the Russian aristocracy, that Chekhov yea I know him. So, there was quite a surprise for them, because I assume, they were thinking I was going to be only to do black things. See, the same thing happened to me in the dance department, I meant the dancers in the dance department because I just happened to see an empty dance room one day an di sneaked in and started working on the bar, and the dance teacher came by and asked me who I was, and I explained to her I was a graduate student, and she said do you dance-

DW - You are a black graduate student,

AB - Well, you know, I was just a graduate student, you know, so, she saw me dancing, and she was like, oh my goodness, would you like to do a piece for the concert? And of course, I did. And I always wanted to make sure that they understood that there was training that could take place on both our parts because probably my greatest feat there was to actually do an African ballet and cast all the white students as Africans just so they would get to be able to take the class, you know learn to do African dance, so it was kind of fun to be that teacher as well as that

student, you know, so there was a whole lot of reciprocation that had to go on at that school, but like I said they were just not prepared.

DW - I remember early on, seeing you dance, and we just say dang, look at that tight butt! I’m just kidding!

AB - I still have it in my dreams. I still have it in my dreams.

DW - Would you say, only in my dreams, only in my dreams.

AB - I still dance in my dreams.

DW - In your dreams... Your mother, what role did she play in your pursuit of the arts?

AB - Well you know, mom, the thing about that, you know, we should call her Victoria, that was her, and our thing in our family you know, my father’s name was albert, my mother’s name was Victoria, and you know, during the Victorian age, there was you know, prince albert and queen Victoria, so I was trying to figure how in the world an Albert and a Victoria get together, and again, to be named the same as these people in the Victorian era, you know, but mom, she was really always worried about me as an artist, because her thing was how were you going to get a job? What kind of money would you be able to make doing an artist? And I told her that really doesn’t matter because I know this is where I belong, and this is where I was going to be happiest. And, it wasn’t until she actually saw me do a performance, a dance performance that she suddenly stopped worrying. You know, because it was like, oh well he really cares-

DW - Cause a dollar’s a dollar,

AB - And well that he can really do this. And, of course one of my fondest memories, I had actually adapted a piece called Mood Indigo, which was Duke Ellington’s music and likes and he uses poetry, and black flew my mother up secretly without me knowing, and of course, she comes here, and I'm there at the end of the performance, and I'm standing there, and they're talking, and they hid my mom, and of course was she walks up on the stage, and all I could think of was my house is smelly because I haven't had a chance to clean nothing.

DW - And you knew she'd have a comment on that!

AB - Oh and she did.

DW - She did.

AB - She did, she not only did that, she also came in and rearranged the furniture. Mom, my chair was over, I like it better over here. I used to have one of those big king chairs, that, no, Victoria, we say, Victoria was really a queen, we believe she was a queen, cause she saw what papa saw, and she had a big big big fan back chair, and she walked through the door, and she said I can rule from here, she said. And for a week, she ruled my house. That’s where she ruled.

DW - I know that you are... particular fond of your mom.

AB - Oh yeah.

DW - So what, what comes to mind of fondest memory?

AB - Gee, that’s difficult, because there's so many of them, I guess the fondest memory that I have of my mom is when I would go back to New Orleans, you know, leaving Oklahoma to go visit for Christmas, Christmas was always very special for my mother, because for one thing, I was, my siblings teased me because they called me the Christ child, because they think I was momma’s favorite child, that was my nickname, the Christ child. They would say oh the Christ has come home. So, I would go home. But at night, one night I went to sleep in my room, and I woke up, and there was my mother at the foot of the bed, and I was like, mom what's the matter? She's just, “nothing.” What, what are you doing? “I’m just looking.” And then she tucks me in. Now you know, I was about 56 years old, when I went home, I was 55, ya momma tucking you in at 55. But it was that warmth feeling, you know, because when you was home with her, she wanted to do everything she could to make sure that you were still her child. That I always loved about her. I guess that the other thing I loved about the Christmas's with her, and we used to laugh when we say that, because she'd say this might be my last Christmas with y’all, and she would say that and we go mom, you gonna live to be a 100. But, you don’t know what that’s like until you lose that person, and the last Christmas when I did go home, and she said that, and she actually did wait for me to go home. I was at home for Christmas, and 4 days later my mom passed away, so you know, it was like, of course my sisters and brothers,” she was waiting for you to get home.” So ok.

DW - That is kind of like when I went home at May, my mom was waiting for me to come home to plant her garden.

AB - Oh yeah,

DW - I was like, she be labor, you know, you can,

AB - Well, you know that’s what you were, you see, my mother had a list of things to do when I got home. So, for Christmas, I knew right away there were certain duties that I had to do-

DW - I think both of us had a job in coming-

AB - We had to wax and mop the house, we had to do the windows, we had to put up the Christmas trees, and all the ornaments, so we had that whole list of things.

