The twigs and dry leaves crackle underneath his feet with every step. His rushed breath is barely audible above the chorus of tree frogs and crickets whom only come to socialize at night. The night air of the countryside is muggy and still, almost suffocating. The perspiration begins to find its way through the fibers of his cotton shirt, causing the shirt to stick to his back. A pin-sized itching irritation suddenly afflicts the meaty part of his forearm, just below his elbow. He swats his flesh and scratches feverishly. Somehow the mosquitoes have sensed the moisture that his pores have started to produce. Like bandits in the night, they sporadically attack in gangs of twos and threes.
His eyes search the darkness of the wilderness, eager to find a good spot. His stomach seizes and tangles in anguish. A warm pain begins to engulf his abdomen. “Why did I have to order the chili,” he thinks to himself, remembering the restaurant.
“You know niggas are spose ta go round back, boy,” barked the young man behind the counter of the roadside diner. The sole three customers looked up from their meals in disapproval.
“Yessir, I’m sorry but the light was off,” he replied. His voice hid the contempt and embarrassment that now coursed through his veins.
“Well gwone, I’ll turn it on,” retorted the white man. He exited the front of the diner and walked around to the rear. The stench of old grease and rotting food seized him as he neared the back door. He ordered his food and soon returned o his car with two grease stained brown paper bags for he and his family. It would have been nice for them to get out and stretch their limbs. To sit for a spell in the diner as opposed to the old ford, but this stop did not have a colored section. He handed the bags to his young bride as he re-entered the vehicle.
SMACK! The back of his neck tingled from the impact of his large sweaty hand. He could feel the small moist pieces of the parasite’s flesh break apart as he rubbed his thumb between his index and middle fingers. He rolled the mashed glob into a ball and repeatedly tried to flick them into the air.
“This looks like a god spot,” he thought to himself as he approached the tree. His fingers fumbled for his belt, finally releasing it. He lowered his trousers and began to squat. There he half-stood, one hand holding his pants and the other supporting his weight against the tree. His legs tensed and sweat dripped from the tip of his nose as he held himself in the awkward position. Though he resented the fact that he and his family were forced to use the restroom outside like wild animals when they traveled, he had strangely gotten used to it. It was just the way things were if you were black. The way things had always been.
The man in this story is my father. This is just one of many stories he has shared with me about what life was like for him growing up. Stories that he shared so that I could understand how things used to be. It is hard for me to believe that only forty years ago today, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into legislation the Civil Rights Act. It took an act of congress for people to realize that everyone should be afforded the right to sit at a restaurant table and eat. That everyone should be afforded the right to use a public restroom, regardless of his or her skin color, religion, or national origin. Though this is most assuredly a quiet anniversary, one that will not receive much media attention, it is definitely an important one. The United States has come a long way in the matters of race relations, but we still have a long road to hoe. I just hope that forty years from now, my children will only remember these kinds of incidents as stories that grandma and grandpa once told them.