A FAIR WEATHER TERROR(L Douglas St Ours) A FAIR WEATHER TERROR


During the eighth grade on fair weather days
before there were such things as bike helmets,
I rode my bike to high school in 1963.
For a short stretch I'd ride on commuter busy U.S.250,
but the worst hazard halfway there came on the unlucky mornings
when I would be accosted by a gang of toughs from Briar Hill academy.

Briar Hill was a brand new private school
set up by the white citizens council
as a refuge for the children of the superior race
from the anticipated horde of surging blacks
on the verge of integrating the public schools.

The thugs surrounded me,
pushed me off my bike,
roughed me up then let me go
repeatedly taunting me with the words
"This is our turf, you race mixing nigger lover!"

When the weather was inclement,
Dad gave me a lift to school
and I got home any way I could.
I remember envying the sophomores, juniors and seniors
showing off and tooling around in their deuce coupes,
hotrods, pickup trucks and muscle cars
like the corvette and the Pontiac GTO.

One afternoon at dismissal I was standing around stuck like a lost duck
when an upperclassman offered to take me home.
Sure.
"Whoa" I thought after I got in with four guys bigger and older than me.
As the smallest I was forced to squeeze into the middle of the back seat,
my knees hunched over the hump concealing the crankshaft.

It was too late...I was trapped and the car was moving when the driver said
"Hey y'all lets cruise Furley and skin us some coons."
Furley was the black high school just five blocks down the street.
Nervous I kept my mouth shut, hoping and praying that he was bluffing.

In stark contrast to the flashy white kids' trophy roadsters,
all the black students walked. Many of them strode by our school
on the way to Vinegar Hill, a tarpaper makeshift shantytown slum
of shacks with wood burning stoves for heat, outdoor spigots for water
and outhouses for bathrooms.

From my classroom through the rope and sash windows
opened in a futile attempt to beat the heat,
I could look out on Vinegar Hill
spreading up the ridge like a rat infested contagion.
It was bulldozed to oblivion in 1964.

Entombed in that car, its engine rumbling ominously,
I and my bigoted companions inched our way
through throngs of wary black youths eyeing us with justifiable suspicion.
My view out the sides was obstructed but through the windshield
I witnessed the tension in their faces as the cretins I was with stalked their prey.
I was in no mood for senseless violence.


Slowly we rolled further from Furley
and the crowds thinned to clusters
and gradually isolated walkers,
stragglers making their way home
and I breathed a sigh of relief believing the riders
had opted against making trouble this time.
But I was wrong.
Suddenly I realized we were tailing a solitary black girl
in her bobby socks and saddle shoes happy to be alive.

Along a secluded stretch where the road bent back into trash and shrubs,
we pulled beside her interrupting her wistful bliss with vulgar threats
from the driver and his passengers.
stunned she turned the other way
and started back and I saw the terror in her face
as the driver rammed the gear into reverse and cut off her escape.
At that point she crumpled to the ground, dropped her books,
broke down and sobbed.

Now don't get me wrong, if I had a gun
I would have shot all four of them,
but all I had was my voice
against cowards terrorizing an innocent girl.
Her tears hit me like a flood,
a flood of shame,
a snap of anger,
I threw out my fear
and heard myself exclaim
"GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL YOU F***ING BASTARDS!"
And the cowards' attention turned from her to me.

So she got away
though she had no way of knowing
it was my tirade that provided her that opportunity.
The bastards beat the shit out of me then dumped me out of the car,
I preferred walking to their company any way.
That beating, however, was only the beginning
as word spread of my betrayal of the white race.
I got pushed into lockers,
ambushed in bath rooms,
towel whipped in gym,
shunned in the cafeteria,
and tripped down the stairs.

I never burdened my parents about the incident or its aftermath.
We were outsiders, what could they have done?
The abuse toughened me and fueled my incipient alienation from established authority.
Still the daily siege took its toll
and grades didn't matter
and mine sank so much
I was forced to attend summer school
to make it into the ninth grade.

My mother was sympathetic and supportive of the civil rights movement
but with five kids to raise, her actions were circumscribed and limited.
She did advocate human rights through our church.
I knew she made an impression when after leaving mass
a generous donor and prominent parishioner approached my mom
but instead of a kind greeting said to mom "So you're that nigger lover."

1963 became the most brutal and tragic of my years.
With my studies declining mom made me quit the paper route
and Queenie, my pet dog turned vicious biting the mailman twice,
so one day in November mom told me she had to give Queenie up
and I never got to say goodbye,
and that would have bothered me more
if not for the fact that my brother, Robert,
was killed just three weeks before.

by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
April 2010

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