My Personal Contribution to Racial Discord in the Deep South

I grew up at ground zero for the civil rights movement in America. Mississippi has long been vilified as a seething cauldron of racial hatred characterized by its past association with such vile stuff as the Ku Klux Klan, segregation, and lynchings. However, coming of age in the early 1980s myself, that was not my experience at all.

In my day, everyone actually seemed to get along quite well. My own little Delta town was a melting pot of cultures. European white folk, Chinese, Jews, African Americans, Lebanese, and Italians were generously represented, all with trivial acrimony. That dark, loathsome stuff was long past by the time I came along. However, I did once nearly inadvertently precipitate a proper race war myself.

Setting the Stage

When I was a teenager, I was seldom mistaken for cool, but I rocked an exceptionally cool car. My 1970 Buick Skylark convertible was the only ragtop in town. On most warm Saturday evenings, I could be found tucked into a slot at the local Sonic Drive-In with the top down and my hot girlfriend by my side. The Sonic was the social epicenter for local teenagers. Friends could readily identify me by my unique wheels from a slant range of 100 meters or more.

One fine evening I was thusly arrayed when a buddy named Cecil cruised by behind us in his enormous cacophonous pickup truck. Suddenly and unexpectedly, a big dollop of raw biscuit dough smacked itself onto my rearview mirror. I glanced up suddenly to see Cecil and his comrade laughing maniacally as they attempted to accelerate away to safety.

My girlfriend was present, and my honor had been impugned. Sticking cheap frozen biscuit dough to one’s car, while patently harmless, was the sort of egregious affront that demanded a firm and decisive response. Without much conscious thought, I scooped up the big sticky mass and pushed myself up so that I was sitting on my headrest. Meanwhile, Cecil was desperately waiting for a break in the traffic.

Everything is Physics

There was a reason I was never asked to serve as a pitcher or quarterback during local pickup ball games. My long skinny arm could generate some proper velocities, but I was no Roger Staubach or Tom Brady in the accuracy department. With my girlfriend’s opinion of my manhood teetering in the balance, I drew back and hummed that big bolus of gelatinous biscuit dough with every fiber of my being.

Now appreciate the geometry of this exchange. I’m sitting atop the front seat in my convertible. Cecil is nearby, straining to exit the scene of the crime. Just to the left of a vector between my right arm and Cecil’s truck is an absolutely enormous African American gentleman leaning over, talking to his own girlfriend through the open window of her car. My fist-sized dollop of sticky biscuit dough struck this innocent black man right between the shoulder blades with a thundering, “Thwop!”

A Murder in the Making

Time momentarily stood still. At that range, the projectile’s elasticity likely caused it to sting a bit. The hulking African American man snapped reflexively erect and pivoted to face me, his eyes wide with rage. I will never forget his words. He looked at me incredulously, a pale skinny kid caught like a whitetail in the high beams, and asked flatly, “Son, have you lost your mind?”

I raised both hands in a universal sign of surrender and responded, “Oh, Good Lord, sir, I am so sorry! I was aiming for the truck.”

With that, Cecil found his opening and squealed away to safety.

The man processed the scene for a moment, shook his head at my simply breathtaking stupidity, and turned back to his girlfriend. He also kicked the high-mileage chunk of biscuit dough under the car, likely fearing that I might be sufficiently deranged to pick it up and throw it at him again should he not dispose of it properly. To his immense credit, this long-suffering gentleman did not snap me like a twig.

Denouement

And thus it should all have ended that sultry evening in the Mississippi Delta back in 1982. My promising young life really should have been expeditiously snuffed, yet another victim of the toxic combination of youthful male stupidity and simmering racial acrimony. Alas, God clearly had other plans.

I sheepishly dropped back down into my seat, fired up the car, and puttered meekly away. My manliness quotient, no doubt, dipped a bit in my girlfriend’s eyes. However, I didn’t die, and we have now been married for 38 years. I think that means I still win.

Testosterone is the most potent poison known to man. Cyanide, botulinum, arsenic, and polonium have claimed the merest fraction of the human toll, as has this most deadly hormone. I still draw breath today solely due to one exceptionally level-headed black man’s extraordinary capacity for restraint.

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