BLACK LIVES MATTER

The following narrative is the sum total of my experience with black lives.

I was born in Idaho a ridiculously red and white state.  The only nonwhite person I ever saw growing up in Emmett was a Japanese classmate whose parents were interned during WWII and settled in Emmett.  There is a larger settlement of Japanese in Ontario, Oregon and there used to be an annual festival.  

My first acquaintance with a black person was in highschool.  We had an exchange student from Kenya named Ellen Ogada.  I got to know her and bugged her about Swahili.  I can still say "Three small potatoes." Which is Kiazi Kizuri Kizulu.  If I remember correctly.  I will never starve in Kenya.

My grandma Horn never swore or used the N word.  One time when I was home I asked her to tell us the story about when the school house burned down.  She blinked and asked, "Do you mean when they burned the N-word?"  I was astounded, she buttoned her lip and wouldn't say another word.  This would have happened about 1910 somewhere in (shudder) Missouri.

There was a very small neighborhood near the river in Boise where the black population lived.  We would drive through there going to Idaho Power Company office for Dad to pick up his check.  

One time we were driving through that neighborhood and dad exclaimed, "Look at the red headed n-word!"  That is the one and only time I ever heard him use that word.

When I moved to Petaluma, California to live with my cousin and his wife I first worked at Fairchild Semiconductor.  There were a lot of black girls who commuted across the Contra Costa bridge from Richmond.  

Fairchild actually had a policy that a black person could not work there unless they lived in Marin County.  I only knew of two women who lived nearby.  One was Doris Bell whom I adored and the other lady was Eula Thibideoux. Doris lived on Rincon Way past the Marin County Courthouse, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  That was a fun building.  It looked like an Art Deco alien spaceship nestled between two small hills.  First husband and I had to go there once to bail his brother, Pat, out of jail for drunkenness.  We got on the elevator and when it stopped the door did not open.  Instead the door opened on the other end of the elevator.  Cool!

Back to Fairchild, the black ladies who came from Richmond just cheerfully gave addresses in Marin County.  HR department was not going to look too closely at that as they desperately needed bodies to fill the positions for all three shifts, six days a week.

There was only one black man who worked there, His name was Roy.  He worked in maintenance.  Every once in a while one of the ladies would tease him, "Roy! Gimme some sugar!".

The first time I ever heard a black girl use the term Soul  Sister, I was charmed. I asked what was that and she explained that her friend was especially close and they were in the same church.

This was also the first time I ever heard about a rent party.   Somewhere would need to come up with the rent and would through a party.  This involved the host having a potluck party with an admission fee.  I thought this was very clever. 

It was also the first time I ever heard about hot water corn bread.  I realized years later that this was polenta.

I moved back to Emmett as a displaced housewife in the mid 70's.  I fortuitously enrolled at BSU in the medical records program.  One of the professors gave a speech on how to deal with difficult situations in particular doctors who are upset about something or other.  He was very tall, very commanding and to add to his stature he wore very sturdy clogs that added a couple of inches to his height.

When I lived and worked in Barrow, one of the pharmacists was a lovely black woman named Vivian.  Her hobby was that sport where one pushed a 30 pound granite rock on ice.  There was not a place to pursue that in Barrow strangely enough.

After that, one time when husband and i were waiting to catch the plane from Seattle.  The jet finally landed and said to husband, "Lets look and see if anyone famous gets off!".  Sure enough the first person off the jet was Rosie Greer!  He noticed us looking and he came over and looked at the cat carrier and asked, "Is that a dog?"

After Barrow I worked at the Coquille Valley Hospital for 12 years.  One of the people hired to be public relations was a lovely black lady who eventually went to work at the Coos County College.

Coquille did have a black sheriff.  He retired a few years later.  

Then I worked in Dillingham, Alaska for a year.  One of the billers was a black lady whose last name was Greer and actually was related to Rosie Greer. She wound up with my van that I left behind.  I wonder where it wound up.  By the time I left there the gas tank had developed a leak.  Someone ran out of gas I'm sure.

About a month ago, husband and I were returning home from Coos Bay and there were Black Lives Matter demonstrators waving as we went by, we waved back.

Most recently, one of the patients at Davita is a black man named Bradley.  We have chatted and gotten a bit acquainted.  Very pleasant person.

The point is, that I should not have to use any descriptor such as black, brown or yellow, I certainly don't use the term my white friend.  So we have a long way to go to achieve unthinking equality.  May it be so very soon.