In 1976, our house in Petersburg, Virginia belonged to a semi-circular compound of two and three bedroom homes situated north of Blackwater swamp and west of I-95. The neighbors were a cross section of Philip Morris factory workers, military families, mechanics, truck drivers, and sewage plant workers -- predominantly white, but beginning to tilt black by the time we moved in. Some people (who were not at all very fine) didn’t appreciate the shifting demographics. Our first year there, around the time I was four years old, I remember waking up late at night, and hearing my parents open and shut the front door. My sister was too young to realize what was happening. She may have even slept through it. But I remember standing inside by the entryway with my face pressed up against the wire mesh of the screen door. I watched as the local fire department put out a burning cross that had been attached to a cherry tree out on the front lawn of the house across the street. A handful of the nearby neighbors came out of their houses, and milled around on foot to watch, huddled around the fire truck. Some of the men didn’t even bother to put on shirts.
The W. Family
Perry and Esther W. lived closest to us. They were a colored couple, older than my parents, with three teenage daughters: La Tonya, Peedie, and Ranita. Perry drove a beer delivery truck, and during most summer weekends, I’d see him outside nursing a can of Schlitz while I was playing in the yard. On sunny days when he wasn’t working, he enjoyed shuttling back and forth from his barbecue grill to the shed, usually carrying some random thing in his non beer-holding hand: an extension cord, a lawn jart, or a small tool for barbecuing. Most people in the neighborhood who could afford a shed had one. Perry’s was the nicest. The whole structure was the size of a very small apartment, and was propped up on wooden four by four stilts so it sat about eighteen inches up off the ground. From a quick glance, it could pass as a miniature wood-frame house. All four sides were painted white. It had a solid core wood door with a deadbolt on it, a shingled roof and two glass windows on the sides that faced our yard. From my swing set, I could examine it pretty close up, and would daydream about what it might be like to live inside of it, and to use it as a clubhouse or base of operations. On most occasions, when Perry was off from work, and felt the urge to barbecue, he wore dark brown short pants, a dark tank top underneath an open short sleeve buttoned shirt, and shower shoes with dark brown or black socks. On days like that, he always kept two things close by: a flyswatter and a can of beer.
Esther was a teacher at Peabody High School, which is where the colored kids went. On nice days, she liked to wait until the sun was coming down, then sit outside on a folding beach chair next to Perry. She wore long dresses, and smoked Virginia Slims. For a few years, she babysat me and my sister, and on those days, we’d play Uno and Backgammon. She would put on records of the Jackson Five, and we’d all sing along to the lyrics printed on the inside of the album cover. For lunch, she would let us eat Oscar Mayer hot dogs right out of the package, and made us Ichiban brand instant ramen –our favorite. Occasionally, she’d substitute in a Lipton’s cup of instant soup, which was a disappointment. In Esther’s living room, there was a thick amber glass ashtray, always filled with Hershey’s kisses and M&M’s. Her oldest daughter, La Tonya, told me that the candies were for her cousins, but Esther let me reach in there, and have as much as I’d want any time we were over at the house.
The Woods
A five minute walk from our house toward the I-95 overpass, was a sprawling maze of small creeks and streams that snaked through the marshes of the Blackwater swamp — an enormous area composed of clumpy patches of swamp grass, nettles, honeysuckle, and thickets of wild berries. Scattered around at irregular intervals were large stones, and rotting tree trunks. There were several entry points throughout the neighborhood, many of which were in people’s backyards. My favorite was right by our house, where K****** Drive dead-ended into a dirt cul-de-sac. That’s where my dad taught my mom how to drive a stick shift.
From our driveway, you’d turn left, then immediately right so you’d be standing on a paved patch of Century Drive, looking down a stretch of dirt road directly into a wall of trees. In the middle of that wall, there was a forty foot tall weeping willow, and beyond that, a rotted out wooden bridge that went over a twenty foot wide creek. Once you crossed that bridge, if you turned right, you could follow the water for at least a mile.
The neighborhood kids knew all sorts of things about getting around – like which places to avoid on account of snakes, the best spots to jump streams, where to find crawdads, and how high the water could get before conditions would become unsafe. “Hey, you wanna’ go to the creek?” someone would say. And that’s all it took. On summer days, we’d go back there with beach buckets, and catch frogs as big as your fist. Sometimes, we’d bring nets to scoop up crawdads. Other times, we’d just keep going straight, and deep into the marshes. Once you were in, you could see a long hedge row of tall sycamores off in the distance, at least thirty feet in height. They bordered the concrete slabs and guard railings of the elevated highway. That part of I-95 ran about twenty feet above the ground, and ran roughly parallel with the swamp. Because it was easy to spot from a distance, we could always orient ourselves to it. If it was on our left and behind us, we were headed further in, and away from home. On our right, and we’d be headed back to our main entry point - the old wooden bridge.