DW - What about the stove? Both of us had to clean the oven.

AB - Oh yes, clean that oven, and clean that stove. That’s right. So she gave you that list of honey dews, and you did that, and as honest as I may seem, I look forward to do that when I got home, because it meant for me now you are really home. Oklahoma, though I live here in Oklahoma, Oklahoma would never really be my home. New Orleans would always be my home.

DW - Know it. You know, I'm dealing with the issue, like I said my mom had that stroke a year ago, and she calls and makes requests with me like I live across the street. But I live in Oklahoma 3000 miles away. And she says, I says, “well momma, I think you need to come out here to Oklahoma, so you know where you are.” And she says no, she refuses to leave, and says I should come home.

AB - People in the deep south do not leave, they are entrenched. I mean, of course my mother was a diabetic, and her last stages of the disease, we were all talking about what would we do,

my thing “was mom, I can get you an apartment right here near me in Oklahoma, it can be fitted for all the handicap accessories and things in that nature so you can be right here.” No way, there would be no way. Mother said she was not going to leave New Orleans, and so, that is exactly it. And true to her word, she's there, she's buried in New Orleans, within the same cemetery as my grandmother and my grandfather, you know, they were all together. That is what happens with new Orleanian, they really are entrenched in that space. My sister, and brothers won’t leave New Orleans, even when Katrina displaced them, they went back to new Orleans, and they are there. You know, it's like, god, come on live in Oklahoma. No.

DW - I remember when your mom had her first amputation, and that was when I talked about my teachable moments. I remember that was when I did the first show that kind of touched on that beats. And, I remember the challenge from everybody saying that you should really not put that prosthetic leg in the show. I was like, you know, come on, first of all it was an actor that I didn’t have to pay. But, you know, thinking about you mother, we did the show, and it had to do with diabetes awareness, we didn’t see the character, but we saw the leg, and we talked about how the grandma character still hopped around and did whatever she needed to do, but she wouldn’t necessarily wear her prosthetic leg. And then in the second show, by the time we did the second show, your momma had a second amputation. And in the second show, we put the prosthetic leg on stage, and we planted flowers in it. And there was counted to say, you know I'm not going to use this leg, but I'm still gonna keep on rolling, which was kind of like your momma would.

AB - Right, and well that was her thing, you know, it became, the argument for us became you know, quality or quantity of life. And mother always said she wanted to be happy. So, even doing that, we had to think, ok, she wants to eat this, but she can’t have that because mom, you're diabetic. But it got to the point where she would be miserable if she would not be able to have those little luxuries. Of course, mom never wear any of the prosthetics, she just didn’t want to have those. The irony of that was my grandmother was also a diabetic and she had lost one leg, and she also did not have a prosthetic leg. Both of them, the whole thing of being in the south, the diet in the south, cause you know sugar is the thing, I would try to sneak stuff in when I would go home to cook for mother, but mother could tell if you used artificial sweetener in anything, so and she loved her coffee, so give me my coffee, put the carnation cream in the coffee till it turns that café ole color, and then put in my two spoons of sugar, well I would try to sneak in the splendor, and momma would look here and say what's that foam doing around the edge of the cup? You got that splendor in the coffee. And she knew, so it was like, ok, take it back, pour it out, and bring me a cup of coffee. And so you brought her, you went back, and you’re like ok, and of course you felt guilty when you had to go to the doctor because the doctor, Mrs. Bostick, are you on your diet? And she goes, she sits there and goes yes.

DW - And you knew.

AB - And you know, doctor, no doctor, nuh uh.

DW - As a renaissance artist, I also know you’re also quite accomplished as a visual artist. How, does your mother... has she been an inspiration for any of your visual art?

AB - Oh yeah, you know, the wonderful thing about being a visual artist is that, images, just like being a theatre artist, when people hear the stories that they tell you, the stories that they ingrain 

in you, the behaviors that have ingrain in you, sometimes they become a work of art. For my mother, there were certain colors that she talked about, certain colors that she wore, there is actually one painting that I did, and I think that it became unconsciously became, I painted a series of black angels that I called Angelitos Negros, and I was painting this angel, and all of sudden I looked at this angel and it was the picture of my mother’s face,

DW –She was there.

