Stickin it to Da Man

Today I am stealing a post from the blog of my best friend's dad. This is a fellow that lives in a small, rural, economically-challenged and rather, um, old fashioned town in southeastern Colorado. He served on their police force for a number of years and so became more familiar than he probably ever wanted to be with the criminal element unique to a small town. However, he never wavered in his personal convictions or lost his sense of humor. I wanted to say something eloquent about the fabulous Rosa Parks, but his story is so much better than anything I could have come up with. Thanks, LuckyDawg. ld

Stickin' it to Da Man

Rosa Parks died this past Monday night.

Rosa Parks was the black lady who refused to give up her seat to a white man back in 1955.

That took guts.

If you don't think so, watch History Channel's bit about the Selma marches, "Crossing the Bridge", wherein you will see thugs in the uniform of the Alabama State Police gassing and beating peaceful protest marchers. And a fat, ignorant sheriff taking a nightstick to a black man on the steps of the courthouse in Selma, for having the audacity to raise questions.

In 1960, shortly after we moved from up north back to MCAS Cherry Point in eastern North Carolina, I had my own very small taste of dealing with The Man.

We were in New Bern, shopping, just up the road from the air station. I wandered across the street to the bus station, looking for a water fountain. I was fourteen then.

I found one.

I drank from it.

And then I was yanked off my feet by a pus-gutted Nazi in a Craven County Sheriff's uniform.

"Wutcher doin', boah? Is yew one a dem (expletives deleted) agi-tayters from Yankee-land?"

I was wondering if I was going to be bent over and sodomized right then and there. This porcine piece of work was in a rage. Spittle flew. I thought his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. I remember quite clearly, even today, the veins standing out on his splotchy, booze-sodden nose.

And he shook me by the neck.

"We doan lak no nigra-lovers 'round heah," he screamed. "Yew gitcher ass t'hell on back weah it come frum, you heah me boah?"

Yeah, I heard him.

I had no idea what had set him off.

And then I noticed the rusted, over-painted, almost illegible "Colored" sign over the water fountain.

That was my sin.

I had sipped some water from the wrong fountain, in an obvious flaunting of the customs of the South. Therefore, I must be some kind of pinko Comm-yew-nist agi-tayter.

It was at that point that I became a social liberal, though it might not sound like it sometimes. I might be an economic moderate, but I have always been a social liberal, thanks to the Craven County, North Carolina, Sheriff's Office. John Kennedy had already struck a chord with me; Lyndon Johnson, in spite of the Vietnam war, did the same with his Great Society. Later on it was McGovern. These were some of the guys who inspired the dreams, even if reality crushed them.

Most of us have no idea of the courage it took for Rosa Parks to tell Da Man, no matter how politely she may have done it, to go stuff himself.

I got a very small bit of insight into it, that hot July day in New Bern, North Carolina.

God bless you, Rosa. Rest in peace. Ya done good.

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