The purple handprint

The Purple Handprint 

      My guess is that it was 1958 or Fall of 1959 when my Dad's forced march toward manhood decreed myself and the Knowltons (John and Paul) would take the old Yellow Los Angeles Railway streetcar from the Loop in Huntington Park and make a transfer at Slauson, then to Vernon where we could walk over to my Dad's offce at Figueroa and Santa Barbara. We took the "J" car to the "V" car and trembling in fear of getting mugged we would half run, half walk over to the Coliseum about an hour before kickoff. The stories of selling programs are many and can be told over other posts but this one holds the social truths of that time in LA history. South Gate was a redlined city and black people were not allowed to buy property there despite the fact that they lived and worked just across  Alameda which was the color line for southeast LA. The truth is that there was an inordinate fear of blacks in my experiences since we had hardly ever seen a person with dark skin. My Dad had a kind of friend named Rudy Washington who worked at J.M. Taylor Oldsmobile with him and then was hired to run my Dad's parking lot. Rudy was a perfect example of the ills of racism since he had all the qualities of good man but was never able to escape the stereotype of the lazy, criminal negro looking to victimize innocent white folks. Rudy was a handsome and strong dude who  played catcher in the Metro leagues around LA when he wasn't working at his two full-time jobs. He came to our house when Christine was little and she was fascinated by his dark skin, calling him a chocolate drop. Even in the undercurrent of racism Rudy loved my Dad and named his first son Rudolph Valentino Creason Washington. Despite the fact we dumb little suburban kids had no idea what we were talking about we used words like "beaner," "kike," "Jap," "Chink" and even "dago" without any idea who these cartoon like figures looked like in the flesh. So, on this warm Fall day when we got off the streetcar at Vernon I happened to have bought a coca cola at the Loop and gulped it to the point I had a "side ache" which was kid lingo for gas. We had not travelled a block when a group of black teenagers spotted these three white lambs out in the open, ready for fleecing. The four approached us, surrounded their prey and asked for money which we were short of being like eleven years old. It became obvious we were going to get roughed up and Johnny managed to dart between two of the teens and  shout a racial slur that somehow left me in the center of the group. Whack! I was slapped in the face hard but being so filled with adrenalin I bolted down the street with Johnny blocks ahead and Paul escaped also. The black teens, seeing no chance of making any score just carried on as I raced toward Santa Barbara and the safety of the office forgetting the side ache. It was precisely at that time that my Dad was making a sale to one of his best customers, a well-to-do black veteranarian named Doctor Lapesarde when Johnny burst in the door and shouted the (N-words) got Glen! My Dad was dumbfounded but soon saw me pitifully shuffling toward the door with the purple imprints of a slap on my cheek. Looking back I could have been beaten badly or stabbed or shot as is done now but I had a sore spot on my face for the weekend. Johnny compounde his gaffe by shouting a similar racist decription to some kids where the program sellers gathered. The sellers, who were about 90% black. For some reason a very nice young black kid who probably went on to law school protected us from a real beating. His name was Washington and he was the first person to increase race relations in my life.