AB - She’s there, you know, so, yeah, she does, rightly so, the people that you know and love and are with, do impact the kinds of art that you do. And so, again, I always refer to my palette as the palette of Louisiana, you know, I use the rich, dark brown of the earth, I use the emerald greens of the trees and the old oaks of Louisiana, and I use the grayish green color of the Spanish moss hanging in the trees. So all of those things, and the color palette of my mother's gardens, cause my mom loved flowers, so she always wanted you to plant things in her garden for her, mostly flowers, she got that from my grandmother. Grandmother had the garden in the back yard, mom’s garden was in the front yard. And I still have a plant that I took from my grandmother's garden when I was going to college, when I went to Grambling. And I kept that plant and brought it to Oklahoma and it's still growing.

DW - Still growing. My mom was a garden person too, but she always had a vegetable garden, and now that she's not able to tend that garden, she still expects it to be planted. As a matter of fact, this year she said to me, when you leave Oklahoma coming to North Carolina, I want you to pick all your green tomatoes and ups them to me. And I'm like, momma, I planted 5 times more tomatoes at your house and she says to me, well when you get here, we gonna make some cha-cha. Do you know how much cooking?

AB - See you still doing that southern cha-cha, its chowchow.

DW - Chowchow.

AB - Chowchow.

DW - Chowchow, cha-cha, whatever, well, stop correcting me.

AB - Look, hey, that’s the English teacher in me.

DW - That’s the English in you. That why I appreciate being a storyteller, not a story writer. I know you guys get quite a kick when I struggle to providing a script, and then you guys go through it, just looking, and what's this word. And I would tell you, I know what it sounds like, I don’t know how it's supposed to be spelled.

AB - But that’s what the director’s job is, what the writer’s job is.

DW - Well, one of my, I know the first story that I formally formulated, was one day I decided, my mothers gonna be apart of history, and I don't need to wait for anybody else to do it, so I need to do it myself. So I did the story Mrs. Lily’s Pecan Tree, and all the kids all over Oklahoma when I would go back to places, would ask me, well how were Mrs. Lily's pecans this year, you know they’ve never seen her, but they knew all about her, because of her pecans, cause she loved to cook. And she made pecan pies, and she did sugar and cinnamon roasted pecans, and when pecans season was in, shed gather up all those pecans and shed crack them and just neatly bag

them, and then all year, whenever she needed pecans, they were all ready ready. which was probably something I learned from her, she was a preplanner,

AB - Yeah cause we always tease you with being that depression baby.

AW - A depression baby.

AB - A depression baby.

AW - With a 5 year planner,

AB - With a 5 year planner,

DW - Yes I have a 5 year planner

AB - Yes you do.

DW - But my mom was a preplanner, you know she laid out stuff, she planned stuff, I could remember growing up, that my sister and I had these little ruffle, white panties that she made, she would just plan and know what we needed. I could remember when my brother needed a pair of white dress pants for something at school, my mother made them without a pattern, I mean, she did quite a bit of sewing. She fixed hair on the side.

AB - See, my mother made hats.

DW - Your momma made hats.

AB - Made wedding hats, I could remember her doing those great, big southern bells, wide brimmed hats with all that taffeta and tools and flowers and I watched her do that kind of thing, grandma on the other hand, grandma was the canner, you know, she had a fig tree in the back yard, so she made fig preserves and so, you had all those figs, and I was allergic as hell to figs, you know, in terms of getting into the tree to pick, but she – get up and pick me the big fat one at the top, and I would be breaking out in these huge hives, and she would still make me climb that tree and pick those figs,

DW - But you came back with them big fat ones,

AB - With the big fat ones, and had them preserved, and on Sunday, you know, putting fig preserves on those buttered biscuits, and that’s the thing I do remember, the food that my grandmother made at the house. Nobody has that recipe, I mean if I had to regret a couple of things in my life, is not having the recipe for the biscuits that she used to made.

DW - Yeah no I can't make biscuits either, my mom would get up in the morning and make a pan of biscuits and we would mix molasses and put in a little bit of bacon grease, and butter with it and mix it up together, and that was,

AB - Yeah, and so you want to say the people leave, you want to leave them with certain things. Now my grandmother, was also sort of a storyteller, in terms of unofficially, because instead of correcting you in a stern, kind of way, there was always a story that was always connected. You know, so you had to sit down and listen to her story. Like, for me, I was the kid, that I know, I knew everything, I know. So she told me the story of the dirt dauber one day, she says you know

the dirt dauber is building a house but he is building the house upside down, and he would always built the house upside and no matter how he did that, he built the house upside down and every animal would tell him, Mr. dirt Dauber, you’re building the house upside down, and he said I know, so he continued building the house upside down. Next animal they came by and said Mr. Dirt Dauber you’re building the house upside down, if it rains its gonna flood, he said I know, but he built the house upside down. Third animal, they come back and said Mr. Dauber, you’re building the house upside down, and if it rains its gonna flood, and there's a black cloud coming this way. He looked up and said I know, and he continued building the house upside down. The last little animal they come back and said Mr. Dauber, you’re building the house upside down, and if it rains its gonna flood, and that big old black cloud is over your house, its gonna flood your house, and you’re gonna be washed away forever. He said I know, but he continued building the house upside down. Sure, enough that cloud opened up, that rain came down, filled up Mr. Dirt Dauber’s muddy house, it kind of bubbled up, he got washed out of the house, and started washing down the road, and all the little animals said see, we told you, and he said I know and he was never heard again. And she said the moral of that story is if you know, don’t tell me you know show me you know by doing the right things, you know.

