The soldier and housewife, looking at each other in a very solemn manner, began explaining their dreams, their hopes and their personal feelings about the future and showed the three minor children a book for us to read and learn how to speak English. The rest was to become the most significant event in their lives as they remember packing their personal belongings into six suitcases and heading for the airport in Amsterdam to head on a KLM flight to the Americas hoping to land and feast on the new dream of living in a free and opportunistic country where persecution or religious beliefs are respected, where opportunity to live and grow healthy were provided and where children, no matter what age can advance both educationally and socially without the traditional boundaries of socialism where the existence of a commune environment denied such goals or motives.
Our new home was situation in the south end neighborhood, situated in the low income of Columbus Ohio. Arriving in America in the late fifties, the biggest change for us was the American culture of food, clothing and music. The extra luxury of having both a telephone and a television was much appreciated and told well of our father and mother’s yearn to educate us to the fullest extend of their possibilities. Soon after arriving in Ohio, a late arrival came into the family and the clan expanded to five. A baby sister would come into this world safe and sound with lots of love and attention provided by her siblings. Each of these changes appeared to be a direct opposite of the culture we had left behind and it was a refreshing feeling for all of us that benefited from the social environment. School was a pleasant place to go for me. I would go to school every day of the year if I could; it was a sanctuary from all the negative things I had experienced in my life so far. Although not very fluent in speaking English, I managed to cope as did my older sister and younger brother who seemed to adjust better than me as his personality was more outgoing than both my sister and me.
Speaking with broken English and apprehending the culture quickly, I gathered a circle of friends that wanted to spend additional time with me and tutor me in the language barrier that existed. Two girls in particular, I remember, raised their hands high in the air when the fourth grade teacher asked for volunteers to sit down with me and help me with the hard words as I learned to put them in sentences and comprehend their meaning as well. Spending my time reading and writing worlds provided by my tutors, I couldn’t help but notice they both smelled really nice and their hands were soft and smooth. One with blonde hair and the other with brown, I felt like a king sitting between these two beauty queens as they dedicated most of their own time teaching me how to speak, read and write the English language at the age of eleven. Elementary school was over and done with before I knew it. Those girls who gave me all that attention moved on and I am sure charmed some other guy off his feet as they were both very pretty and smart to boot. Recess in school often provided a time to meet new friends and as time passed on I developed new friendships with some of the same who lived nearby and also those who lived down the road where the racial boundaries of the city divided the black from the white houses. Living on the white side was not always a peaceful event as it was just as rough on this side struggling with those who roamed the school yards looking to pick a fight with weaker and smaller than them. I recall those hot summer days when we all gathered, black and white, in our shorts and tee shirts with towels draped over our shoulders as we trekked our way to the community swimming pool five miles down the road in another part of town we had heard it was the bigger and better than the smaller one we had near our neighborhood. Sweating and exhausted from walking the trip in the middle of the July summer, we were ready to line up and jump into the pool when were abruptly halted by two white tall and muscular life guards as they told my brother, my black friends and I in a very calm and stern voice, we could not enter the pool as we were “too dark” for the rules.
Looking in shock and dismay at my white friends, I turned around but not without saying something that was obscene or derogatory as I was not only embarrassed but really brought down to the reality that here, on this earth, at any given moment, the color of your skin can reject or allow you entry into a public pool or any other place if they chose to deny you your rights of equality under the social cultural standards of the neighborhood. Sports became my favorite pastime and as I developed myself into an athletic type of persona, I realized my physical prowess allowed me to be a terrorist on the school yard, if I wanted to be thus I chose to be careful of how I was perceived as a bully or a friend. On several occasion, I needed to intervene in situations where others, stronger and bigger than they ones they picked on had to be put back into check by me as they chose to pick on my friend or friends during their reign of terror on the playground.
Thinking of me as a peace maker, in reality it was turning out I was being perceived to be an enforcer. It became a common consensus I represented the rights of those smaller or weaker and protect them from the bullies that roamed the playgrounds; often going unnoticed by the teachers who were suppose to be supervising us during recess or lunch time. A reputation is a terrible thing when you lose control of this label because as I was about to find out, my reputation to defend evil and the weak quickly elevated me to the level of being a target for others to challenge and determine whether or not they could beat me in a fight or wrestling match which to my surprise, came way to often as I reached my later years as a teenager in junior high school and as an athlete on the track and football squad in high school. Wanting to be more free spirited and independent, my thoughts of going to school wavered from time to time and caused me to begin taking it more lightly than I should have. Grades dropped and my presence on the football team was hinged on the ability to bounce back and get my grades back where the coach would be able to keep me playing. Seeking help by looking for a tutor, I found a girl who was both smart and pretty but who already had a boyfriend who was extremely jealous of the fact she wanted to tutor me and get my grades back up to where they were suppose to be.
There were times when I felt tension as she was slightly distracted at times during our meetings and finally told me to find somebody else to teach me math and algebra as those were the two subjects I really had trouble with in class. Reaching sixteen, I became the family chauffeur as the formerly retired soldier, my father, had sought new employment and worked in an insurance warehouse where all things burned or salvaged in an industrial fire would be stored, cleaned and resold to bidders. Getting up early in the morning, I took my father to work and turned around quickly to return home and pick up my mother who had taken job as an accountant at another insurance place downtown Columbus. Having only one car in the family, I was placed with the responsibility to ferry both parents to and from work so I could go to school in between the runs and park the car at the school parking lot. Needless to say, a sixteen year old teenager with a car in the sixties was a rare sight and to say the car was a chick magnet would be an understatement. The white ’59 Chevy Impala was a high profile device often the interest of the local police as it was known to be a fast cruiser and often seen smoking tires on the street and school parking lots. Radio blasting and an eight track of the Beach Boys in the car player, I was a king of the road for many to envy as I took this opportunity to brag and show off as much as I could with my friends and giving rides to all the girls who expressed a wish to ride to the burger joint during lunch time or sometimes we would cut school and go joy riding out of town.
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