Rememberin Time

“That you…there in the picture.”

Strange sometimes what brings back time from a place you’d forgotten. Couldn’t remember where I’d even put it, till my grand baby brings me this picture. Doesn’t seem like sixty years ago, but I guess it must me. I’m still here and I kind of think most of those folks from back then ain’t around anymore. I find with each passing day there’s one less to remember, one less to forget, but mostly just thinkin how much things has changed since then. Then again, things in some ways still the same. Take being a different color. Having brown or black shades of a past that kind of won’t come into its own but won’t go away.

Now I know disliking people ain’t’ nothin new, but it’s a shame we waste so much time on it. Just think of all the effort goes into hating somethin you know nothin about, but what you’d been taught. Of course it depends a lot on who’s doing the teachin, but not always. Some people have a way sifting through all the hate and wrong stories and find some kind of truth they can live with. Ain’t’ happen often, but it do happen. I see’d it.

There was this guy, white kid, not a lot older than me, but some. He come down here for some program they had back then. Poverty program, begined by a President Johnson. We was younger then and had no respect really for much. Called him big ears Johnson, well, cause he had these big ears that kind of stuck out like he was goin to take off. But he never did. Instead he spent his time getting this poverty program off the ground. Votin and such stuff. Organizing against the hate. Never really understood much about it until I got older and couldn’t vote, couldn’t ride the bus lessen I sit where I was told. Decided I’d rather walk.

This guy and a bunch of others, some girls, mostly white, but young. They was called VISTA volunteers.  Don’t know how they ever got um to come down to this place. They stayed in the old migrant camp. Just a bunch of long sheds the pickers used to stay in. I remember one of them boys meetin up with one of growers. The growers used to ride around the oranges on horseback. They carried shot guns and hoped to scare off us kids who liked to borrow and orange or two from time to time. They acted like we was robbin their personal bank. They’d run us off after the pickin cause we was picking up the ones from the ground. 

One of them white boys he got to walkin around in the oranges and here comes this guy on his horse, and acts like he is gonna shoot this kid, till he see’d he was white. He yelled at him to, “Git the hell out, private property,” and a lot more not worth repeatin. 

This young guy, I knowed don’t know nothin much about how things worked here, so he just laughs at this guy. Big grin on his face. I was standing back with Buddy my friend and we’s watchin as this guy points his gun at this kid and tells him he ain’t foolin and he’d better git. Well this kid, still smiling like a cartoon, he grabs the gun right out of the guys hands. He points the gun at the guy on the horse and tells him to git. Well the horse guy, his jaw on the ground and his eyes were like picnic plates, and his face got all red like he’d been out in the hot sun all day pickin oranges like a migrant. The kid yells at the man to git and shoots the gun off over his head. Well, the horse took off runnin and the guy he’s trying to hang on. Did pretty good till he hit this limb. Knocked him clean out.

So, we watch as this kid takes the gun and digs this trench like hole with his heel, and then puts the gun in it and covers it over. He kicks some of the fallin off leaves on top and then strolls back towards the camp like it was a Sunday after church. Buddy and I had never seen nothin like that before. We could only guess what was goin to happen. But it never did.

Always thought that the guy who got hit by the limb was to shamed to say much, so didn’t, and besides when you are from someplace else, they say you look alike. Specially if you is the same color. Don’t figure that horse guy could pick him out of all the other white kids. I remember that day like it was yesterday.

That boy, and those like him, and some of the girls stuck it out for a year. They had them livin with us, goin to help out at our schools, and teachin us games and songs and stuff like that.  I learned this song , This Land Is Your Land. Good song we'd sing at nights when there wasn't much goin on.

I don’t quite know what they was trying to do, but they did something. I used to be afraid all the time when I was a kid. Specially of people who was white. They treated me alright when I worked for them, but something happened when they’d get together. Something changed in um. It was like they was two people in one and they didn’t know which one to let out.

I’d seen that boy that took the gun from the horseman, a few years later. He was on the television they had at the school. Supposed to be for school stuff, but every once in a while, we’d get tuned into this program about what was goin on in the rest of the world. This one day we’s watchin something to do with a space program they was havin not far from here, and they showed a picture of this guy I knowed ridin on a bus with a bunch of others. All different colors, but ridin in the same bus, singin songs, and waving signs. 

They called them the freedom riders. I guess I got it. They was ridin the buses to get some kind of equal for everyone, but it didn’t work none too good. That guy I knew, he got killed for doin what he was doin. Killed by his own people for not doin what they wanted him to do. They had a special thing on the TV with his picture and how they were lookin for the people who killed him.

That was the time when my cousin, who I’d only hear’d about, was trying to go to school with the white kids. Why she wanted to do that, I had no idea, but she did. My mother said, she had a right to go to school where she wanted.  

Course things got some better today. We get to go to school mostly where we want, sometimes even get to vote; usually for those people no one really cares if we get or not. So I guess the more the things change the more they remind me of what went on back then, when that young kid thought it was important for him to come down here with me, and get himself killed for doin it.

Sittin here lookin at this old picture when I was just a kid made me think about what they called the civil rights movement. Well, as I remember it, it wasn’t too civil, and we didn’t get much for rights, but it was a movement. When they kill us now, they get knowed, even if they pretend they don’t care. But more and more people are beginning to care, cause they is beginning to realize that it could be them next time. Nothin get you motivated like watchin someone light a fire under someone else. You can’t run far enough not to hear the screams.

Oh yah, still got that gun. Kind of a trophy, from a time worth rememberin. Don't hurt none thinkin back on who you was and who you turned out to be, and those who helped you get there.