Wow. Just wow. It's so crazy how the farthest memories can be triggered by the smallest little things. A smell. A photo. A song.
I was watching Maryland Public Television this evening and it was a pledge drive. Of course it was. It's always a pledge drive! They were showing, chronologically, American Folk Music. My grandfather was a musician, he played most reed instruments and he loved music. All music. He preferred jazz, he had worked his way through St. John's College by working nights as a jazz musician, but he'd listen to just about anything. I didn't realize until I was watching this show how much of an influence he had on me, I knew well so many of these songs! When I would visit my grandparents, I'd bring my guitar and my Pop-pop and I would spend the weekend playing our music. It was wonderful, and I had no idea at the time how progressive my Pop-pop was. He was such an amazing man, in so many ways.
While I was watching this MPT show, the Simon and Garfunkel song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" came on, and they showed a video of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. I flashed back to another childhood memory, this one not quite as warm and fuzzy as the memory of my Pop-pop, but it was such an incredible and pivotal point of my life that hugely influenced who I am now. I flashed to the race riots that took place in Washington DC in 1968. I was so so young then, only 2 years old, but I remember it. I remember my mother crying, my father had gone to work in DC and was stranded. I remember my father coming home very late. I remember my father walking into the house, he hugged my mother, and they cried. I was too young to understand it at the time, but some years later my father told me the full story when I was old enough to understand.
My father worked on K street in Downtown DC. The K street of then was not the K street it is now, it was a time of transition for the city. Old buildings were being raised to make room for new, "modern" buildings (that have since been raised to make room for even more modern buildings). My father was a social worker for the Federal Government, he worked in one of the old, drab buildings in a not so great area. To get to work, he took a series of buses then walked the rest of the way. On the day of the riots, my father was in DC, blocks from the Mall, right smack in the middle of the riots. He was stuck. Apparently they had been given warning and most of his coworkers had gotten the heck outta dodge, but for some reason my father stayed. The next thing he knew, he was the only white man in the middle of some very angry, rioting black people. In the 1960's, our country was fractured, much like it is now, but then it was racial. My father was a progressive white guy for the time, he marched for equal rights for blacks, equal rights for women. Equal rights, period. On this day, he feared that his "resume" wasn't going to get him very far, he was just a small in stature white guy in the middle of a race riot.
He and the only other remaining coworker, who was a black man, decided it was time to leave. The streets were dangerous with rioting angry mobs breaking windows and burning buildings. My dad and his coworker ran several blocks through the mobs to where his coworker's car was parked, they were going to try to drive out of DC. and they were terrified. The coworker had my father climb into the back seat of his car, he covered my dad with his coat, and he drove them through the riots. I don't know if it's fair to say he saved my dad's life, although my dad, to this day, says he did.
So as I was watching this Simon and Garfunkel video of the Kennedys and King Jr, and as I was remembering the race riots, something really big came to my mind. It's not the first time I've thought this, but this time, I really REALLY get it. We, the United States, have a black president. These race riots took place when I was 2 years old. In my lifetime, I have experienced the progress of my country to this amazing point in history. Holy hell, I get it.
Now.... if we can only keep our country from regressing.
Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
When you're weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all
I'm on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can't be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
When you're down and out
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you
I'll take your part
When darkness comes
And pain is all around
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
Sail on Silver Girl,
Sail on by
Your time has come to shine
All your dreams are on their way
See how they shine
If you need a friend
I'm sailing right behind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind
<3
