On the Band Wagon

Because of the movie, SELMA is being talked a lot about these days and the bravery of those who marched over the bridge.  Keeping a segment of the population from voting or depriving them of any other guaranteed right is just plain UnAmerican.  It  is now and it was then.  Only then, to hear the people who were keeping people from voting,they were doing the patriotic thing.

Now,  it is time for me to get on the bandwagon.

When I turned 18 I registered to vote.  I went to the  Cobb County Courthouse and went to the appropriate office and showed the man my proof and credentials I was age 18, and a citizen.

I filled out the application or whatever I need to fill out.  

The man said according to Georgia State Law I had to qualify.   I had to pass a reading test he said.  He handed me a  sheet of paper of some printed words on it.

He said, "Read that aloud."

It was part of the Gettysburg Address, by Abraham Lincoln.

I started reading aloud:  "Four Scores and Seve...."

He interrupted me.  "That's good.  You passed, congratulations".

I said, "But I did not read much."

The clerk said, " You read enough.  You pronounced the word "four" correctly".  If you had pronounced it "foe" I would have failed you on the literacy."

I looked at him suspiciously.  He went on to say:  If we allowed all those people who say "foe" instead of "four" there is no telling what they would elect.  We are doing this to keep the U.S.A. a democracy."

Alone the same note, a few years after that, a friend went to Canton, Georgia, to get his drivers license renewed.  He heard the lines wasn't so bad at the State Patrol Office in Canton.  In line was a black man. 

A state patrolman looked up from his desk and saw the man and walked up to him and rudely told him to go to the back of the line, didn't he have the sense to turn and see all the white folks in line behind him.

By theory, he could be the first one in line but have to wait until the end of the day to get service.

click on image to read balloons.

The above  by  cartoonist Bud Grace, from his comic strip PIRANHA CLUB reminds us in the late 1950s.  We were not above piling into someone's car trunk and letting one or two people drive into a drive-in movie.  I remember once at the Smyrna Drive In theater we took Larry Southern's 1957 Ford, it had a big trunk.

I was elected to drive in the theater, which I did.  I drove around to the back row and got out of the car and was about to open the trunk when a man with a flashlight  walked up out of the dark and told me I had to move, the area I parked was for "colored people". 

I went back to get into the car and the man added, "Before you go you need to get those boys out of the trunk before the smother."