Georgia On My Mind

Well not really, but like the rest of the country, I have been thinking about race lately. A lot. So rather than me telling you what I think and feel, I thought I would share two stories in two separate blog postings about race. These are my stories. In the seventies, there weren't too many privileges you could look forward to while you were in high school. Sure you could drive, but that was about it. In my house being older did not necessarily mean more freedom, it just meant that you had more responsibilities. Unlike high school where age and class meant status. When you became a senior, you were at the top of the status heap. With that status came one very special privilege. That was that seniors could leave campus and go out to lunch. Because no one had their own car, "out to lunch" really meant you could cross the street and hang out in front of the tiny burger shack eating on the sidewalk. Eating your burger and onion rings standing up in a cloud of adolescent second hand smoke just seemed so very cool. I was so excited about being able to go “out” to lunch. I had a friend, a fellow debater; Eva Goodman-who was very pretty and smart. She was tall with long, thick, straight dark hair and was a clever debater. She was the coolest. We talked everyday and would walk together to our classes planning and plotting our senior lunch. We talked about it for at least a month and then we picked a day. Eva had to get permission from her father. I waited for her response for what seemed like weeks, but was probably only a day or two. One night, the green princess phone in our kitchen rang and it was Eva! I stood there twirling the endless and tangled green spiral cord anxious to hear her father’s decision. That night on the phone, her voice was different; softer or smaller I don’t know which really. Eva spoke softly and said: “My father said I could not go to lunch with you.” I had not a clue why but just knew it was because of all those kids smoking cigarettes on the corner. That wasn’t it. In a very truthful and deliberate way, Eva said, “I can’t go with you because you are black.” Now she may have said Negro or colored or *Schwartza, I don’t remember, but I remember why she couldn’t go. I was devastated. I couldn’t change who I was and on top of that, I wouldn’t get to go out to lunch and eat my burger in a cloud of second hand smoke. We didn’t talk much after that and I have often wondered what happened to Eva Goodman. If the Gods have a sense of humor, perhaps she fell in love with a black man. *Yiddish pejorative for Negro