Reckoning on the River

IT WAS HOT OUT It was 104 degrees with 90% humidity when I stepped out of an air-conditioned plane from San Francisco in the early 80's, with one suitcase and a cat, into the sweltering heat of Memphis. I was 23 years old. I’d read the word sweltering in Faulkner novels, but I’d never worn it before. It rose from the pavement like steam and coated my skin with beads of sweat. It was beyond hot and I passed out waiting for public transportation that was never going to arrive.   RESCUED BY HOLY COINCIDENCE I was rescued by a Church of God in Christ (COGIC) pastor who worked security two days a week to make ends meet. He was at least 6 foot five, with pale grey eyes, and skin the color of cast iron, and I’ll never forget his kindness. He had just clocked out of work and was on his way to his car when I collapsed, right in front of him, in a moment my grandmother would have called Holy Coincidence.   He stowed my cat carrier and suitcase in his backseat, glanced at my hot pink blouson pantsuit and feathered hair clip and said, “Why do you want to live in North Memphis?”   WHAT IN THE #*&^ WAS I THINKING? As we drove north and I compared the rows of tiny identical brick houses laid out like dominoes, to the colorfully painted Victorian I’d just left in San Francisco, I asked myself the same question.   But, his kindness deserved an answer so I said, “Well, it’s near the Schering Plough plant where I have a temporary job so it will be a short bus ride to work.” He snorted, and said, “Don’t no bus come out here, you gonna need a car.” He refused my money, put the cat and my suitcase inside the house, and quickly left.   MY NEW REALITY After ordering a pizza for supper, I walked the neighborhood. My new neighbors and I stared at each other in astonishment. I’d never seen that many buzz cuts and six-packs of iced beer in my life and apparently, hot pink blouson pantsuits and feathered hair clips were rather rare there. With no bus stops in sight, it appeared my rescuer was right—I needed a car, so I bought the one my neighbor had for sale.   A bright blue, $700 Dodge Dart. After returning the confederate flag draped across the back seat, I drove it to work every day for a month and then moved to Mid-Town to start a new job in the theater.   FINDING THE RIVER WITHIN I discovered three things on my first trip downtown: the source of all that humidity, the mighty Mississippi, barbeque, and this amazing thing called the Blues. After eating my fill of delicious dry-rub, I happened by a big warehouse filled with long tables and folding chairs, packed to the gills with people who weren’t my color, and heard a wail come from a guitar named Lucille. BB King was making that old girl sing the blues and before I knew it, I was dancing the night away in Club Paradise, and it changed me forever. I’d never felt that unbridled and free in my whole life. The river, the heat, the beat, the dancing, the hard liquor, it was exhilarating.   REALITY AND RACISM Other parts of life in the Delta were more sobering and changed how I saw the world. On one side there was the ostentatious Carnival Memphis. A glorified frat party where all-white country-club Grand Krewes cavorted in elaborate costumes and crowns, while many black parts of town were over run by gangs from Chicago. They formed turfs with unpredictable violence and became dangerous but protective father figures for children suffering from generations of poverty and the over-incarceration of black males.   The riverside was also home to newly out-of-work, quietly desperate, middle-class whites. Their high school graduates had once been all but guaranteed a job in the big industrial plants that sat alongside their orderly brick neighborhoods before greed and robotics sent their jobs overseas.   CHANGED FOREVER Life on the Mississippi changed my na?ve attitudes about race and injustice, wealth and poverty. It taught me that a solution without everyone is a solution for no one. Every time I saw the Corp of Engineers dredge the river I was reminded that new boundaries are hard to keep against an established flow of life-long circumstance.   The river changed how I see personal responsibility. My unsolved problems just flow downstream, impact others, and arrive as dark and muddy as the river itself. I thought I was a quiet little pond, but old man river taught me that I’m just a stream, a tributary that flows into life, and you can’t change a river without changing its tributaries. The stream that poisons one of us, poisons all of us. Everything we do, matters.