Martin Luther King was assassinated at age 39 on 4 April 1968.
Back when Cut Rite waxed paper bags held our school lunches, we couldn’t wait to get to the church.
It was only ten minutes on foot to St. Andrew’s, the protestant one a block up from the President movie theater.
Others, like Tony, Dave and Big Wayne went too, and if we finished early enough, we would run around the hall, plunk on an old beat piano and maybe grab a girl. Gail was there and Cynthia and Carmen, Dave’s sister. There wasn’t any lunch hall for those of us who walked a half hour from the Wilson Park Homes to get to school. If you lived back beyond McKean Street, and you did if you were Black, it was too far and too risky also. Everybody else went home for lunch—Viggiano and Ziegler had hot meals and sauntered back to class drowsily full and at ease.
In the middle of the day there weren’t too many chances we would have to hide under a car from “them”.
Even Big Wayne got all serious and wary when we ‘got into our stroll’ and walked down from the school on 23rd to Snyder. Every one of us had been caught out, alone or in a small group—beer or soda bottles raining down in a South Philly shower of hatred.
That happened to me the day Mom insisted I go to Saturday afternoon confession. That day it was good to get into the huge gothic St. Edmonds. I made sure I didn’t go off the Snyder main drag on my hurried way back to home base.
Seemed that we didn’t want to be seen on weekends; daytime crews of ten or twelve mainly scrawny housing project boys and girls was enough for enclaves of Whites born of Napoli and County Cork. You had to know the safe streets and where you did not want to get jumped.
Because we had to, we rallied, even facing off the high schoolers. We might have to back away from their kicks and strange scowls, go another direction to get to our Roman Catholic destination, but we had heart, we told ourselves.
They went on to theirs, swaggering as best they could, because they would need all that and more when the got to 25th. Some ‘soul brothers’, we knew, could cause those clowns to run like hell.
Mostly though, we tried hard to just be ‘cool’.
My lunchmeat sandwiches had that honey brown spicy mustard, I had a miniature metallic candy red Eldorado car in my side pocket. In my back pocket was a hard black plastic ‘afro comb’ for my hair or for doing battle if I had to.
I couldn’t dance, had glasses and was skinny, but Dave said we were ‘tight’.
Yeah!
We were going to both be ten next year and go to overnight camp. Pushups were exhausting but if you wanted to punch a White boy he had to hear bells.
Out of the St. Andrews’ door and into the sunshine, we would tumble, laughing.
Then we would joke, arms across each other’s shoulders and flash each other the reassuring look and start up the street back to class.
At least we had fun for a while.
A little while after that the church board said we couldn’t eat lunch there anymore. Our parents were angered, afraid for us but they couldn’t persuade the Unitarians any better.
We went back to the four times a day hike across playgrounds and narrow streets where Italian grandmothers screeched at us in that funny language.
22 February 2008
From Exile,
Bankole
www.geocities.com/exiledone2002
Popularity: 27% [?]
Sphere: Related ContentOther Posts
