28 Jun 2023 7:53 pm
I never stood face to face with and had a conversation with a black man until I was 14, and a chicken vendor came to our lily white little town and sold barbecued chicken.
Rural white people didn’t barbecue in those days. We fried or baked everything. I thought barbecued chicken was the best I’d ever had and asked the men how he prepared it, while my mother was standing beside me.
The man was very proud of his chicken, and gave me a bottle of barbecue sauce he used, and invited me and my mother to come to his home in a large town the next time we could, and he’d show me how to barbecue chicken.
His wife overheard this and said out loud
What are you thinking!
You can’t have this beautiful nice white lady and that young white boy over to our neighborhood!
You know where we live. It’s not safe there, especially not for them.
That put any idea of mine to rest, learning to barbecue chicken
My Mama never skipped a beat, and asked if her husband could come along, a retired LAPD officer.
Mama was only married to that man about six months.
But he put on his reserve officer’s uniform and watched that man teach me how, to barbecue chicken.
Rural white people didn’t barbecue in those days. We fried or baked everything. I thought barbecued chicken was the best I’d ever had and asked the men how he prepared it, while my mother was standing beside me.
The man was very proud of his chicken, and gave me a bottle of barbecue sauce he used, and invited me and my mother to come to his home in a large town the next time we could, and he’d show me how to barbecue chicken.
His wife overheard this and said out loud
What are you thinking!
You can’t have this beautiful nice white lady and that young white boy over to our neighborhood!
You know where we live. It’s not safe there, especially not for them.
That put any idea of mine to rest, learning to barbecue chicken
My Mama never skipped a beat, and asked if her husband could come along, a retired LAPD officer.
Mama was only married to that man about six months.
But he put on his reserve officer’s uniform and watched that man teach me how, to barbecue chicken.