Haystacks Calhoun

Midsummer 1963; my family moved from Tampa, Florida to Tallahassee, located  250 miles up in the panhandle. Besides being the state capitol, Tally was also home to Florida State University, one of the bigger colleges in the South.

Folks in Tampa told my parents, the pandhandle was almost Georgia. Be careful. North Florida didn't cotten no free spirit bullshit, nor God forbid, any casual fraternizations with "Negroes". ( I will refrain from using the popular racial slur that passed for normal at the time) Blacks were still under White Man's thumb in Florida, especially in the Panhandle. Black folk knew their place in the Pandhandle. Jim Crow ruled.

At age 11, my Civil Rights education began.

Central Florida was full of run of the mill Crackers who did not go out of their way to show their racist tendencies. I am sure Tampa was segregated, but not to the degree, the citiy of Tallahassee went to. Head down to South Florida and the Keys, it was a party every day. No one seemed to care about anything but having a good time. Northern Florida was definitely a different state of mind than further south.

In Tallahassee, everything was segregated. Restaurants, buses, movie theaters, drinking fountains, and most motels and hotels posted signs clearly defining who could use this or that, eat there, or which end of the bus they could sit. 

An exception was the Travel Lodge my father had been hired to manage. It was integrated. I think it may have been because visiting black educators and atheletes needed somewhere to stay while they visited or played at FSU. Travel Lodge bordered the college. The racists could ignore one motel I guess. Of course this is only conjection on my part.

A lot of life changing events occurred during my time in Tallahassee. Probably, the most transforming for me was my exposure to the burgeoning Civil Rights movement that was playing out right in front of me.

Along with the brutal eye opening blatant racism, I also saw moments that showed promises of what might be coming. Civil Rights people were showing up more and more. there was a change coming. Everyone knew it, even I did.

I cannot remember the name of the elementary school I attended as a 6th grader. I remember my teacher, Mrs. Savage. She is one of the teachers I remember the best. She was awesome. 

The school was affiliated with the education department at FSU. Student teachers learned the basics at my school.They had all the latest cool educating stuff. New buildings, TV's in every class and they used those TV's regularly. I remember watching the aftermath of JFK's assasination on those TVs. I watched live as Jack Ruby jumped in front of the TV camera and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach. ....... That school was one of my favorites of the 12 schools I attended before I went to college.

I struck up a friendship the first week. We'll call him Jake. Jakes parents were post grad students at the unuversity. They lived in a compound of apartments owned by FSU. It was early to mid September when Jake invited me over to his place. We would hang out, eat lunch and later in the afternoon, his mom or dad would drive me back to the Travel Lodge.

Cool. My mom hauled me out the next mornig to his apartment complex. Jake and I did shit 6th grade boys do. I don't really remember those details. Just a normal get to know ya friend visit I guess.Their apartment was tiny, tiny, tiny. His mom set up a couple of card tables and wooden folding chairs outside andserved lunch for everyone. She called us to eat.

What I remember with intense clarity is was what happened next.

As I sat down on the folding wooden chair, it collapsed. Instinct kicked in and I tried to catch myself. Instead, the collapsing scissor action of the wooden chair sliced off a sizable chunk of the 3rd finger on my right hand. I remember screaming, falling and then I am not sure how long before Jake's mom came out of the apartment building. She was carrying something. She dropped it when we looked at each other.

From that point until I found some focus in the Emergency Room, everything was a blur. My next clear thoughts were of sitting in an overcrowded waiting room, my mom is sitting next to me and the biggest man in the world walks through the crowd waiting there. He was literally the biggest man I had ever seen in person. He was wearing bib overalls and he had a straw hat on. 

As he walked through, he would stop and chat some with the folks. Everyone seemed to know who he was. Mom and I were clueless until someone next my mom identified him as "Haystacks Calhoun", national celebrity in the pro wrestling world at the time.The longer he was there, more people recognized him. Someone loudly aasked how come he was at the hospital. He laughed and sad something like, "Oh, the ole lady's having our baby." 

The waiting room was a divided space. Blacks had their own section. Haystacks walked right into their space and started yukking it up with them also. It was not until years later that I began to understand what I had experienced in Tally the year and a half I lived there. I saw so much hatred and yet, what really stands out, were those few moments in the ER waiting room watching the biggest man in the world in my eyes cross a line no white man was supposed to cross.

Keep it 'tween the ditches ..............................

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I often ponder my musical choices for my posts longer than most folks would consider sane. Perhaps I do. I guess it's part of the pleasure I add to writing posts. It's the search for music I have never known, the end result, just an expansion of my love of music.It has become part of the show. And I'll ponder and taste music as long as it takes until I finally pick a tune. Sometimes I do have a song in mind before I begin to write. Sometimes I have to check 20 songs or more before I find one I like.

Here is a song that has no real connection to my post. A new song from an artist I have never heard of. Gotye & Kimbra  are from New Zealand. I am not sure what genre I would call this tune. Doesn't matter to me. I really like this tune.

Tunrned up to WOW or turned down to LOW.... works either way. Definitely a toe tapper. Enjoy "Somebody that I used to know".