This is a true story.
I was a pretty good kid, though as the eldest of Harry and Ellen on Grubb Road I had to blaze the way for the four siblings that would follow. I didn't do drugs, and I was good in school, but I had my girlfriends in Faulk Road Jr. High, Quina and Cirlot and Joanne, and sometimes we kicked things up a bit.
One thing we used to do as 14-year-olds was "sneak out". Oh, we had it all planned. We snuck out in the middle of the night and pretended we were cheerleaders in the middle of Faulk Road. We didn't rob or pillage or steal or do drugs.....we just all met at a predetermined time and place in the dark of night in Brandywine Hundred and pretended we were cheerleaders.
The traffic then wasn't like it it now. We could do that.
Push 'em Back ! Shove 'em Back ! Waaaaaaaay Back !
Wellll, we all had a "sneak out" planned and I snuck through all the sleeping young'uns, down to the basement and up the cellar stairs, and don't you know I heard my father's voice, "C'mon outta there, Charlie". He didn't know it was me, assumed it was some intruder. I was busted.
Oh boy was I in deep shit. In my 14-year-old mind I wasn't doing anything bad. Just sneakin' out to have some fun with my girlfriends. Parents were called, punishments were meted out. I think I may still be technically grounded.
There was one small problem, of which I was oblivious. The month was April. The year was 1968. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and there were riots in Wilmington. The National Guard was occupying the city (it lasted for 10 months). All this was going on around me, and I didn't have a clue.
"C'mon outta there, Charlie !"
It was only years later that I heard and understood the fear in my father's voice.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I can relate to that story. I grew up a grubby child on the streets of LA. In 1968 I was 13 years old, and my best friend in all the world was a black girl named Char. When the Watts riots hit LA, she said to me, "I can't be your friend anymore, or they will call me white-lover and hurt me". I was devastated, and didn't understand at all why that made a difference. I was kept home from school and two weeks later, my father announce we were moving south to San Diego. And it wasn't until I was an adult that I understood why he also had that fear in his voice.
sheez...I was a kid who lived off of Foulk Road too, in Windsor Hills. My sister and I would occasionally go out to Foulk in the middle of the night to dance around on the concrete highway under the lights!
Our family also stopped going to Wilmington's center city besides trips to the doctor and dentist offices near Delaware Avenue.
I was miles away reading about Wilmington in the newspaper.
But I was told this story by some people who were close, and in fact, it might be good for the community to see where we once were, to fully appreciate just how far we have come.
But this girl and her sisters were playing off Gov Printz, near the stop light, when an old lady pulled up in a Cadillac headed into town. To the the girls, it was obvious that she was unaware that a riot was taking place, and they tried to warn her...." you had better not go any further," they offered. "There is a big riot going on." Apparently oblivious to the words being spoken, and reacting to feelings incubated by years of segregation, the bitch replied, " get the fuck away from my car..." or something like that.
Minutes later they saw her car flying out of the city, windows smashed in, blood pouring down her face. They felt so awful.
"We really tried to warn her"
People are so blind sometimes. But what impresses me upon hearing your story, is how today, I can be on Foulk road 5 minutes after leaving Wilmington, and while you and Nancy were oblivious to the turmoil, these girls I mentioned were quite aware...Truly, there were two different worlds then.
Brandywine High School, Class of ‘62.
When we first moved to northern Delaware in 1957 (Oak Lane Manor), Faulk Road was at that time a two-lane macadam.
It was rebuilt into four-lane concrete in 1961-’62, at which time new road signs were erected spelling it F-O-U-L-K. (The previous signage had it as F-A-U-L-K.)
Post a Comment