I went out to dinner tonight with a mom's group. I really only know one of the moms well, but it's fun to meet new people and enjoy a nice meal. Dinner was at a local grill on a reservoir - a little restaurant out on the banks of a river in rural SE US. So there I am enjoying my Merlot and Veal Monte Carlo and chatting with the ladies about racism. "Well..." I say, interjecting myself..."I grew up in a little town in southeast Texas that was all white, with a little town just down the road all black, and the KKK would hold meetings at our county park." "Oh", says a lady down the table. "I lived in a little town like that in Texas where the KKK was active! It was a whole 'nother world. It was called Santa Fe". (Which, as those who know me, is indeed my hometown.) We lived there at different times, but we chatted about the Busy Bee and Red Cap and such. How odd to find someone sitting at my table, who lived in Santa Fe.
A couple of comments about Santa Fe and racism and the article I'm linking to. I love Santa Fe because it is my hometown. I love the people I knew there - my family, my friends, my teachers... When I call it racist, I of course am speaking of it as its own entity, which is not necessarily the same as the individual parts. I never personally saw direct racism there, at least not that I can remember. But it is very insular, very homogeneous, and I was only exposed to the inner safe haven there, you know? That's the *point* of racism...to separate yourselves. Looking back now, I understand that it's not by chance that the town had like one black family living there, while Hitchcock, a couple of miles down Highway 6 was the racial mirror image (duh). Those things don't accidentally happen. A large part of racism is unspoken. But the individuals I knew then, and know now, are really good people. It's uncomfortable for me to look back at the culture of Santa Fe and see it in the daylight and know this is my heritage. I'm enjoying this thought progression and will have to devote an entry to it one day soon. But in the meantime...
...I digress. That's not the end of my story. To recap, I am in a little tiny restaurant out here in SE US and meet someone who lived in the same town I did in Texas, about 1500 miles away. And then...
The conversation continued and the lady next to me said "Well my parents just bought a place in Texas to retire to near Lake Livingston." My ears perk up, since, well, that's where my parents bought a lot to retire to, and currently live. "Wow," I say. "My parents live up there in Trinity". She looks at me strangely - "Yeah, that's it...Wildwood something?" "Westwood Shores?" I ask. "Yes," she says.
So what are the odds of all *that*?
It's a big world out there, and when it shrinks around you like that, it's kind of freaky but kind of comforting. These threads of commonality - of shared interests and backgrounds are just floating all around us, mostly unseen. It's good to know they're there.
1 comment:
Wow,,,, That's an amazing story pantheist Mom. I wander if I know the lady that was from SF. Email me her name if you would and I'll see if I knew/know her. I never,ever knew that SF was racist, cause I wasn't exposed to it either per say. I wasn't raised like that either, but whenever someone raised the issue whenever we were in high school, all of it fell into place. The one family that lived there, didn't live far from me at all. There house "suspiciously" burned down at one point and the fire fighters couldn't seem to find their house. What a bunch of idiots. You know, my house burned to the ground and they were right out there to put it out and loot it while they were at it. Go figure.
Me.
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