The Trip

The trip I remember most was our family trip to Virginia in 1966. I was ten. We took MJ with us. MJ was a Black kid who lived in Brandywine Homes. We became friends playing Caln Little League.

We stopped in a small town to have lunch. At that time there was no great proliferation of Fast Food Restaurants like we have today.

We sat down at the table and waited. There were four white men in the restaurant. We waited. No service. My father pointed out the sign hanging over the window to the kitchen. "We Reserve the Right..."

If you know me and my snap judgmental vocals and quick temper, imagine my mother, Emma, times ten. She took after her father, Ted Daniels, who was according to family sources, a Bullhonk. My father showed my mother the sign, read it to her, and began to explain. My mother couldn't read having quit school in sixth grade. My father didn't get to finish.
"I'll be goddamned!" my mother said loudly in her West End dialect. Oh...she was heard.

The chair screamed as she stood. She went to the counter, "Are you gonna serve us or not?"

The waitress was silent.

"That boy's with us," Emma said. "He's none of your goddamned business!"

The man sitting on the stool at the counter turned his head toward the noise and then lowered it toward his soup. The two men sitting at the table turned their heads to look at my mother and then toward the street level window. The waitress looked at the man in a Fedora handling a toothpick in his mouth, sitting by the window in the corner with his foot on the windowsill. He nodded.

The waitress picked up her pad and menus and walked around the corner of the counter to our table.
"I'll bring some water," the waitress said.

We finished our lunch with the usual kid chatter, MJ, my sister Laurie, and I. We knew how Emma Beck was. As for everything else, we were clueless.

MJ doesn't remember this incident. Maybe it didn't have an impact because we sheltered him from the intentions of the waitress and the man in the Fedora at the window. I think in the car my mother said that they were sonsabitches for taking so long to serve us but never mentioned race so as not to embarrass MJ.