This is the last of the series of February’s stories. I appreciate the feedback that I have received because of them, especially the very nice plaque that Mary Ann Rolland dropped off at the Gazette.
But this week, instead of kids, this one deals with two southern, 40-something, white, female counter attendants and how, hopefully, we changed each other’s lives.
The USS Farragut moored in Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale for a three-day stay on that balmy, spring morning. This, right after I received the first drawdown of my Variable Reenlistment Bonus. In current terms, I carried with me about $2,000 of that $8,000.
My posse and I rode away in the luxury of a new, lime green Ford Crown Victoria and after enjoying a noon of revelry, I left my shipmates to strike out on my own to explore the beauty of northeast Lauderdale.
Magnificent broadleaf floral beds of reds, yellows and greens filled island after island of its beautiful streets and palms rose 50-or-more feet straight up into the subtropic blue skies. Graceful mansions lined the canals, and expensive yachts and boats rippled the silver dollars of sun drops in their shiny waters.
But despite being submerged in that beauty, what caught and held my eye was a Woolworth store. It sat in the near-empty parking lot of a strip mall that was not at all unlike the ones at Niagara Falls Boulevard and Military Road where Ollie’s and Office Max do business.
A strange feeling of familiarity hit me. From that street, and through those big windows of that Lauderdale Woolworth store, I could see all the way back through both time and distance to the wooden floors of Woolworth store that once sat on Niagara’s Main Street. It was where my mom once dragged me as she tightly held my 5-year-old hand to ensure that I didn’t break, soil or tear anything as we navigated its aisles.
In my mind, I could smell its cottony wares, its snow-puddled and freshly mopped, wooden floors and the aroma of sizzling butter on the grill of the snack bar of that faraway store. I could see the mushroom-shaped stools. I thought that it would be nice for me to reconnect with my memories by having a 3 p.m. lunch there.
Sitting at the lunch counter, I breathed in the sights and smells of that Lauderdale store and exhaled the unpolluted breath of my protected childhood. Even with the many years and miles apart as were the two stores, they really were no different at all.
Two white women, one with her back towards me, chatted idly as I waited. Five minutes passed before one made the other aware that I was still there, only to be waved off as they continued their conversation.
I was uncharacteristically cool. I had both time and money. This mini-Civil War, as far as I was concerned, would pit the patience of a veteran that had actually participated in the Vietnam War, against two apron-wearing, Dixie daughters that were still struggling to emerge from their perceived glory of the 1950s Deep South.
Another five minutes passed. I cleared my throat and the waitress reluctantly presented herself with a rough and rude, “What-do-you-want?”
Having won the first volley of the new civil war, I asked for a hot dog and a vanilla milkshake. “Is that all,” she snapped.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I smilingly said and she set about preparing it.
There is a difference between a Navy man and a sailor. I was both. The waitress prepared my milkshake with her back towards me. I am all but positive that she spit into it. A Navy man would have objected but as sailors, we have shared the same cigarettes, and have drunk from the same containers, with even stranger and more unsavory characters. What’s worse, we did so with each other, too.
I slow ate my lunch slowly, just to annoy the waitress, who had paused long enough to watch me sample her shake. Upon finishing lunch, I summoned her to pay the slightly more than a dollar tab.
I kept my wallet in denominational order and I opened it so that she could see as I thumbed first through the hundreds, then through the fifties, twenties and tens, on down to the fives, whereby I pulled one out and handed it to her. Her face flushed and she turned to get my change. I turned and walked away.
“Sirrrrrr,” she gently cooed; then with a smile on her face and sweetness in her voice, she said, “You forgot your change.”
I cooed back, “That’s your tip.”
I reached my car and looked back at the lunch counter where the two women stood together. In the same way that she had it when she offered it to me, the one was still holding a handsome tip that equaled more than an hour-and-one-half’s pay. They watched as I climbed into the huge Crown Vic and then drove away.
Having told this story to many people, all have asked why I gave her such a huge tip. One reason was that the other woman could have waited on me, but didn’t. Another was that I wanted to change what was obviously the waitresses’ impression of black people.
But, thirdly, I would have paid a thousand dollars to have watched those two women fight over who would wait on the next African American that sat at that counter!
I wish never to forget the lessons of Ft. Lauderdale. Hopefully, brushes with someone who is different, even as I am, may be another stroke of the Supreme Artist’s brush that paints for each a better and changing picture of our own lives. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll do some good in race relations — if we all just, “... don’t forget our change.”
