Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Coming, Going, Here, Gone. All At The Same Time



When I was in the eighth grade, my Girl Scout troop came to Tallahassee from Winter Haven, where we lived. This was in 1968, right after Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated and the entire country was dazed and unbelieving, reeling and anxious. The African-American community was devastated and there had been riots and rumors of riots and since Tallahassee was the state capitol, my scout leader was concerned that perhaps we should postpone our trip until things settled down, but someone calmed her fears, convinced her we'd be fine, and so, dressed in our uniforms and with our little suitcases, we boarded the train in Winter Haven and rode it to Tallahassee.
My scout leader was a woman from Illinois or Indiana or Iowa- one of those heartland states that begins with the letter i. She was a woman who, looking back, must have been abused or molested or perhaps both, in childhood because she was filled with fears and anxieties and was constantly warning her daughter, who was one of my best friends, to be on the lookout for this or that possible threat. And I doubt she'd ever even laid eyes on a person of color until she came to Florida as an adult and she probably had some of the most overt prejudices I've ever seen. Once, when I was in high school, she saw me giving a ride to a black friend of mine and told her daughter that she was no longer allowed to associate with me.
So, given that combination, it's a wonder we did come to view the Capitol at all, but we did, and I don't remember much about the train ride except that it seemed to me that the bar car was where the action was and they served a fine turkey sandwich.
We stayed at the Floridan Hotel and that I remember well. It was fairly old even then, and had that great old hotel smell which is sadly lacking in today's Marriotts and Holiday Inns. It was a smell made up of elements of time and wear and dust and mildew and of all the people who'd stayed there- their clothes, their shoes, their cigarettes, their soap and shampoo and shaving cream, their body odors, their breath, their sex, their room-service meals.
To an eighth grade girl, it was intoxicating.
We were vastly relieved to discover that the black people of Tallahassee were not rioting. The men who toted the bags and the women who cleaned the rooms went about their jobs with no outward display of hatred towards us although who knows? They may have made the sign of the evil eye at us when our backs were turned. I wouldn't have blamed them then and I wouldn't blame them now.
Our visit was entirely uneventful. We went to the Capitol. We met Claude Kirk, the governor. We visited FSU where one of our scout's sisters was matriculating. She gave us a little tour of the campus.
All of those things were fine but what I remember most was visiting the Little Folks toy store which was right across the street from the hotel. We saw Claude Kirk's wife, Erika, shopping for toys there. She was a beautiful, glamorous woman and as close to a celebrity as we were going to see. My friend, Mary Lane, bought a stuffed giraffe that day. I wonder if she still has it.
The other thing I remember was eating our supper at Angelo's restaurant which was also across the street, right next to Little Folks. Mary Lane and I split an order of spaghetti.
I do not forget meals.
I had no idea on that trip so long ago that I would one day move to Tallahassee. That the Floridan would play a role in my future, that I would eat hundreds of meals at Angelo's and that I would buy toys for my first child at Little Folks. I was a Girl Scout, on a trip to the Capitol. I had no idea what my future held.
Things change. They do. The Floridan is long gone, as is Little Folks, as is Angelo and his restaurant which I will forever mourn the loss of.
And I am not going to sit here and say that everything changes for the worse. I know I wouldn't say that if I were black, although things in this country are still not what you'd call civil, and rights are denied people because of the color of their skin every moment of every day.
But there are laws. Things do change. We might have a dark-skinned president by this time next year.
And won't that be fine? Won't that be proof that change can be good?
It was just odd this morning to open the paper and see the report on the ground-breaking of the new Floridan, to remember staying there as a girl and to remember how, when I was pregnant with Hank I worked there, in one of the rented side-spaces, for my friend Ruth in her graphics design business. My friend Karen went into labor there.
Buildings can define space and thus, define human activities and lives. Bricks and mortar will rise up into the sky again and Tallahassee will redefine itself once again when they do. There may be a hotel there and it may be called the Floridan but it will never smell the same.
And me? I'm hanging on here in Lloyd in a house that's been here since the nineteenth century, it's walls and floors defining my life this very moment. It was right here when my Girl Scout troop took the train into Tallahassee and we probably passed right by it on the track that runs through my back yard now.
And there I was, a child sitting in a train, wearing a green skirt, a white blouse, a badge sash and a beret, anticipating the huge adventure of a trip away, never knowing that I was passing within a hundred yards of a place I'd live with my as then yet-undreamed of husband and children.
The me of the past flew right past her future and the me of the present looks back and thinks how the past has flown by.
I could almost shiver, thinking of that, how the present and the past and the future are always happening, as we hurtle through space, passengers on this planet for the short time we're given, thinking we know exactly where we're going, our uncertain tickets clutched in our hands.
Where does the time go? I have no idea. I am not a philosopher or a physicist. I am only a woman, sitting in a room facing a railroad track, thinking of a girl.
I am that girl. I am that woman.
I am sitting still. I am flying foward.
I am hurtling through space.

10 comments:

  1. As an old country picker, I once played with, used to say to me (when I got it right)...
    "Mighty fine, Mighty fine"
    Speaking of gone , I went to Winter Haven every year for years with my folks, to watch the Red Sox at spring training, God I loved that place.
    "Those days are gone forever...over a long time ago..."

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  2. "I am hurtling through space"

    which is why I always wear a cup and helmet.

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  3. Ah yes, Brother WB. A lot of folks came to Winter Haven for the Red Sox. And Cypress Gardens, of course. Winter Haven was a happenin' place for the tourist industry before Disney unrolled his kingdom and Mickey moved in.

    Juancho- and that's why I always carry a pen and some pesos.

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  4. I was wondering if you were going to talk about the old Floridian. Remember that Friday that we stopped after Angelo's and picked up a brick or two?

    Also, I want to say that your writing is getting sort of intimidating.

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  5. DTG- highest praise I could get. Thank-you.

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  6. Oh my god I love you and that post all at once :) Loooooove it.

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  7. You happen to be, Ms. Moon, one of the most interesting people I have ever met.

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  8. I'll second that except that we've never "met," exactly. As I read, particularly at the end, I shivered and remembered Janis Joplin saying, "It's all the same day!" Ain't it, though???

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  9. That really did take my breath away!

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  10. I must be a decent writer because actually, I'm the most boring person in the world.
    But thank you all so much.

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