DW - You know.

AB - So she had that little story, that’s how we learned.

DW - That’s it, I think we learned most of what we learned from the stories that we’re told.

AB - Stories and proverbs.

DW - And maybe that’s how I became a storyteller.

AB - I know that’s how I did, because that's how I got on the artist and residence storytelling roster by telling that story.

DW - By telling that story.

AB - That’s right.

DW - I've created a lot of stories, I guess, one that we really think about a lot as a single parent, I adopted 7 kids, and so you I had this big task to bring them up to stuff with family history and to just to give them something solid as a family. Of course, I listened and look at everything that went on around the house and I remember when I created the sassafras story, which was basically Jazmin’s story, because she was always telling on somebody for one thing, and so you know, sassafras in the story says you know, my momma named me sassafras after that tea she be drinking. I don’t know why she named me sassafras. My brother, he, they call him, he comes, he always messes with my stuff. Well one day, he let his dog have his puppies over by there, and Jazmin would always go around the house mimicking oh no he didn’t. And then she says, well I have a pink ballet tutu, and on Tuesdays I go to ballet class, and I peret across the floor,

AB - Peret.

DW - Peret across the floor, while my brother, he, he let his dog dance in my pink ballet tutu. And Jazmin would say, oh no he didn’t. And then she say well I didn’t have but one stick of gum, and it was for to last me the whole week, so id chew my gum and id put it on the bed post,

but then he let his dog chew my last piece of gum. Oh no he didn’t. Well you know how the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Well she said when my momma came home, I told my momma everything my brother did. I said he let his dog have his puppies in my bed, and he let his dog dance in the mud in my tutu, and he let his dog eat my last piece of gum, and my momma, you know my momma, she put her hands on her hips, and you know what it means when she puts her hands on her hips, and she looked at my brother, and she said oh no he didn’t.

AB - That’s it.

DW - And that’s Jazmin’s legacy. She proud of it too.

AB - Oh yeah, I've heard her do that several times.

DW - Well Mr. Bostick,

AB - Yes ma'am,

DW - Anything we haven't talked about that you think you want to touch on. Oh, that was scary.

AB - That is scary. Well the only thing that I would just like to touch on, in terms of being an artist and being an artist in Oklahoma, particularly being an African American artist in Oklahoma, is, that, you know, that whole dream of preserving that legacy of performance and preserving that literature for African Americans and those kinds of art forms have been quite a struggle here in Oklahoma, because there's this feast and the famine, and I, somehow hope that Oklahoma will realize one day that it is as valuable legacy as all of the other kinds of artform they do here, so people who hear this will know that part of my legacy is keep reminding them that what we do is equally as important as all the other art forms, the native American, the cowboy, the oriental, the Asian, all those kinds of things, we have the same importance here, and I hope that one day they will actually build a theatre for us to be able to show and display that kind of thing.

DW - Well, with this being the centennial, I noticed that there is still this image of Oklahoma that is cowboy and native American, I think that was one of the reasons why in the sweet biscuit show that we start off by busting that myth by saying that not all the members of the 5 civilizes tribes were full blooded Indians. Some of them, some black people came right along the trail of tears, right along the native Americans. I would hope that, I think my legacy is I think, born in the style and the language that I hear children pick up from me, and in my head I always say that, there may be homes that I might not physically not be invited into, but if your children have ever participated in one of my story telling's, when they take my stories home with them, they’re taking me into your house, and seating me into your table. And now I see, really the first generation, the first group of young artist that I think we have directly impacted and I see their little tenacity and their spark, and I say you go girl, that’s my subtext anyway

AB - That’s right, but I tell my grandchild, you know, my mother always asked when I was going to have children so she could have grandchildren, and I tell her you do, they all over Oklahoma, so, those are the kids we have directly impacted in terms of the performances and things we did ourselves. Yeah, it is true we do have that legacy of those kids.

DW - We have that legacy of those kids.

AB - Amen.

DW - Well, it's been real

AB - Yes, and it's been fun, so I can truly say it's been real fun.

DW - I think that’s a wrap.

AB - Alright.