I was born in the mid 50's, and like so many Southerners of my generation grew up during the Jim Crow era,
and also like so many of my generation, and despite the words of Thomas Jefferson to the contrary, was
taught and grew up with the impression that not all people were created equal. Surely prejudice resides in
the heart of everyone to one degree or another, and thankfully, eventually I would come to the point in my
life where I would realize that the philosophy with which I grew up is all wrong. But it would take time and a
creature not human to help me reach that understanding.
At 32 years of age I had reached the lofty position of pizza delivery person. Even though I had graduated
from high school third out of a class of 143 and had been offered scholarships, I had decided to take a
different path. But that is a different story. During the spring of 1986 I made a decision that changed my life
forever. I decided that I could do better than pizza delivery, so at the age of 32 I enrolled as a freshman at
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Whereas I had been raised to believe a certain way,
my parents did insist that I show respect to all people regardless of race or color. Thankfully the brand of
prejudice with which I grew up did not include lynchings, and although it wasn't necessarily my fault that I
grew up the way I did, I am very grateful that I was able to finally realize the wrongness of the philosophy
with which I grew up.
In Baton Rouge I found a very nice second floor apartment situated immediately adjacent to the LSU
campus. The kitchen and one of the bedroom windows looked out onto the horse and cow pasture of the
LSU veterinary college. Beyond that was the levee that held back the Mississippi river. If you've never
been to that part of the United States you might not realize that the levee system of the Mississippi River
has quite become Pandora's Box. Samuel Clemons wrote about this in his wonderful book, Life on the
Mississippi. Through the years, and despite the efforts of engineers dredging the bottom to remove
massive amounts of sediment that settle from all that is carried from upstream, the bottom of the river has
steadily risen so that today the bottom of the river is where the top used to be. I saw this for myself when
the first time I looked out one of my windows I saw a boat -- one of those large oil tankers -- going by above
the level of my second floor window!
I used to love to look out and see the levee, and the pasture, a gorgeous green that was dotted here and
there with horses and cows. I was in college and was very happy with the decision I had made. Now I could
get down to doing something serious with my life. I enjoyed college life! For me it was not all about parties,
oh no. I loved studying and doing homework. I still do. Today I am a software engineer, and I spend my
days reading through and writing hundreds of lines of source code, developing highly complex applications
or their algorithms.
It took a while to get there though. First I had to pay the price of going to class, doing homework, and
taking exams. But truth be told I loved all of that. During most of my college career I tried to avoid social
entanglements such as close friends, especially girlfriends. I did not need nor did I want the distractions.
But I did acquire one minor distraction, and that was in the form of a beautiful, golden cocker spaniel.
Shortly after moving to my new apartment two new tenants arrived. They were two of the most beautiful,
tall, sleek, gorgeous beauties I had ever seen, and their beauty was breath-taking. I had never been that
stunned by the good looks of a black female. As it turned out both girls were members of the LSU women's
track team. I met them in the summer of 1987, and as it turned out the LSU girls track team won the NCAA
outdoor track and field championships that year. Eventually, the LSU women’s track team would win 11 or
12 consecutive national outdoor titles beginning with that first one. These two girls were pioneers in that
effort. One of the girls, Esther Jones, would go on to win a gold medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics in
Seoul, South Korea. I didn't get to know Esther all that well because being world class she was always on
the road competing. Leslie, equally athletic, was a high jumper, and it was Leslie and her dog who would be
the first to show me just how misinformed I had been regarding my prejudice against blacks.
At the time I met Esther and Leslie I still felt toward blacks the way I had always felt: "show respect, but
remember that they are different." Esther and Leslie moved in to an apartment only three doors down from
mine, and college life went on. Going to college was the best thing I ever did. At 32 I had a healthy respect
for going to class and doing homework. I determined that I would make the best grades I could, and I was
into my third semester before I made my first "B." Until then I had made all "A's" taking courses like
microbiology, calculus, and organic chemistry.
I had grown up in the South, so I had been around blacks my whole life -- but not to socialize with them. I
experienced the desegregation period during the 60's and 70’s. The first blacks with which I went to school
were three students that integrated my school in the eight grade. I had made friends with them, but the
prejudice with which I had been raised stayed with me. Now I was sitting in class at LSU next to young
people of all manner of background, color, and ethnicity. I learned early on that Orientals are extremely
intelligent, as are Indians, and surprise, surprise: Blacks! I still have the computer printouts from tests
results. My name was most always placed at or near the top, but more often than not there would always be
one or two students that consistently outscored me. I made it a point to seek these students out, and when
I did would find that they usually were not Caucasian. As often or not some of these students who would
outscore me on a chemistry test would be of African descent.
I had always been taught that Blacks are superior athletes to Whites because they had been bred to work in
the fields. I had also been taught that Blacks had thicker skulls and smaller brains, with the result that
Whites are superior intellectually. Of course, I believed what I had been taught, so how was it that these
Black students were outscoring me on college-level exams? It didn't fit in with what I had been taught.
