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South Street

The sign over the
white porcelain water fountain
read `COLORED.`
Next to it was a new,
stainless steel water fountain.
The sign read `WHITE.`
I knew immediately
I was drinking
out of the colored fountain,
the water was warm you see,
colored fountains had warm water.
How did I know that
without reading the sign?
Just an assumption maybe,
an uneducated guess,
something you didn't learn in school
but were taught every day
by professionals in the field.

Mordy Epstein, George Tom, and Clem Cheetum
quickly let me know of my error
in loud frantic whispers,
`you're drinking out of the nigger's fountain! `
I remember clearly
what flashed through my 12 year old mind,
that moment so long ago,
in Woolworths five and ten cent store,
in Vicksburg Mississippi,
in 1962.

1318 South Street
was our address,
on the edge of black town,
only a hedge, a hill,
and the color of our skin
separating us
from the tin roof shanties
of the poor black folks
who were our neighbors.

My mama would say,
`those poor Negroes, I wonder
if they get enough to eat, `
to which my father would reply,
`Well, why don't you invite them
over for dinner sometime honey,
and chuckle to himself, quite amused.

I took my time finishing my drink
from the white porcelain fountain
with the COLORED sign over it.
When I stood up and looked,
at my three friends,
they just stared at me
for the longest moment,
never mentioning it again,
just looking at me oddly sometimes,
wanting to know
but afraid to ask I guess,
afraid I might answer them
and say what everyone else was thinking,
that George Tom was a chubby little Jap kid,
Clem Cheetum, a half breed Choctaw Indian,
Mordy Epstein, a Jew boy,
and me, I lived on South Street,
on the edge of black town,
where rumor had it
my mama invited Negroes over
to have dinner with us,
and that her son hung out
with misfits and such,
drinking warm water
from colored fountains.

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