Obama and the Year 1964

Week Two, January 2008


Morning Haiku:

Three yellow street lights
punctuate the asphalt strip -
pallid winter suns.

This morning the coffee shop is buzzing with talk of Clinton and Obama, of caucuses and primaries. There is a preponderance of Democrats - not that Republicans don’t like their morning coffee; it is just that they seem less likely to blow a fiver on a double-tall decaf latte. This is after all Starbucks.

Letting the conversations wash over me, I am inexplicably transported back forty years to the Panhandle of Texas. The year was 1964. The wide Texas sky glowed tangerine as my three companions and I pulled up to the drive-in theater ticket booth. We were escaping the confines of Amarillo Air Force Base for a well earned girls’ night out. No one deserved to cut loose more than we did that evening. We hadn’t been off base since the beginning of our technical training right after Christmas.

Airman Ridley had borrowed a big blue Chevy from one of her multitudinous shirttail relatives so that the four of us could go together to a screening of “Giant”. The car looked like it might fall apart any minute but we were so excited to be driving past the base guard post it might as well have been a limo.

I had met my three bunk mates on our first day of basic training at Lackland Air Force Base the second week of November, but two months later I felt I had known them all my life. Shared misery will do that. Airman Haley and Airman Samuelson (Sam) were from Mississippi, Airman Ridley from Oklahoma, and I from Washington State. Our barracks room was equipped with two sets of bunks and little else. We struggled through field training, chow hall food, leaky gas masks, white glove inspections, heat exhaustion, frozen toes, and formation marches in dust storms - but basic training became a nightmare beyond anything we could have imagined when two weeks after enlistment our Commander in Chief was gunned down in Dallas. Kennedy was dead and we were captives on an air force base in turmoil.

The world changed in an instant and with it our situation. The base was locked down, our training flight confined to barracks as the whole country went into shock. We were leaderless. It is hard to convey what that meant to us at the time. To many Americans Kennedy represented hope for a saner civilization, a brighter future. There was a kind of awe and reverence attached to the office of the presidency that has since been lost amid scandals and criminal behavior. So many good things died that day in Dallas. Innocence being one.

My bunk mates and I enlisted for many of the same reasons - taking to heart President Kennedy’s entreaty that we consider what we could do for our country. Of course we women were not subject to the draft as our male counterparts were but the U.S. was at war (whether we approved of that action or not) and we hoped that by serving we might make a difference - maybe better our lives and those of our fellow citizens.

As African Americans, my bunk mates had a reason to join the military in addition to those we shared - military service offered them the promise of equal opportunity in a country that was still segregated to a great degree, especially in the South. Of course I had heard of segregation but I, a young white woman from the Northwest, was woefully ignorant of the challenges my new friends took for granted. I was about to be educated.

In the aftermath of the assassination, stress on base was thick as red Texas mud. Several women in our flight tried to commit suicide, many others couldn’t stop crying. At night I would hear them sobbing through the thin walls that separated our rooms. By the end of basic training half of our flight had been discharged and sent home. We had the dubious distinction of being the worst flight ever to have been processed through Lackland - a fifty percent washout rate. The record may still stand.

I am convinced that Haley, Sam, Ridley and I survived by holding each other together. We were as terrified and heartsick as our fellow trainees but we had each other to cling to, sharing tears and hugs when things got rough. Sisters couldn’t have been closer than we became over those turbulent months.

At the end of basic training we were amazed at our luck when we were shipped together to Amarillo Air Force Base for tech school. The barracks at Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle wasn’t any better than the one we shared at Lackland - a creaky leftover from World War II. Every morning New Mexico blew between cracks in the walls - come afternoon it was Oklahoma grit sifting its way over the window sills and into our foot lockers. When we weren’t studying we were cleaning, though how we ever passed inspection I will never know.

Then the blizzard of the decade hit. We awoke that day to snow drifts piled against the doors and half way up to the second floor windows. A dozen men from across base shoveled us out in time for supper but training was suspended for weeks while the winds howled and ice flew. We ironed our uniforms while catching coverage of the blizzard on the break room black and white. I thought things couldn’t get worse until a week after the melt-off when an outbreak of German measles confined us once again to barracks. I spent three days covered with itchy spots in the base infirmary, the up side being I got to sleep in a real bed for a while.

