My Summer Vacation

A Deep South road trip I’ll never forget

“Coming and Going,” Norman Rockwell’s 1947 cover for the Saturday Evening Post. Source

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One of the upsides to becoming a writer is that it allows me to build an online community, not only of folks who enjoy reading my musings but also of other writers. And while the platform isn't perfect, the Substack app lets people share personal stories without fear of an army of bots descending upon them. This leads me to a recent post shared by a talented writer I've gotten to know.

He described purchasing a beverage at his local coffee shop and, since someone had done the same thing for him a week earlier when paying for a drink, he paid for the drink of the woman in line behind him. I’ve been on both ends of this practice. He was in effect, paying forward the good turn he’d received from someone else.

Here's the part of his story that grabbed my attention. Rather than thank him for the courtesy, the woman “looked at me like a deer in headlights” as he described it, took her free cup of joe, and walked away without even so much as a thank you.

As I read about that writer's experience, I was reminded of something that happened to me close to fifty years ago. Although my writer friend didn't mention the woman's race or ethnicity, something about his tale took me there. I suppose that sometimes, the mind travels to places and in ways we cannot begin to understand.

A Deep South road trip

In the late seventies, my father worked as a salesman for Batesville Casket Company. As the name suggests, he was a casket salesman. As I wrote a few years back, eventually my dad made a better-than-average living working for the company. That said, because the company did not allow my dad, or their other Black salesmen (the company had no female salespersons), to call on white-owned funeral parlors, he was at a decided disadvantage:

One day we had dinner at the white salesman’s [my father's coworker] home. During the meal, he mentioned how great it was to have a job that let him travel across the state and still be home for dinner each night.

My father explained to us later that the white salesman’s territory consisted of every white-owned funeral home in Arkansas. Since there were dozens, if not hundreds of white funeral homes across the state, his counterpart never had to travel more than a few hours to make a good living. Most of the time, he could be home for dinner. 

On the other hand, my father’s territory was very different. It spanned all the Black-owned funeral homes in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and parts of Texas, Alabama, and Tennessee. Unlike his white counterpart, my father was rarely home for dinner.

To earn a living, he traveled the Deep South for weeks at a time. He also had to absorb the extra travel cost associated with covering five times as much territory. Under those conditions, he could never make the same money as his white coworker.

How My Parents Gamified Racism

Even though he did well, we couldn't afford proper vacations in the early days of his career, so the whole family traveled with him as he traversed the southern United States.

By the time I graduated high school in 1976, we’d traveled to Chattanooga, Atlanta, and New Orleans—throughout Mississippi and most of Alabama. We took the scenic routes on our makeshift vacations, drifting from one town to the next with an occasional stop at a funeral home in the town’s Black section. At day’s end, we would settle in the nearest Holiday Inn. These were not the upscale motels available today, but they were always clean, and the price was right.

During one of our stays, I rose early, dressed, and decided to read a magazine by the motel’s outdoor swimming pool. As I read my copy of Gentlemen’s Quarterly (yes, I was into fashion), a woman, who happened to be white, and two small children entered the pool area. Judging from their body language, the two children were uncomfortable entering the water. Ignoring their apprehension, the mother shepherded them past me to the pool’s deep end. I recall thinking, “I know she’s not putting them in the water.”

I watched from my lounge chair as the woman jumped into the deep end. Treading water, she coaxed the older child into walking onto the diving board. Seconds later, he leaped into her arms. The child’s weight was too much for his mother to handle. I watched as the two began sinking to the bottom of the pool. The second child screamed hysterically from poolside as the scene unfolded.

I dropped my magazine, kicked off my shoes, and jumped into the water. I was a strong swimmer and easily pulled the coughing child above water and over to the side of the pool. As I lifted the boy out of the water a man, I assume the children's father, stood over me. Evidently, he’d heard the commotion. Without a word, he snatched the boy by the arm and dragged him out of the water and away from me.

The mother gathered their belongings while the second child ran behind the father, still screaming in dismay. As he headed towards their hotel room, the man kept looking over his shoulder at me. It was as if he’d saved his family, not from drowning, but from me. He disappeared into a hotel room a few doors down from ours as the wife rushed after him, now holding the other crying child.

Neither parent thanked me for pulling their child from the water. It was as though I wasn't even there. After catching my breath, I pulled myself out of the pool, picked up my magazine and shoes, and headed to our hotel room to change my wet clothes.

Although our stories are different, in some ways they are alike. To me at least, there is a through-line. It’s about how rewarding kindness with ‘thank you’ can have real meaning. It may be a not seem like much to give, but sometimes, even the smallest acknowledgment of kindness goes a long way.