Quote O' Teh Day

"I tell people I've been working on the Obama campaign since 1932."
Man being interviewed about the significance of the new president on today's All Things Considered.
It set off a flood of memory for me, and I guess I've been working on the Obama campaign since 1950, the year I was shocked to learn that my father would not allow my best friend Diane Garnett to come to my sixth birthday party. My mother had not told me why I could not go to hers earlier, but I guess she finally decided I should know the truth. (I've been working on the Hillary Clinton campaign since 1973. There's nothing like being home alone with a 2-year-old to turn you into a radical feminist.)
We lived on Henry Street in Grand Rapids, Michigan and it was divided racially by Wealthy Street, a busy arterial. The Henry Street School was on the black side and I was one of a handful of white kids in kindergarten and first grade there. Diane was a fabulous artist and I tried to copy what she drew, but I wasn't any good and my mother also told me that truth.
One summer day a black man who worked at the corner gas station came walking up our street and Mrs. Fitzpatrick ran out of her house and chased him away, telling him he should never walk in our neighborhood of rundown rentals again. Heh.
My partner remembers his family's rather straightforward relationships with black neighbors and friends and coworkers that dated back to their origins in the rural area of Truman, Arkansas, home of the Scottsborough Boys scandal/lynching (?). They hunted and fished together and big and small gatherings always included black families and their children. It's amazing, really. We speculated that this was a community in the true sense of the word, interdependent, especially during the Depression.
I believe my dad's bigotry was the product of both his environment and his own inner sense of, not privilege, but inadequacy, which had to be put off onto others for him to bear the burden of it. He hated Spics, Wops, Kikes and Niggers, Hollanders (Dutch) and Ayrabs equally. When he came to Seattle to live, the Marine Corps veteran of WWII South Pacific horrors, demanded to know where all the Japs came from.
I also believe that deep below the surface my father was a loving man scarred by early alcohol abuse, as well as his brothers'.
BTW, KPLU disc jockey this afternoon noted after playing Etta James' classic The Jealous Kind that Beonce, who played James in the movie Cadillac something (Studios) may have sung in the movie. For sure, she's singing James' "At Last, My Love Has Come Along" at the inauguration in which Barack and Michelle will have the first dance. Another classic. It was suggested that it would be great if James were there for that, too, but who knows what shape she's in.
Calm down, I'm looking for the YouTube, I'm looking. And Billie is singing "I've been down so long that down don't worry me."
Thank God I'm an American. I'm proud, yes, sentimental and silly and unserious as that may be. It's just that my pride and feelings are based on differences as well as similarities, it's just more fun, more exciting, broadening. And I've only had one drink.
Stream of consciousness, I'd rather drink muddy water and sleep in a hollow log than...fill in the blanks.

Okay, she's more ancient than I am, but you've heard this a thousand times and it always gave you the chills.