At that point we wondered if we would finish training before the end of the war. Still, eventually the snows melted and the measles spots faded. We plowed through our studies at a fast and furious clip, making up for lost time. Graduation was a weekend away when our class finally got liberty to go into Amarillo for a night on the town.

Ridley was at the wheel since it was her cousin’s Chevy. Haley rode shotgun, Sam and I sat in the back. We wore our dress blue uniforms as the newspaper ad said the theater gave military discounts to people in uniform. Being trainees we were not rolling in money. I imagined I could already taste those juicy hot dogs as the car stopped beside the ticket window. This was going to be great! I hadn’t enjoyed an evening at the movies with friends in what seemed like eons. And “Giant”! Shot right there in Amarillo, staring the biggest actors of the era. James Dean! What could be better than that?
“Four, please,” said Ridley to the ticket agent as she handed him our money.
He pointed to a small sign on the window which began “We reserve the right . . . “
“’fraid not,” he said, ignoring the bills.
“What did he say?” I asked Sam.
“Shhh. Never you mind,” she said, patting my arm.
Ridley handed our money over to Haley and put the car in gear.
“Sir,” said Ridley to the man. “Can we turn around up ahead, please? There’s cars waiting behind us.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. He leaned out of the window and looked toward me. “Honey, you can come on in and watch from the refreshment stand if ya want.”
“What’s he talking about, Ridley?”
She turned to us. “Sorry,” she said. “I must have missed that part of the ad.”
I still did not understand what the problem was.
“It’s whites only,” whispered Haley from the front seat. “Sweetie, we could come back for you later if you want to see the film.”
Ridley cut a u-turn in the gravel drive.
“Haley’s right, we can go somewhere else and come back for you,” she said.
“You’ve got to be kidding! Of course I don’t want to see it without you guys! “
“Never mind,” said Sam. “Let’s get out of here.”

No one spoke on the drive back to base. I could not get my head around what had just happened - and how could the three of them so quietly accepted the situation? Weren’t they angry? For my part I was sick with shame to belong to the same race as the little twerp who had turned us away. If it had been up to me . . .

Four years later when riots erupted all across the country and whole neighborhoods were burning - when Martin Luther King was killed - I began to understand the looks my bunk mates exchanged that evening as we drove away from the theater. The anger was there all right, waiting for the right time.

After graduation we each shipped out to different bases and though we wrote from time to time eventually we lost touch as our country churned with change. Now, forty years later, an African American man is a viable candidate for president - for Commander in Chief. I’ll bet Ridley, Sam, and Haley - wherever they are - are getting a kick out that. I know I am. To this day I have not seen “Giant” but come election time I think I will rent a copy and pop a big batch of popcorn. Better late than never.


This Week’s Office Plant Care Tip: Pay attention to your plant!

“My plant is dying!” exclaimed one of my plant care clients. Well, I thought, that pretty much sums up the condition of all living things - still, I knew what she was getting at. Her plant had some brown leaves and that worried her.

Brown leaves can mean many things depending on the plant. It can indicate poor health but usually it does not. (As it turned out, my client’s plant was just fine.) Plants, being living creatures, change constantly, sprouting new leaves as they shed old tired leaves. It is what plants do - we in the plant care industry call that “job security”.

My client was doing something I commend - she was observing her plant. She noted its condition and expressed an interest in finding out what was happening to it. Even if you have a plant care service your observations can be very helpful - remember, your plant technician sees your plant only minutes a month, while you share office space with it forty-plus hours a week!

So, take a good look at your plant on a frequent basis. Plants communicate in graphic ways - yellow leaves, brown leaves, wilted leaves all are saying something to you. Feel the soil for moisture. Dry? Wet? Note the condition of the leaves - clean and shiny or dull and wrinkled? Eventually you will get a feel for what is going on in your plant’s life.
By the way, the main reason people who talk to their plants tend have “green thumbs” is that by doing so they are connecting with the plant at some level - paying attention. (Of course you risk looking like an idiot but you will have pretty plants. Here is an idea: one of my clients has her Bluetooth in her ear when she talks to her plant - that way if someone catches her she can always claim she is taking an important call.)

HAVE AN OFFICE PLANT QUESTION? ASK SEASTAR.