last time I used the word negro

Spring of sixty-eight some folks I hung out with rented this house,  at the corner of South Jackson St and Thirtieth Avenue South.

Except for the arborvitae flanking the porch, house looks much the same today

Kathy, my brother Justin's wife and her friend Betty, ran the large kitchen. Still see them coming in from Pike Place Market loaded down with produce and goodies, producing delightfully crafted meals served to seven or more hungry people seated around a large dark wood table in the formal dining room on the Jackson street side of the house.

My brother Justin and a guy named Charley who had the room on the third floor delivered mail in the cd.  Betty and her husband Mike were students; she a painter and he must have been reading philosophy.  His after dinner discussion around the table were carefully crafted, thoughtfully delivered between pulls on a vintage briar.  Charley drove a beat up fifty-six Volvo, got into fender benders with attractive young women that somehow lead to little romantic trysts. Denied hitting the women on purpose, but we remained skeptical.



Second year in college for me.  Slow season on the salmon cannery and the call of youth culture from the city landed me back in Seattle first of August.  Invited to fly down to Burkley with a couple women leaving the ship the same day, go to the Monterey Jazz festival.* I opted for home, 1918 Eastlake Ave., lugged my Alaska duffle bag past hippies on the landing at dusk; dawn of a new day.

1918 East Lake - The Brownell 

We had two narrow rooms and tiny toilet space on the second floor, large double hung windows overlooking lake Union, downtown, cliche Seattle view, Space Needle and all.  On acid one night I witnessed the presence of all former inhabitants of the building as if seeing through layers in the B-theory of time.  Middle of September found me heading out of town on the train for Spokane, reluctantly moving in with my folks, take classes at Whitworth college.  Pine woods campus on the  northeastern outskirts of town.  Spent a lot of my time throwing pots in the basement of the art building.

Traveled back and forth across the state a lot that year, hang out with friends on weekends and school breaks.  Traveling turned out to be more memorable than the hanging out part in between, more fun too.

Fly student standby in those days, ridiculously cheap. Show your student card to get your ticket, then wait at the gate while the full fair passengers board the plane.  Any empty seats left over went to the standbys.  Scrambled across the tarmac and up the stairs in those days. One evening I got the last seat, after the lieutenant governor and a couple of his staff climbed aboard.  Land at Boeing field, Coffee Corral with friends in the small hours up on Broadway.

Passenger train up over the hump and across eastern Washington high desert also inexpensive and a whole lot more fun than riding Greyhound.  One trip on the Empire Builder, heading east the train hit a car or truck at a level crossing in Monroe.  From the dome car we could tell something happened but not what until word came through about the accident.  Seemed like a long time before we got going again.

 Another time the character sitting next to me had ridden free in box cars more often than in the coach with a ticket, lots of stories to tell.  Think of that guy every time I hear the line you got to know when to hold um. Invited me to join him in the club car for a drink, I was only nineteen, stayed in my seat.  Couple hours later he came reeling into the car, shitfaced. Blamed me for the drunk.  Waiting for you to come back to the bar I took every drink they brought around, you made me drunk!  Even as a naive kid the I knew that guy is going to get drunk every time he has a twenty dollar bill in his pocket, turned my face to the window and dozed off to sleep until the call for our stop in Spokane.

Second semester an ad for riding sharing to Seattle every other week caught my eye.  Black guy and his buddy, sometimes one or two others beside me, chip in on gas leave campus five in the evening on Friday, leave town for the return trip about the same time Sundays.  Don't remember names, no one ever said why they wanted to go back and fourth to Seattle so often.  Get away from campus and Spokane reason enough without saying.

Found out as an adult that the folks thought there could be something wrong with me because I spaced out so quiet for so long in the back seat of the car.  There is, but that's for another story.  Riding in that car pool would have been the same, me rarely entering into the conversation.  Probably the third or fourth trip with those guys I did speak, asked if they knew a guy we hung out with those days,  he is a negro.  GULP!!

Cut with a knife silence in the car hit me as hard as if it were the back of the driver's hand.  In an instant, I felt the fool.   No, cracker, I don't know your buddy Jerry just because he is a negro.   What kind of dumbfuck question is that?  Think everyone in the cd knows everyone else because we are all negros? Dumbfuck cracker.  Silence can speak volumes if one cares to listen.

Possible that I just felt shut down by evoking the disapproval of someone I looked up to as a cool guy, socially popular, funny, smart and only grasped the deeper meaning of the word negro over time.  We didn't say the N-word in our family, not so much because of the racial slur, but because my mother viewed the word as vulgar lower-class speech.  On our side of town, we say negro.  Means the same damned thing and don't ever forget it.

Not long after that, Martin Luthor King got shot.  Next day the whole school filed into the chapel for a prayer memorial.  My car pool driver, as the token black on campus, got up to deliver a eulogy. Kid must have been a preacher.  Started low and slow with respectful memories of the fallen hero bringing us into the palm of his hand before taking us a little way into his world, being black in America.  Touched on a personal story or two, only hinting at realities we couldn't understand.  Building toward his climax he ended shouting  if shooting down Martin Luther King is the best this country has to offer then take your star spangled banner and shove it up your asses!

Congregation stunned to silence, the speaker left the podium in tears.

Carpool left from the usual spot for our ride to Seattle later that day.  I wanted to raise my fist from the back seat shouting off the pig, but I don't do that kind of thing.  Besides, after the negro gaffe, I kept my mouth shut in the car.

The community seemed calm the evening I got in.  Settled into the hippie room on the first floor.  Pillows and record albums scattered around, heavy shades and fabric hung over the ceiling light, incense lingered in the air.  Lenord Cohan ruined my love life in that room; if I can't have Susann I don't want anybody. Possible exception for the Girl from Ipanema.

Next day a couple black guys Justin and Charley worked with at the Post Office came over to the house, heavy into a jag on weed and wine.  Open mason jars half full of  rosé, Prince Albert cans stuffed full of sixties weed dumped into a pile in the middle of the circle.  Stems flame seeds pop in loosely rolled joints passed around while our black friends lectured us on race relations.

That's a sign, I tell ya, That's three M's. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin. Next time it's white folks going to die!  Going to be machine gun nest set up at Fourth and Pine, start mowing them down.

Charley delivered mail to the Panther Party headquarters, read Carmichael and spent long afternoons in deep discussion around the office, ready to take to the barricades with the brothers when hot lead began to fly.   Later in the summer the twenty-foot tall arborvitae that grew close on each side of the wide front doors of the house burst into flame at two in the morning. Biblical towers of flame.**  Gang of teenagers milling around outside; guess someone in this neighborhood don't like you folks.  Not sure about Charley, but others in the household came to the conclusion that in a race war, the color of your skin could make you a target regardless of the contents of one's heart.

Nevertheless, one is under a moral obligation to accept all people as having an equal right to exist. If there is a connection between these incidents and this conviction, I have been completely unable to write a closing paragraph making the point.  Tired of trying, publish this sucker so I can move on to the next story.



* until this morning, I had the jazz festival held in September of that year confused in my mind with the Monterey Pop Festival that happened in June.  Still a fun memory, regrett not taking the girls up on their offer. Wonder how my life might have unfolded differently had I done so.

**working in Alaska at the time, I only heard about the incident later.