When Ron and I retired, we thought about moving outside of California, where the cost of living would be easier on a fixed income.  One of the places we explored was a town in Idaho, where we could easily use the equity in our California home to buy a 2-story house near a lake.  We flew there in February, while it was still cold and there was some snow on the ground.  We checked into a Holiday Inn Express, unpacked 3-days’ worth of clothes and essentials, and hopped back into our rented Subaru SUV.  We drove through neighborhoods, letting ourselves get lost on side streets; past parks with parents and children bundled against the cold, bravely navigating the slippery playground; past narrow churches, their steeples piercing the stone-gray sky; and lots and lots of people walking dogs, pushing strollers, or jogging.  The homes were lovely, well-kept, with 2-car garages and large front yards.  Some had boats sitting in the driveway, looking like huge aquatic beasts waiting to be towed to open water.  The average price of homes in the area was half of what you’d pay in California for the same square footage.  I knew this because I had a handful of flyers grabbed from a local real estate office.  As we drove around, we talked about the plusses of moving to a place like this – space, cost of living, fresh air, recreation, minimal traffic.  We drove through downtown, remarking on how clean it was, despite the piles of grimy slush pushed to the sides of the road. 

“I’ll bet it’s beautiful when all of this slush is melted and the sun is out,” I said, looking out the passenger window of the SUV, trying to imagine myself walking these streets on the way to the post office, or hairdresser, or to meet a new friend for lunch.  Did I see a Starbucks?

We had been sightseeing for hours, so we were both hungry.  Earlier in the day we had seen a sign along the freeway for one of Ron’s favorite restaurants.  He had been known to drive several miles out of his way to dine at that particular family-style restaurant, so having one right here in town was a huge plus in the pro-Idaho category. We backtracked our way to the restaurant. Ron was giddy.

The restaurant had a southern menu with enormous portions.  You cannot enter the dining room without passing through their quaint “Country Store,” stocked with everything from candy to clothes to yard statuary.  I made a mental note to grab a bag of Bit-O-Honey on the way out.  The woman who seated us in the dining room was short, plump, and rosy-cheeked.  She chatted us up on the way to the table.  “You from out of town?  Yes. “Here on vacation?”  Sort of.  “You been here before?” Nope, first time.  “Well, enjoy!” she said as she placed us at a table by the window with a view of the parking lot and busy road beyond.  We skimmed the huge menu.  I was pulling my jacket off as our server came over.  She had ash-blond hair piled on top of her head, with matching brows and lashes.  Her name was Tammy.  Ron greedily ordered meatloaf, which would come in a size bigger than his head, potatoes with no gravy (so he could put a stick of butter on top of the potatoes instead), grits, greens with pepper sauce, and bread pudding.  I ordered a hamburger and fries and made my way to the lady’s room. 

On my way there, and on my way back to the table, I had an unsettling feeling that I couldn’t put my finger on.  Things felt off-kilter, odd.  I shook it off and sat down, reaching for my Diet Coke.  While we waited for our food, Ron and I went over the day, discussing the pros and cons of the area. Ron was deep into describing the boat we’d need when Tammy brought our food.  As I dove into my hamburger, I looked around the dining room.  You could step into one of these restaurants anywhere from Alabama to Virginia and they would all be identical; homey, with a cabin feel, tin signs and farm tools mounted on the walls.  An axe hung on the wall behind our table. I scanned the tables of families, mostly with kids who scribbled on their paper place mats with broken crayons or punched away at games on their parents’ cell phones.  Adults gobbled their jumbo meals, chatting between bites.  Table conversations blended into one indecipherable buzz.  Again, I felt a strangeness I couldn’t identify.  I watched a young bus boy, pale-skinned and pimply carry a tray full of dirty dishes toward the kitchen.  I studied the room again, my eyes bouncing from table to table.  Blonds, red-heads, pale-faced brunettes, fair-haired children, and men with biscuit-colored skin and ruddy cheeks sat hunched over their meals, enjoying the bounty.  I put my hamburger down.  That’s it!  There was not one person of color in this building.  Not at the tables, not at the registers, not waiting tables, not browsing the gift shop, not walking to and from cars in the parking lot.  Having lived my entire life in California, I had never encountered this before.  It felt weird.  Ron was finishing his dinner, washing it down with sweet tea.