Because so much of the ground was waterlogged, we’d use long sticks to walk on top of anything we could find that looked dry: busted up logs or dense clumps of grass, or a big oddly shaped rock. We used them like crutches and probes. If we came up to a stream, or a dark patch of water with grass poking out, we’d poke a stick in to see how deep it was, and to test for any snakes or turtles. Then we’d plunge them into the soft creek bed until they stuck, so they’d support our weight as we took vaulting leaps from one dry spot to another. Occasionally, there would be clearings, and the ground would be firm enough to walk on. In these spots, there were trees, mostly sycamore, but some oak and pond pines.
One time, we found a small wooden shanty someone had built, hidden away in a thicket. There was no floor or door, just a single opening you could walk into, and a pitched roof of planks of old lumber. Inside, lying on the ground was a spring mattress, and scattered all around were cigarette butts, beer cans, and used up rubbers. We had no idea what the rubbers were, but we were convinced the fort was a makeout room for teenagers. I found a dirty magazine with all sorts of pictures I had never seen before. At some point, someone stepped on a huge dried up turd in the corner by the mattress. That’s when one of the older kids suggested an alternative theory: that the place we stumbled upon was actually a hidey hole for a couple of dirty hobos with nowhere to live. And that any minute, they might be back, and throw us into their shack and start doing stuff to us. We all started screaming, and hightailed it back to the bridge, not even looking backwards. I didn’t even bother to find both of my sticks.
My Dad’s Army buddies
John S.
“I met John in Germany. He was very productive. He worked for the engineering department of the organization I worked with in Kreuzberg Kaserne in Zweibrücken. Unfortunately, John has left side neglect – this is a problem... this is a brain problem that causes him to have seizures. And people with that problem, they sometimes even deny that their left side exists. He uses it, but he continues to have accidents – all on his left side. Some big heavy machine would fall off a truck, and he would just stand there, and injure himself.
The thing about John: he always tries to be very helpful. The one time he visited us in Virginia, he just showed up out of the blue, and went straight for your mother’s car. You remember that Dodge Aspen? John just jerked off the wheels, and fixed the brakes. Took him hours, but he did it. And I tell you, that repair lasted for YEARS. I was just amazed, and stood there with my mouth open. That's just how he was. We were so grateful, your mom whipped up a home cooked meal, then went to fetch a roll of quarters for him so he could play pinball. John loved pinball.”
— Roger Willenbring
Mike N.
“Mike was one of the trainers at Fort Lee. You might remember meeting him one day when I brought you into the office. He was the one who put the picture of the Ayatollah in the center of the dartboard. He was kind of a joker.
After the army, he just waltzed right into a… sales manager position at Triangle Dodge dealership. I think it was in Colonial Heights. Any way, before we wound up buying your mother’s car from that CLUB, we went to go visit Mike to see what kind of price we could get from him. She was dead set on that roof rack. Back in those days, it was a very popular feature you know? For people transporting things they didn't want to be lugging around on the inside, it was a very nice thing to have. I was very specific with Mike. And I tell you, when he tried talking us out of the roof rack, I just soured on him. And we cut the visit short.”
— Roger Willenbring
Judy W**** and the Jaguar XJ12
Judy and her husband Armand owned the only upscale department store in all of Petersburg, eponymously named W****’s, and located at Walnut Mall on Crater road. My mom worked there as a seamstress, three days out of the week, and was paid two dollars an hour. She was very conscious of being the only non-white employee, and did her best to stand out, but not so much as to draw attention to her slower coworkers.
Judy was friendly with all of the ladies at the store, but took a special liking to my mom. I didn’t understand why, but I could see that Mrs. W**** genuinely liked my mother, and that made me like her. Judy was an attractive redhead in her forties, well educated, with a superb sense of style. She enjoyed gossiping with the ladies at the store, and told dirty jokes when customers weren’t around. Although she worked six days out of the week, she occasionally took long lunches that turned into short work days, so she could play doubles tennis with her husband. It kept her in good shape, and explained what my mom called a great hourglass figure for dresses, just like Sophia Loren in Houseboat. My mom was a wizard at movie-themed similes. Ninety nine percent of the time, they were merely accurate. One percent of the time, they were so dead on, it was like some next level Buddhist Koan shit that jilted you into a higher understanding. She seemed to have one ready to go for any occasion. In Judy’s case, the Sophia Loren comparison was accurate and obvious to anyone. Judy had an ass like a fucking shelf.
