The Side Effects of Endorphins

Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

Not an easy read

I grew up a racist, in Berks County Pennsylvania. And it is really bothering me.

Hopefully, I learned from it. A famous man once said, Pennsylvania, a state with two big cities and Alabama in between. He must not be all that famous.

I grew up a racist son of a bitch.

I did not know any better.

What sticks to a young mind and that what sticks can be removed? It is like a frying pan left in the sink too long. It can come clean if you work at it long enough. The residue somehow stays.

When we were little the men who picked up our trash, we were taught to fear them. There were black people coming into our alley. The putrid smell of trash lingered from the trash cans. While falling asleep at night, every noise I heard were people in the alley, lurking and dangerous.

 

I felt like we were at war with a country called Puerto Rico. The parents blamed the spics for everything. Why did they not go back to their own country. Do not go anywhere near the housing projects. The projects were not a safe place to be. For a long time, I thought Puerto Rico was another country. They did not teach us any different in school. Those still living there, still think of Puerto Rico as a country all its own.

Polish jokes ran rampant. I never figured how many it took to screw in a lightbulb.

In our household the moon landing eclipsed the life and death that was Martin Luther King. The space program was indeed exciting. Gas stations gave away commemorative stamps, and the achievement was phenomenal. Stories of Martin Luther King were page three news, tucked in near the Hi and Lois comics. The comics never had a person of color.

 

There was a club in town that made fantastic mouth-watering pizza that tickled the senses. The sauce was perfect. I do not remember the cheese. I know many people who referred to this pizza place as the WOP club. The WOP CLUB preferred to not have blacks as customers. This sentence is odd for Berks County where they would shrug their shoulders and speak

“It don’t matter.”

I do not know what became of the polish jokes we heard as kids. As a Cub Scout we made Indian war shields out of elongated raw pasta. It did not work very well in the rain.

Our grandmother when eating licorice spice drops would refer to them as Nigger babies. As a kid the candy was passable, as an adult it is delicious. The term we should have hated, but it was our grandmother. Our other grandmother predicted the demise of Tiger Woods before there was an actual Tiger Woods.

 

Let us play tag -Who is It?

 

Eena, meena, mina, mo,Catch a nigger by his toe;If he squeals let him go,Eena, meena, mina, mo

 

We said that shit.

 

Our high school had about a dozen persons of color. They all lived in the same neighborhood. It called Furnace Hill. The furnace referred to the place where they burned trash. Most people in town called Furnace Hill -Nigger Hill. It was not a term of endearment. It was a convenient place to burn the trash.

 

It had predictably come to this.

 

One day while eating a traditional Berks County hoagie along with a bag of chips, I sat on my break with a woman with whom I worked. I liked her plenty; she was a friend and a great co worker.

 

She happened to be black.

 

While enjoying that delicious hoagie with the perfect crusty hard roll, I pulled a single chip from the bag. Yes, a single chip. It sat burnt to a crisp.

 

I called it a Nigger Chip.

 

It was automatic without thinking. It was a learned behavior. I said it aloud.

It came out so easily it scared me.

It came out so easily it scarred me.

My friend and I talked. Well, she talked and I listened.

It took awhile, yet it changed me, it shaped me to understand how that made her feel.

That may have been one of the more life shaping sandwiches I have eaten in my life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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