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The Stranger
A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger…he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet.
(I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home… Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.
My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!)
about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked… And NEVER asked to leave.
More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents’ den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name?….
We just call him,
“TV.”
No One Ever Told Me
I was raised in a very sheltered household. My parents seldom left our community and when they did, it was to visit relatives. As teenagers, we were not permitted to run around with our friends who had cars. My parents obviously believed the less we knew about life and the world the better off we would be. On most points, this child rearing philosophy was ill-conceived.
My mother never told me the “facts of life.” Thus, my first real boyfriend at age 16 became my husband at age 16 ½. Being that it was 1968 and I was a “good girl”, a wedding was quickly planned by both mothers. Our first daughter was born less than one month after our wedding, coming three months early. She died shortly after birth because she only weighed 1 pound 2 ounces and her lungs had not fully developed. I was very confused because I was just beginning to understand how I got pregnant in the first place, and I had never known anyone who had died. That was when I first realized my parents should have told me about life.
Six months later, in February of 1969, my husband and I moved to Memphis, Tennessee so he could attend school. I had never been to a city before and was totally amazed by everything. Especially people of color. You have to understand, there were no black people in Holmes County, Ohio. I guess I sort of knew they existed, we did have television and one episode of Bonanza was about a black man. Of course there was more of a family discussion about the episode featuring a leprechaun, so I didn’t learn much about another “real” culture.
After a week or so, I needed to go to the laundromat, which luckily there was one two blocks away from our apartment. When I walked in, I saw it was like the one we had at home, with a row of washing machines back-to-back down the center with a row of dryers on each side. What was different, however, were two very large signs at the end of each aisle. The one on the right said “WHITES ONLY” and the one on the left said “COLOREDS”. Being the law abiding person that I was, I went immediately to the white side and loaded my white clothes in a washer. I then went around to the other side and loaded my colored clothes into two washers, one for light colors and one for our jeans. I was loading our towels into a third washer when a black attendant (that was before coin machines and so laundromats had ladies who gave you change and sold laundry soap) came running up. “Honey child, what are you doing on this side of the laundromat?” she demanded. Being somewhat aggravated about the whole thing, I snapped back, “You tell me! What possible difference can it mean to a washing machine what color of clothes is put into it?” She blinked, looked at me and said, “What, are you kidding me?” To which I responded, “What is there to laugh about? This is just plain annoying, having to go all over the laundromat just to wash your clothes. I don’t like doing the laundry in the first place.” She took another look at me and replied, “You are not from around here are you?” “No, I am not” I assured her, “And I can tell you, we don’t have to do this in Millersburg!” pointing at the signs. She began to laugh and then explained to me what the signs meant, the WHITES ONLY side was for white people and the COLOREDS side was for her people. I thought about what she had said and asked, “How do the washers know what color the person is that is loading the machine? What possible difference could there be?” Her response was assuring me that I needed to go to the white side so I didn’t get her into trouble.
When I went back to my apartment, I stopped by my landlady’s house to tell her about my adventure. She was stunned and told me “all about the black people” and how they were “lucky we took them out of the jungle and brought them here to be our slaves”, and how ungrateful they were “by our generosity.” She also said it would be better if I didn’t go anywhere alone while I was in Memphis because I didn’t understand and could get hurt.
It was several years before I finally realized what racism was, and still is. I still find it amazing to hear derogatory comments made about someone just because of their race. It just plain doesn’t make sense to me how someone can dislike another person solely based on their race. I wonder what our country would be like today if no one ever told their children “all about the black people” or all about the white people.