As I believe I’ve stated earlier, my parents weren’t hateful people. They were just segregated in their thinking, due to the environment in which they were raised and the era they were born into. My dad was born in 1917, mom in 1923.
My dad was a conductor on the railroad for over 45 years. While I was growing up, the only people I remember him complaining about were the hippies riding the trains in the 60s, barefoot and wanting to sit on the floor instead of the seats. In the early 70s, just after we moved out of the city, he did change his route to avoid racial violence on the south side of Chicago.
In the late 1980s, after my father retired from the railroad, he took a part-time job as a crossing guard with the local school district. One day while on duty near a busy intersection, he noticed two boys heading for his intersection. They were playfully shoving each other as they headed his direction. Suddenly one boy darted between two cars into the street and the other followed in chase. My father watched in horror as a passing car slammed into them both. Both eight-year-old boys were killed.
I saw my dad later that day. He was quiet and contemplative; visibly shaken by what he’d seen. He shared what happened and, the strange part was, he never mentioned that the boys were black. My dad always stated the nationality, race and possibly religion of anyone in one of his stories or jokes. Because of his segregated thinking, that information seemed pertinent to any story he told. But this time, I didn’t find out until I saw the story in the paper. His lack of details gave me more insight into my dad. It didn’t matter to him what race the children were. I saw his heart, not his usual segregated thinking.
More for me to think about.
To be continued . . .