I was walking home one evening, I was 12 years old, a strong looking lad, reddish hair, determined if anything to make a few bucks. I had already made $4.35-cents; I charged .15 to .25 cents per shoeshine, depending on the bars I'd go into, and the composition. Yes, even at thirteen, or almost thirteen, I was using psychology to make a living, or better yet, at least I was trying to figure out if I could outsell my opponents, for there were other shoeshine boys on the beat (sometimes my friend Donald Brandt((or Donny as I often called him)), his father went out, or dated my mother,"in any case, we'd compete with each other sometimes, and sometimes we'd join together). If I saw another shoeshiner I'd automatically charge .15 cents a shine, for I knew his was between .25 to .35 cents. Plus, when I charged .15 cents a shine, I always got a tip, making it .25 cents anyhow. The end result, being the same as their earnings; but this evening was a busy evening, and I had to get home by 11:00 O'clock, or my mother would surely be fuming thereafter (wondering and worrying, and so forth and so on), and so I made my last bar, leaned against the building next to the arc light, and started counting my pocket full of change. "Not looking about, just counting, counting and recounting, with a smile on my face: it all came to $4.35 each time, thus, I was satisfied with the tally. Dust had crept in, as my bluish-green eyes looked at the coins in my hand again, and sensitive ears heard a voice, a demand, "Hay boy," it said, "hand it over..." the stern voice unrelenting. When I looked up, holding two hands full of change, it was a tall thin white boy, about sixteen or seventeen years old, possibly too tall for his weight; "I being about 5'5" at the time, and this kid close to six-feet I simply looked up, and straight into his eyes, not saying a word. "I said boy, hand it over, or I'll beat your head against the brick wall." I hesitated, somewhat in disbelief, then as I adjusted to the surroundings, taking in a deep breath, as if I had but a second to deliberate and hand it over: give a yes or no, I said (it burped out somehow), "No-pp!" and the boy stepped two feet in front of me, grabbing my shoulders and pinning me against the brick wall. Now things were seemingly becoming a little gloomier. "I said boy...hand it overrrr...!" another voice came from behind this tall white robber, it was a heavy voice this time"a strident voice, it had kind of an accent to it, and when I looked around the thin kid's lower part of his right shoulder, I saw even a taller person than the white lad, a big tall Blackman: the scene became a bit dubious (was he going to rob the tall white boy after he rob me? So I was thinking? Inasmuch as that was one thought, it was not my only; but often times when such things happen like this one swears"hours pass by, when in essence it is but a few seconds if not minutes, yes, time for me was lost somewhere in-between. Before I could run and escape, or come up with something magic, something peculiar happened: "Leave the boy alone... [pause]," said the rustic voice coming from the Blackman"as the pandemonium thickened the ghostly scene of the evening, I looked, looked at the taller Blackman's eyes: eldritch-dark and they had opened up wide, wide like umbrellas, big and broad and strong, real burly looking. The white boy didn't pay too much attention to the voice behind him at first: only giving a morbid twitch with his mouth and eye (or at least that is what I observed), and then the voice said in a more gaudy way, a second time"more deathly than ever: "You just can't hear, can you, I said NOW!" and as the huge Blackman was about to grab the white lad (and pick him up I think and throw him like a bird over to: wherever, perhaps the sewer), the white chap turned about, his eyes opened up as wide as White Castle Hamburgers, for there was a fast food White Castle restaurant right across the street from me; on Rice Street by our State Capitol in St. Paul Minnesota. With one hand the Blackman pushed the tall white lad away from me as if he was a pickle on one of those hamburgers; like a twig: making everything a ting more haunter (but safer for me), "You want to make something of this?" he asked the white boy, adding, "If so, let's get to it; if not get going before I flatten you on the cement." And the white lad was gone, just like that. The Blackman then turned to me (which I was more concerned about getting home than a punch in the face), "You best be getting on home, you're lucky tonight," he added with a grin and smile as if to say, '...can't believe a Blackman stood up for you,--haw?' Had he been reading my mind: for that did occur to me for a millisecond? "I, up to this moment in time, never really knew a black person. But this deed of kindness was imprinting for the most part into my mind; my first encounter with a black person would stick thick with me the rest of his life. If anything, as I would progress in life, I would see the character of a person vs. the color before I made my future judgments, and not even knowing why; perhaps because of him; that is to say, I didn't know why, until I was much older in life, when most people examine the 'whys,' and 'ifs,' of life. If anything, racism would be a foolish noun to him, not fully comprehensible, not fully accommodating, yet in life despairing moments would prop this noun up, here-and-there; it would not have the impact it had on others for me, it would not dominate my life, nor alter my sleep like others. One might oversimplify it, as I do, by scarcely looking at it, yet observing it I did, but such perfect simplicity would mean being somewhat naive, and if anything that may have been my worse sin in a world, an adult world I was about to enter, for it was the being of the 60's: and it couldn't have happened at a better time. |
