STUCK IN BOONE HALL

I’m not writing autobiography. It’s all subject to change. …Whatever seems to suit the work best, that’s the direction I’ll go in.
—Raymond Carver

#1 Prison/Work
The young black gangbangers thought I had more in common with the older white gentleman, a pathological liar who claimed that he drove the Zamboni for the Detroit Red Wings Organization, but when he hung back after class and made some derogatory remarks about African Americans, thinking a “white-bonding” session would earn him special privileges, I said, "You sir, no matter what color you are, are one sorry-ass excuse for a human being." He, of course, laughed it off and called me a "nigger lover."

#2 Vacation
Four weeks earlier, my wife and I left Charleston, South Carolina, traveling down U.S. Highway 17 to America’s most photographed plantation, Boone Hall. The television mini-series “North and South” had been filmed there, so it didn’t take much for her to convince me to spend the day walking along the gardens and pecan groves. She snapped a few pictures of me standing in front of a slave cabin and in the gardens. The entrance alone, a one-half mile avenue of massive, Spanish moss-draped live oaks, had made the trip worthwhile.

#3 Prison/Work
The older white gentleman knew to avoid me after making his racial comments. From that day forward, he buried his face in a book. The young black gangbangers, on the other hand, refused to do any class assignments. I tried to get their attention. I showed them the photographs of Boone Hall Plantation. "Someone who has the ability to read but chooses not to," I said, "might as well be illiterate. Is that what you want? Do you want to be a slave to your own ignorance?" They studied the photographs and made disparaging remarks about the “white honky tourists” enjoying themselves. One gangbanger even questioned whether these were the original slave cabins. "Yes," I replied. I informed him that these had been the better living quarters, a place for the house servants and the plantation’s skilled craftsmen. I told him that the field slaves had lived in clusters of small cottages elsewhere on the plantation. "See," one of them said, "even the smart ones is catering to the white man." I wanted to tell them, Don't do if for me, do it for yourself, but, for some reason, I kept quiet.