I grew up in southern California and Oregon. My folks were schoolteachers. We camped around in the canyons. Sometimes schoolteachers are forced to camp to stay alive, I think. I rode my Schwinn Stingray around in the canyons. Every time it rains in California on the limestone, new canyons and new bike trails are carved out. And when the sun comes back out – it’s go time.

Now, the cool things about bike life in the canyons around those days was that’s where you met the black kids from Otay. Yep, they had bikes.

Those black kids, they changed my life. They had Stingrays too.

This was the time of the riots in Watts, and everywhere else, of course. But I didn’t know anything was wrong except my banana seat always shifted to the left and I had to stop often to straighten it out. After a day of chasing lizards and horny toads, we were all butt-tired. We emptied out the lizards from our MJB coffee cans and headed off to our homes, my gang to our split-levels on Topaz Court and them to the other side of the cutaway off Melrose Street. Sometimes we’d have a dirt clod fight just at the end, grabbing the steel lids off neighbor’s garbage can to use as shields. I always thought it was just to see the pieces of limestone pulverize against the garbage can lids. But you know, the black boys threw their clods harder than us. We never made anything of it. Some kids would use the N word, once they were out of sight of course. My mother taught me that if someone said that, we were supposed to say:

“We call them people”

Now, our family was special. See, we weren’t prejudiced. I didn’t know what that meant. But it sounded good to me. So I wasn’t prejudiced either. And I screamed that out as the dirt clods were slamming against the garbage can lid and my skinny little torso.

Sometimes, if my mom got drunk enough on a Saturday afternoon, she would invite some of the Otay folks up over the ice plant to our place for a drunk fest blues jam. She would play the piano and they brought their guitars and amplifiers. Ain’t nothing prejuliced about that. We all had a great time watching the parents get liquored up and playing sentry while our sisters made out with the neighbor boys up the stairs.

Life magazine started to publish what was goin on. Pictures of black kids getting pounded by cops, German Shepard’s takin bites outa folks and firemen gunnin water at crowds of bystanders. People dyin, cryin and pictures of big fat white politicians surrounded by national guards and smoking cigars. What the hell? I was just lookin to hold hands with Suzie Starr. I had a plague of a crush on her. But she wore glasses in 7^th grade and that was a deal breaker. Damn.

Then Dr. Martin Luther King got killed. On my 12^th birthday.

I have a dream, I have a dream. Everyone just go away!

We moved to Roseburg shortly after Watts. There was one black family in Roseburg in 1969, that I ever heard of. Model citizens and I had a crush on the daughter,. As well as Mary, Linda, Lindy, Jan, Carol, Stephanie and the entire 8^th grade cheerleader squad. Which continued through ninth grade, tenth grade, eleventh grade and the fantasizing barely left me time for the 4-H thing. I didn’t have a lot of time for political issues being all-pubescent and stuff, but I knew I was a Democrat because that’s what my working class dad and bohemian freak mom were.

My family was way too much drama for Roseburg though and we had to leave to or we were probably gonna get featured in the Newsreview like the folks that were killing each other at the Wagon Wheel lounge every other weekend. I learned you can’t enter sisters as livestock in the 4H fair.

Life in Eugene at that age meant hanging out at Momma’s Homefried Truckstop, popping in at the KIVA on west 11^th, the daily stop into the Sunshop to look at records and play some guitars and on to the quest to find a “lid.” And now I’m not talking garbage cans.

They was rioting up on Campus and we were all reading the Strawberry Statement, following Abbie Hoffman and just basically living the glamour of rioting. Most kids didn’t know what we were rioting against, other than Viet Nam. But we had fun eating those flavored rolling papers and trying to get off by smoking catnip.

When my family went to shit I joined the US Army. That’s gonna help. Turns out being all I could be was to be a PFC. But I got to cut the hash in Germany, get lost at the Oktoberfest and be barred from the possibility of ever being in the armed forces again, with an honorable discharge, full benefits, came home with a black eye and that suits me just fine.

From sea to shining sea.

Disco happened right after I had been repatriated. I had been integrated, upbraided, castigated, denigrated, seargent-hated, forever-jaded, pixilated, room-mated, field-paraded, underrated, berated, personally invaded, but I was ready for disco. I did the hustle, I bumped and I think that’s when I created the back problems that haunt me now.

I was in line at the Safeway. This older black dude, okay, African American, in line behind me looked like a good guy. How ya doin? I asked. He said “oh man, I’d be cool if people would just stop fuckin with me.” Yeah, me too.

God shed his grace on us.

President Obama has a full plate, as they say. He has to find his birth certificate. He has to prove he’s not a pinko. He has to fix all the shit white corporate America has laid at his feet. He has to make jobs for all the people who used to work in factories. And he has to do it while people show up at town hall meetings with assault rifles strapped to their legs. Oh yeah, he has to make peace in the Middle East too.

The political race is about race. It always was. It always will be. We conquered Hawaii and Grenada but the census is a little harder to swallow for white Americans. How about this idea?

The grain is amber. The mountain majesty is purple. Not only that, it is fruited. Archie Bunker is unemployed. Roseburg has a lot of hippies. America is beautiful. But not just for that. The beauty is in the mirror. Which sounds good if you’re in your fifties doesn’t it?

America, the powerful, can you please explain,

The prejudice and travesties that underline your name?

America, America, your people weep for thee.

Crown the good with what we should and let all people be.