Things were great back at my apartment. They got better. One day there was a knock on my door. Leslie
was there holding her dog, Abigail. She was going out of town, and would I mind watching Abigail for a few
days? I knew Abigail. I had seen the little dog hanging around Leslie’s apartment and had come to pet her
and hold her as did everyone in the complex. Abigail had been a gift from Leslie's boyfriend. I observed
that Leslie took very good care of Abigail, and I would always say "Hi" to the pup whenever I saw her and
Leslie by the apartment pool. I had gotten to know Abigail and Leslie, and Leslie decided that she could
trust me to look after her pup while she was gone.
So Abigail came to stay with me for a few days. In the beginning I was not enamored with the idea of taking
on the responsibility, but Abigail quickly wormed herself into my heart. Within a few days, Leslie returned
from her trip, and Abigail went home. In the mean time I had begun the practice of leaving my front door
open when I was home. My air conditioner did not work very well, and it does get hot in South Louisiana.
Leslie’s routine came to be that she would open her door and let Abigail out, and Abigail would run to my
apartment and fly through the open doorway, scurrying about the apartment until she found me. She
developed the habit of throwing herself into my lap and showing me her belly. I had earlier made the
mistake of scratching her belly one day, and it was all over with after that.
Everyday after those few days I had watched over Abigail, she would come down to my apartment for a
visit. In the early mornings, Leslie would open her door and Abigail would run out of her apartment, down
the walkway, turn the corner and glide straight into my apartment. It became a daily routine. I am a very
early riser. I would be up and at my desk studying each morning by 4:00 am, and usually sometime between
then and time to go to my first class at 7:30, Abigail would come flying in, waddling and shaking and beaming
all over. One morning I had stepped out early and had closed my door behind me. I happened to see Leslie
open her door and saw Abigail fly through her door and down the walkway, headed for my apartment. I
heard a heavy thud and heard a sharp yelp. I rushed over to see what happened. There was Abigail lying
on her side just outside my closed door, her tongue hanging out as she panted. Her eyes looked at mine
and for a few seconds they failed to recognize me. The look on her face said, “What happened?” When
Abigail finally recognized who I was she broke into that winning smile of hers, raised herself up, and stood
by patiently until I opened the door. Cautiously she proceeded to go inside.
"I gotta go to class now, Abigail. You come back and see me when I get back."
Leslie was a gorgeous girl -- tall and lean with a big smile and very pleasant personality. In the beginning
she would apologize for Abigail's intrusion, but eventually she would come to accept Abigail's forays as just
part of the way things were. Abigail became as much my dog as she was Leslie's. Over the course of the
year or two that Leslie, Esther, and some of the other LSU track girls' lived at the complex I became friends
with most of them. Quite often before a big meet, all of the girls would gather at the complex and go to a
movie. They never failed to ask me to tag along. As a group we saw such movies as "Field of Dreams," and
"Rain Man." These girls, world-class athletes, All-Americans, and NCAA national champions would exit the
theater in tears, wiping their faces, and I, being the macho man that I was, would be do the same.
Time moves on, and in college one semester moves into another, then another, and so on. Each morning
before I would go to class Abigail would show up in my bedroom or kitchen, wagging her tail, smiling that
big smile of hers, looking for her belly rub. Her “mommy” and I had become very good friends, and it was
inevitable that the day came that Leslie would announce that she had become engaged to be married.
Within a few weeks she was married and moved out of the apartment. Abigail went with her, of course.
College moved on and the great day of graduation arrived. I was thoroughly exhausted and ready to move
on to bigger and greater things. President Ronald Reagan spoke at my commencement. On the return walk
to my apartment I happened upon a couple walking through one of the several Live Oak groves around the
beautiful campus. The couple had their dog with them, and as I crossed their path I realized the they were
Leslie and her husband. Abigail was with them, and the three of us enjoyed a brief reunion. I held Abigail
for a few minutes, and she wagged her tail and licked my face, and the two of us enjoyed a few minutes
embrace. I gave Leslie a hug, shook her husband’s hand, we parted and have never seen each other since.
I turned back, though, and watched as Leslie and her husband and Abigail continued on their way. Abigail
kept looking in my direction, but Leslie held to her tightly to her to keep her from jumping and running back
to me. I followed their progress into the distance, and Abigail kept her eyes on mine until they
disappeared. And as they disappeared from view, I thought back on that day that Leslie had knocked on my
door and asked if I would babysit her dog. I recalled that on that day I still held to that prejudice with which I
had grown up, but that over the past three of four years of knowing Leslie and her dog, of attending
classes and coming in second to students who were supposed to be “inferior,” I had definitely come to
realize that those philosophies with which I had grown up were all bogus. I had learned from my time with
Leslie and with her dog Abigail that among God’s creatures, “red and yellow, black and white, all are
precious in his sight.”
Please take a moment to read or leave a comment in my Guestbook, or read more about daily life at Willow
Oak in my journal, or email me one of your own stories.
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