I attended a redneck high school. Imagine yourself as one of the three black students there.
I did not know Lorraine very well at all; in fact, I’m not even sure that was her name. I knew who she was, of course, but it was Leroy (La-ROY, not LEE-roy, he pointed out as often as necessary) and Steve who I knew well.
Although I befriended both of them, I didn’t give any deep thought at the time to what it must have been like for them to be in that redneckish environment. Come to think of it, I didn’t even realize how “redneck” it was until I moved away.
At any rate, Leroy and Steve’s experiences differed significantly from each other’s. Other than their general skin tone, they didn’t have much in common.
Steve was pretty quiet. I noticed him sitting by himself at lunch when he arrived at our school. I approached him and made a friend. I don’t think I ever asked him, but now I wonder how it was that he ended up there, of all places.
A group of us hung out together at lunch: Steve and I and two or three others. Soon enough, there was a kid on Steve’s bus who was irritating him, calling him names and such (the typical racist garbage). It got to the point where Steve revealed to us that he couldn’t take it much longer. I knew that Steve had a switchblade. I advised him to keep his cool, to ignore the jerk and his ignorant provocations. Not that I cared whether Steve beat up—or even cut up a little—the bigot who was bothering him, but I didn’t want Steve to get into trouble. It wasn’t worth it, I told him.
Not long after that, though, Steve’s frustrations boiled over, and he attacked Roger during the morning ride to school. After yet another racial epithet, Steve lunged at Roger, wielding his knife like a sword, slashing back and forth. Fortunately for all concerned, the sharp steel never met the gashable flesh. Roger’s coat was sliced clear through in several places—the bigmouth barely escaped being the subject of impromptu experimental surgery.
Steve was arrested, of course, and landed in Preston School of Industry, a reform school in a neighboring county. I finally attempted to visit him the following summer, but he was no longer there, and they wouldn’t tell me where he was. I never saw him again. I hope he is doing well.
Steve and I and the rest of our group were mostly freshmen. Leroy was a senior, and a physical specimen. Genetics probably played a role, but he worked at it, too. Walking along the paved area above the football field on my way to lunch one day, I saw him beyond the far end of the field, doing pull-ups. He had done so many of them, and so fast, that his body was swinging violently forward and back, like a child being pushed higher and higher on a swing by a practical-joke-pulling older sibling. Just when it appeared he was going to flip himself all the way over the top of the bar, Leroy abruptly stopped pulling and just clung to the bar as his body gradually decreased its pendulum-like motion. Once Leroy had almost reached equilibrium, he started up again.
Leroy became my body guard, of sorts. Hazing freshmen was common. Upper classmen would pick on them in proxy revenge for having been victims of the same treatment a year or two previously.
Once, one of these slack-jawed miscreants tried to force me into a large trash can. I was resisting, but it got to the point where it seemed I was bound to end up inside. Leroy then stepped up and put a stop to it, telling the bully to leave me alone. We were already friends, but that certainly increased my appreciation for him.
After that, it was customary for the two of us to take on all comers in basketball games during P.E. (“gym class,” as some call it). Leroy and I would team up against as many as ten other guys. My job was to rebound. I was taller than most, could jump well (for a white guy) and was aggressive, so I got the lion’s share of the rebounds. I would simply feed Leroy the ball until he made the basket. Shoot, miss, rebound, pass, shoot, basket, and so forth and so on. I was an insufferable trash talker at the time, and this two-man dominance only added to my swagger.
When Leroy was looking for work one summer, he walked into the construction trailer where Melones dam was being built. His timing was impeccable. “Why are you here?” “I’m looking for a job.” “You’re hired.”
The manager had just received a call from his employer or a State agency, and was asked how many minorities he had on the payroll. “None.” “Get some.”
The lack of minorities wasn’t necessarily a deliberate act of racial prejudice; it could have been a matter of local demographics. Whatever the reason, Leroy arrived at just the right time.
After Leroy graduated from high school, he joined the military. He was already muscle-bound, but when he returned during the next school year for a visit, he had reached another level of fitness. I found that out the hard way. After P.E. one day, I was walking down one of the school breezeways, not paying attention to where I was going, as I was distracted by the scenery on my right. All of a sudden, I ran into a brick wall. It was Leroy. He was wearing a dress uniform, and grinning down at me.
Wherever you are now, Leroy, I wish you all the best.