Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, racism is as alive and well in my hometown as it is in any other community in the United States. When I was in my early teens, however, I got very lucky. I was befriended by thirteen-year-old Jim Garcia.
Jim was as different from me as any person I had ever met. He was bold, and I was timid. He was sure of himself, and I wasn’t. He said what was on his mind, and I tried to keep most of my thoughts to myself, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings. He was also the first person I had ever spent any time with who wasn’t white.
Our first summer as friends, Jim decided we needed to make some serious money, and somehow, he came up with the bright idea of cleaning bricks. So, for almost three months, every morning, at the crack of dawn, I would crawl out of bed, walk the length of Michigan Boulevard, and meet him at the corner of Michigan and Walnut. I never met him at his house. That wasn’t allowed. Jim’s family didn’t have a lot of money and he wasn’t proud of where he lived, although this was never talked about. He kept that and other hurts to himself. Jim didn’t like to burden other people with his problems.
Once at work, which was a good mile away, Jim and I would begin what to this day is still the hardest job I have ever had. The object was to clean up old used bricks, which had been deposited by big dump trucks in even bigger piles and get them ready for use on new construction projects. To do this, you had to take a hand ax and chop off all the old mortar, which is a lot more difficult to do than it sounds. We also had to do it while sitting on the hard, sun-baked ground with no shade anywhere in sight, during what had to be one of the hottest summers of my youth. At the end of the day, if you hadn’t died from heat stroke and still had all your fingers left, you took your cleaned bricks and stacked them neatly on old wooden pallets. For every cleaned brick the boss said was in pretty good shape, you made three-quarters of a penny.
The only other people who seemed willing to do this work were bums. They would bring their wine with them and as the day wore on, they were much more eager to steal the bricks Jim and I had cleaned than to work on their own. Fortunately, Jim was determined that we get full credit for every brick we cleaned and more than once I watched him, with his ax raised high in the air, stare down very rough looking men two or three times our age.
Somehow, we both survived that summer and soon thereafter found ourselves the starting guards on our high school basketball team. For two years we teamed up to help direct our team to a win and loss record which I’m sure both of us would like to forget. Jim was an even worse shot than me (which is really saying something), but on defense he was the most respected member of the team. He usually was assigned to guard the other team’s top scorer and he would spend the entire game scratching and clawing to take the ball away. His tenacious and determined approach to basketball, and life, was something I really admired, and my respect for him continued to grow throughout our high school years.
When Jim and I graduated from high school, we went our separate ways. Many years later, we accidentally bumped into each other at the California State Fair, exchanged handshakes, introduced our wives, and promised to stay in touch. We never did. A few years after that we were once again brought together, this time by the tragic death of a childhood friend of ours. After the memorial service, Jim and I talked at length about our friend and growing up together. When it was time to go, Jim did something totally out of character for him. He reached over and hugged me. And he wouldn’t let go.
Part of that hug belonged to our friend, but a part of it also belonged to Jim and me and the youthful years we had spent together trying to work out our differences and understand the cultures – different worlds, actually – which had shaped our early lives. That struggle, made necessary in me because there were so many qualities in Jim Garcia which I aspired to, forced me to confront early in life the absurd premise upon which racism is based, and allowed me to grow up understanding that cultural and racial differences are to be celebrated, not feared.
There was a time in my community – and it wasn’t all that long ago – when local realtors and decision-makers worked very hard to make sure people of color didn’t end up living here. And as diversity has come to our city over the years, “white flight” has been part of the reaction to it, especially with so many concerned parents trying to get their kids into “safe” schools and environments where everyone is more or less alike, and where the goal seems to be to eliminate all the problems – good and bad – inherent when people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds interact with each other.
What a tragedy, though, that so many of those young people will never get a chance to grow up with a friend like Jimmy Garcia.