“Ron,” I whispered, pushing my plate aside and leaning closer.  “There are only white people in this restaurant.”  My eyes were wide. 

He looked around, his fork poised above his bread pudding.  “Wow.  Yeah, you’re right.”  

“Doesn’t it feel weird?”  I asked him. “I mean, what if a person of color walked in right now?” 

“I don’t know,” he said shaking his head at my silly question.  “Nothing would happen.”  The bread pudding had his attention again and he took a bite.  “I mean, it’s just this part of town, I guess.” 

This part of town.

Ron and I lived in Georgia for about six months early in our relationship.  This was many years ago; no need to go into how many years ago.  We lived in a small apartment close to downtown.  For the first few months I didn’t have a car, so I was cooped up in the apartment or flopped by the pool everyday while Ron was at work.  We hadn’t lived there for very long when boredom got the best of me, and I decided to go for a long walk.  I’d been walking for a while, meandering up and down streets until I was not exactly sure where I was.  At one point I stopped and sat on a bench at a bus stop to figure out my next move.  I looked around.  There were a few commercial buildings with faded signage and some tired-looking homes sprinkled on both sides of the street.  On the corner, I spotted a fast-food restaurant with a sign across the front window screaming in giant red letters against a yellow background, “Best Fried Chicken in Town!”  It was hot and humid, and I had worked up an appetite, so air conditioning and fried chicken sounded fabulous.  I crossed the street and pushed the front door open.  Inside, I stopped short and let out a little, “Oh.”  

The restaurant was almost full, and every person in there, from cooks to cashiers to customers, was black. A few people turned to look at me with mild curiosity, but most continued eating with no interest at all.  I walked to the counter with the same sense of exposure I might feel if I had walked in completely naked. 

The fiftyish woman who took my order looked mildly amused.  “Will you be eating here, or do you want your chicken to go?” 

I took a quick glance around.  “To go, please.” 

She took my money and told me it would be a few minutes.  “You can wait outside if you want.  I can bring it to you.”  Was I that blatantly uncomfortable? 

“I’m okay,” I said.  Even though I wasn’t.  “I’ll just wait here,” and stood at the end of the counter.

“Suit yourself,” she said. 

It was very disconcerting to feel as though I didn’t belong. It was not a fearful feeling; oddly, it felt more like shame. When my order was ready, I left and walked in the direction I had come. I soon realized how lost I was. I asked a man who was mowing his lawn with a push mower how to get to Kmart, the closest landmark I could think of near our apartment complex.  His bare back was sunburned and he was alarmingly flushed and sweaty. He told me the way and I headed in that direction. Triggered by the day’s events, I thought about Robin, the one black student at my high school.  I hadn’t thought of him in years.  I wondered how out of place he must have felt each and every day, walking into a school where no one looked like him.  By virtue of his singularity, he was a celebrity of sorts, a luminary among us.  I don’t recall anyone being unkind, but what do I know about his experience? 

When I got home, I unwrapped the chicken and told Ron about my afternoon walk, easing into the part about where I had bought the chicken.  His reaction after taking a bite out of a drumstick was to scold me.

“First, you shouldn’t take off walking just anywhere,” he warned, waving the drumstick.  “Second, you’re lucky it worked out the way it did.”  He had grown up in the south, where crossing color lines was perilous for a black person in a white neighborhood or for a white person in a black neighborhood. A hangover of these social norms dictated that I had gone to the wrong part of town.

We chose not to move to Idaho.  It was not because of our experience at the homestyle restaurant. My decision was made when I slipped on ice and performed a triple axle before landing on my butt in the parking lot. After exploring several options out of state, we stayed in California, making our forever home in San Diego.  There is diversity here, differences are embraced for the most part, and there is no ice on the ground. 

Sometimes I think about my experiences in Idaho and Georgia and the circumstances that helped to enlighten me. I think about which was the more uncomfortable, the unsettling feeling of zero diversity, or the startling sense of isolation in a room full of people.  I can’t say.  I think about whether I’ve grown enough in my social consciousness over the years.   I think about Robin from High School and hope he’s doing well.  I think about that fried chicken on that hot day in that unfamiliar neighborhood.  It was unbelievably good.

Footnote: I refer to people as “black” rather than “African American” in this post because a former coworker of mine, who refers to herself as a Black American, pointed out to me, “African American is not inclusive. My parents are from Jamaica. Not all black people hail from Africa.”