When Old Folks moved back to Delray Beach,
and lived in a hovel on the edge of historic colored town, he knew what to expect,
because he'd just been living in a hovel on the edge of historic colored town in
Tallahassee: loud music, all-night parties, cars scratching off at all hours, litter,
broken glass, poor police protection, inconsistent trash pickup, lack of Area Beautification
Plan. Not seen were underlying symptoms of poverty: drug and alcohol addiction,
compulsive gambling, chronic welfare dependency, illegitimate children, gang violence,
grafitti, poor performance in school.
You got used to ugliness, noise, and
the threat of unpredicted danger. And the other things you couldn't see.
Besides, it was your fault for not making smarter life-choices: if you lived in
a gated community, out west of town, you wouldn't have to deal with such low-rent
squalor.
But Delray Beach was worse.
* * *
Being on the route from historic white town to historic colored town Old
Folks got the foot traffic going each direction, and the litter, fruit theft, and
dog aggravation that came with it.
If you had a yard, black experience citizens
would throw fried chicken boxes, milk shake containers, hamburger wrappers, and so
forth in it.
If you had a fruit tree, black experience citizens would come
in your yard and steal the fruit.
If you had a dog, behind a fence, black
experience citizens would aggravate it so that it barked at black experience citizens.
* * *
In Miami Blues, Henderson told Hoke Moseley a joke.
"How
do you know a Haitian has been in your yard?
"Your mango tree's been
stripped and your dog has AIDS."
You could say the same thing about
black experience citizens.
They started from behind, but they're catching
up, on AIDS.
* * *
Add to that the burglaries.
Old Folks got burglarized once a month.
His TV set and VCR would be stolen.
Once the car keys were taken out of his
pants and his car was stolen.
Usually, the thieves struck at night, but sometimes,
when the kids were in school and Old Folks and Brenda were at work, they struck in
the daytime.
If they went out of town for the weekend, to a bluegrass festival,
thieves struck.
Old Folks asked the police why they couldn't so something
about it, and they said, "It's crack. They can't work because they are dope
addicts. The only way they can support their drug habit is to steal or sell their
ass. Steal from people who are working. Sell their ass to married white guys who
want strange pussy."
Oh. That explains it.
People who have
a job must deserve being stolen from, because they have things the crack addicts
don't have. It isn't fair.
A mango tree belongs to anyone who wants a mango.
My prune is yours. That is, your prune is mine.
* * *
When their car was stolen, it was abandoned, in colored town, because the
door on the driver's side, once opened, would not close, and stay shut. Old Folks
and Brenda got in the passenger side and whoever was driving crawled over the gear
shift hump. They left the driver's side door closed.
The car was too raggedy
for a crackhead.
Owen and Balder's schoolmates told them where the car was
and they told Old Folks, who went out to colored town with a spare key and retrieved
it.
I don't know how many bicycles they had stolen, from out of the house,
or locked to a tree in the yard.
It was very wearing.
It wore your
liberalism down.
They say a liberal is a conservative who hasn't been mugged
yet.
The constant fear of being assaulted, ripped off, or gotten over on
has the same effect.
Having to look at some grinning eejit who got over on
you, and was not punished for it, pecks away at you like Chinese water torture.
* * *
Oh yea, when they lived in Old Folks's grandparents house, a thief talked
his way inside, took the car keys out of Brenda's purse, came back later and got
their new station wagon out of the driveway under the porte-cochere.
Balder
let the guy in because he was little and his parents weren't prejudiced against black
people. Yet.
Old Folks and Brenda were upstairs, in bed, because they had
to go to work in the morning.
Once thieves stole every CD Old Folks and Brenda
had but a Jim and Jesse and the Virginians album. They left it, like hillbilly
music was beneath them.
Brenda grew up a hillbilly, and nobody in
her family stole.
They did without.
* * *
Because they lived on the edge of historic colored town, when Owen was old
enough to go to middle school, he was bussed with the other colored kids to a good
one in Boca Raton.
But that meant he was on the school bus with older black
bullies who picked on him for two years, because he was white, and privileged.
Schoolyard bullies, or schoolbus bullies, are a fact of life.
It did kind
of irk Old Folks's nanny that the black schoolbus driver, and the black schoolyard
monitors, didn't enforce the rules, when rowdy blacks broke them-or the black lunchroom
monitors: sometimes Owen had to go without lunch for the blacks letting each other
cut in line ahead of him--but c'est la vie.
Better learn to deal with
it, son. It gets worse in high school, in college, and in the corporate, governmental,
or academic employment worlds.
You got to let them in, pass them, hire them,
and promote them. Regardless of whether they do the work they are expected to do
or not.
You can't fail them, fire them, or pass them over for promotion.
They are victims of a past discrimination, and their history means a different standard
applies to them.
* * *
Bukowski wrote a short story once about unloading frozen sides of beef from
a semi, that contained the line, "The American schoolyard had beat me again."
The story didn't say so, but anyone who has ever done work like that could read between
the lines and know that Bukowski was white and his co-workers were black.
Fuck you.
You're supposed to be the bossman.
If you aren't, tough
shit.
* * *
It's a jungle out there.
And we're the monkeys in the Lincoln Park
Zoo.
* * *
Oh, shit. Now he's calling black people monkeys.