The Jaguar
Judy drove a Jaguar XJ12, a type of car my mom had never before seen or heard of. One day, my mom rode in that car – to accompany Judy while she went to go pick up her daughter from school to take her to a doctor’s appointment. My mom later described that ride to me in quite a lot of detail. She told me about stepping in and closing the door and hearing a sturdy thoonk – the kind she associated with well-riveted, insulated massive steel components. She noticed how quiet the interior cabin was, as though a thick varnish of stillness were somehow injected into all the nooks and crannies with a magical caulking gun.
Because the car was kept in a garage year-round, the windows were immaculately clean. The air was cooler, and smelled faintly of leather and perfume. When Judy reached across to open the glove compartment, my mom peeked in. She saw a solitary item: a pair of brown tinted Ferrari sunglasses folded in half. Other than that, the compartment was barren - a simple cavity that was a miniature chairless version of the cabin. There wasn’t a single scrap of lint, loose hair, crumb, or piece of paper. Judy casually unfolded the glasses, put them on her face, and closed the compartment as though it had been obvious from the beginning of time that automotive glove compartments should be utilized and maintained in this manner.
The steering wheel was upholstered in leather, and the dashboard was surrounded by dials and knobs that looked extremely heavy. Round objects that were intended to be turned had finely etched grooves, just the right depth for human fingerprints to grab hold with minimal effort and discomfort. Along the armrests were automatic gizmos and teeny tiny levers that would make things rotate or move left and right. My mom admired the controls without pressing any - not wanting to look foolish in front of Judy. She thought of how much effort must have gone into the fabrication of the car, attempting to figure out how many men, what types of skills were required to make such a thing. She imagined a stupendous factory nestled in a forest, manned by athletic craftsmen with well-groomed blond beards.
When the car moved, it felt like you were rolling along thousands of indestructible velvet ball bearings. If they were to drive straight off a cliff, my mom was certain, the impact of the crash would be 90 - 95% nullified - cancelled out by whatever force made the car impervious to outward acoustic and kinetic disturbances. She smiled throughout the ride, hoping it would go on and on. It was what cemented Judy’s image as berry berry hi krass.
The Bollingbrook Day School
Just as memorable as the car ride was the destination. Bollingbrook was a private K-12 school Judy’s daughter attended. There were exactly 254 students, separated into a lower and upper school, each with a principal and vice principal, both of whom were credentialed with graduate degrees. Dr. Boschen, the principal of the upper school had a PHD from Harvard, which my mom always pronounced as Harbor. It wasn’t a Catholic school, though it did compete in regional intramural sports leagues with Catholic school kids. In 1980, when my father made an annual salary of twenty four thousand dollars, the tuition was a little over five thousand dollars a year for one student.
After my mom met Mrs. W****’s daughter, she was convinced that my sister and I would have to attend this school. In the fall of 1980, that’s exactly what happened. To help afford it, my dad took on a part time job as a salesman in the Craftsman tools department of Sears. He would mention the store discount every chance he got – that, and the fact that Craftsman stood by the quality of their products, no questions asked. He got dead serious when talking about the no questions asked part, and would repeat it to you in a slower, slightly more baritone voice to really let it sink in. He spoke about Craftsman with a reverence you might associate with the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. In his mind, if Sears could make tools of such exquisite quality, their shirts and pants must be other-friggin-worldly. And so, his civilian attire, from 1980 onward, consisted of solid colored button down shirts, thick-soled black walking shoes, and either grey or navy blue slacks - all purchased from the Sears men’s department. Many of his shirts have permanent smudgy fingerprints along the cuffs and sleeves from handling greasy metal items that he keeps squirreled away in his pockets at all times.
