DATE: 19 Jan. 2009
TO: My Political E-Mail List
SUBJECT: MLK Day Image and True Story
For Martin Luther King day, and my act of service (as President-Elect Obama has so characteristically statesmanly asked of us), I’d like to share the image of this button and the rather incredible but true story behind it ...
Near midnight on New Year’s night (New Year’s Eve we had helped welcome this new, historic year by watching racial harmony movies, like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Great Debaters, with Barry & Gail and friends), my wife and I were driving home on the 405 from Santa Monica, where we had just seen the latest James Bond film. Suddenly, I remembered that I had left my coat in the theater. So I turned off at the nearest off-ramp. But we couldn’t just get back on there because the on-ramp was blocked by an accident.
Navigating unfamiliar streets at night, we soon found ourselves lost in “Inge-Hood,” as graffiti prominently named this neighborhood of Inglewood. And because we had taken a nice long drive beforehand, talking over some serious family issues, my car was running dangerously low on gas. I pulled into the first gas station I could find open at that hour, to get my bearings from my mapbook as well as some fuel for the car. We noticed a number of African American men hanging around the station, whose Indian American attendant was nearly hermetically sealed in the office, behind bullet-proof glass. I walked up to him, slipped my twenty through the slot, and began pumping my gas. Frances sat watching, nervously, in the car.
As the petrodollars clicked away on the pump, one of the guys — maybe homeless, from the look of him — wandered over to me, shifting this way and that, looking me over. He started to make small talk. Thinking it better to answer, as nonchalantly as possible, rather than ignore his questions, and thus disrespect him, I replied when he said how bad things in the economy were, “Tell me about it” — hoping I could somehow impress him that a white guy with an old, but well kept car and inexpensive, but well kept clothes could somehow be unable to share some money with his homeless or nearly so self (The last thing I was going to do at this point was take out my wallet). Seeing this stranger in the “hood” at night so close to me now, Frances stepped halfway out of the car.
Then I added, from the heart (so as to not disrespect him but also since that’s just my nature), “But at least we’ve got Obama.”
He pulled the button from his pocket. I said, again very spontaneously from the heart, “Wow, that’s a real collector’s item!” At which point he gave it to me, asking nothing in return. I didn’t know what to say. Then a bell rung — my tank was full — and it hit me, “I’ve got $2.40 coming to me for the gas; why don’t you take it? Thanks!”
Frances and I got in and, quickly getting our bearings, started to drive off. I saw that the night clerk didn’t at first give the guy the money, perhaps thinking I would still come get it, so I drove slowly by his “cage,” now with all the guys around it and another one or two coming to join them, and asked my new friend, “Did you get it?” As we were still rolling, never stopping, he said yes; and we drove off, back to the theater, where the night manager — a nice African American woman — got my coat from the lost-and-found.
I would never repeat our adventure. I’ll leave the suspense to 007. The “hood” in the middle of the night is not the safest place in the world for anyone of any color, but perhaps particularly white (or so my friends of color tell me) or even brown (as is my Frances). But somehow the hand of fate, God as I see it, (and some driver’s mistake at that off-ramp) had brought two very different but equal Americans together at a time and place neither would have ever predicted; and a piece of history changed hands.
This button, and all it represents, is now one of my most prized possessions. Yes, the dream is now.
God bless America,
Doug
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