Friday, October 21, 2005

When I was in high school, my father would drive me to my music teacher's house for my weekly lesson and the most direct route took us through an area of town where women were obviously hooking on the street. Once a sistah crossed the street right in front of our vehicle at a stop light, and she was wearing the most insanely tight jeans you've ever seen. My father said "if you put a razor near that, there'd be hind-end all over the place." He has a way with words, my pa.

My brother-in-law was studying architecture in school a few years ago, and was driving around the rather tony neighborhoods around Dallas' White Rock Lake looking at some great new houses, when an interesting thing occurred. He was driving along slowly, windows down, when he noticed a fracas in one of the yards-- several black people were yelling and gesturing wildly at him. To paraphrase, the essence of their harangue was "ain't you never seen black folks with a nice house before?" He was taken aback at the bizarre outburst. We were discussing the fabulous new rock houses in that same neighborhood and he remembered that event and told me about it. I realized which house it was, because a girlfriend of mine lived right around the corner. The house belongs to Erikah Badu. I remembered this story when I was driving down that street after visiting an art gallery last week. There were boxes and personal items all over the driveway of said house, and either someone was being thowed out, a yard sale was about to occur, or someone put a razor near a full-to-bursting storage room.

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