I entered Bollingbrook in the second grade in 1980. I now believe that first year was more stressful for my mom than it was for anyone else. The school demanded a high level of participation from the families of students, which in 1980, meant a substantial level of disruption to our established routines. Right off the bat, there was the issue of transportation -- just getting to and from school. My mother had to get a driver’s license specifically to handle this, and then make friends with a few other families to arrange for carpooling. We took turns carpooling with two families: the Sh****** and the No*****. My dad had to buy a moped so he could free up the car for my mom. There were odd school supplies, an endless stream of permission slips to read and sign, conferences to attend, and fees for special trips and activities completely foreign to my parents. Every thursday was dress up day, where the boys had to wear jackets and ties, and the girls had to wear dresses.
Things were more clear cut for me. The second grade was primarily devoted to the pursuit of a couple high-value objectives. For starters, I had to prove myself academically to a small cadre of teachers and administrators who were on my mother’s enemies list. Mrs. L**, the principal of the lower school was at the top of that list. Over the summer, when we came in for a family interview, my mother was convinced that she thought of us as berry berry roe krass. My mom had to remind Mrs. Lee a few times that my dad was an enlisted man. The polite way to convey this in the military is to jokingly say my husband works for a living. I think my mother fed her that line three times on the day we came in.
Second, I had to fit in with my classmates, and make friends. One of my first memories involves becoming friends with Chad K******. He was the toughest kid in class, and up until he was instructed not to do so, would actually wear white t-shirts to school with a deck of cards rolled up in one of the sleeves, pretending they were cigarettes. He wore jeans and a denim jacket almost every day, along with a set of dog tags. Chad was always talking about military history and war movies. We met during my first week of school. It was a brief run-in in the boys bathroom. I walked in as he was coming out. He slowed down as he walked by me on my left side, and looked right at me without saying a word, then walked right back in. I don’t remember the exact way he explained things to me, but he said he’d need to punch me as a test, and that I shouldn’t tell anyone about it.
“Where do you have to hit me?” I asked.
“In the chest or the back. You pick.”
“Back.” I said
“OK, turn around.”
“Are you gonna’ hit me as hard as you can?”
“Naw, it’s just a test. Don’t worry.”
I tensed up and held my breath in, confident that I could take the hit. I heard him take a step or two backwards, then lunge at me from behind. The punch landed kind of high up in the upper right part of my back.
“Aw man, you hit hard!” I said, delicately balancing the goals of acknowledging the power of his punch, while also not admitting to being hurt (too bad). He smiled.
“You’re OK man.” he said, grinning. Then added a parting question – “Are you a
wetback?”“I don’t know.” I said, also smiling. Clearly, I was in.
When I returned to my classroom, I didn’t mention anything about the punch, but wondered what a wetback was. I thought of our run-in in the bathroom, and concluded that it must’ve been a nickname for people of unusual toughness. Chad and I became great friends, and later formed a club with our friend Flynn called the Commandos.
My Mother: the Korean Plato
My mother often told me stories about growing up during the war in Korea. Stories of people starving, being chopped up by meat cleavers, or walking past the remains of bodies, shattered by artillery. She wanted me to understand where she came from. She told me to look around us, at our neighbors in Petersburg. They were good people, but none of them had any idea what a Jaguar even was; because like us, they were berry berry roe krass. Roe krass people are not even aware of the existence of Judy’s world; the one that produces Jaguars; because our attitudes of, and recognition of luxury, are shaped primarily by what we see reflected back to us by our reference group and popular television shows. Which is why, up until that point, her idea of a great car was a Ford Mustang King Cobra – just the sort of car Mike N and John S would be swooning over.
High krass people like Judy have a sensibility that is cagier, allowing them to see things that are completely invisible to army staff sergeants, seamstresses, mechanics, and sewage plant workers. My mom wanted me and my sister to develop the eyes and ears to see and hear what Judy did; not to buy Jaguars of our own, but to be able to walk among the people who bought them. As equals.
Berry Berry High Krass in Today’s World
41 years after my mother took a ride in Judy W****’s Jaguar, David Brooks wrote a wonderful article that appeared in the Atlantic: HOW THE BOBOS BROKE AMERICA. In the excerpt below, I’ve substituted his term, ease, with my mother’s term high krass.
“[High krasspeople] can walk into any room and be confident that [they] can handle whatever situation [they] find. [They] know how to structure relationships with teachers and other professional superiors so that they are treated both as authority figures and as confidants. A [person] in possession ofhigh krasscan comfortably engage the cafeteria workers with a distant friendliness that at once respects social hierarchy and pretends it doesn’t exist. A [person] withhigh krassknows when irony is appropriate, what historical quotations are overused, how to be unselfconscious in a crowd. These practices can be absorbed only through long experience within elite social circles and institutions.”