Say What?

I only remember hearing the word "cock" to mean "pussy" once.  It was in the army and the guy was a White Southerner.  He seemed surprised when the other guys told him that it made him sound like he was gay, and I don't think he used it very much after that.  I have heard that the lyrics to rap music were pretty trashy.  I never could understand them myself, but then again I never tried to.  There is nothing about rap that ever interested me, but then I was never crazy about most rock music either.

I seem to remember discussing this before but, briefly, the army was decisively more integrated than civilian life back in those days.  The White Southerners were not happy about that, but they never said anything in public, just grumbled about it among themselves.  Looking back on it, though, I don't remember ever seeing any of my Black comrades down town.  They had their own place to go, and the local girls, who were all White, would meet them there.  You never saw a Black guy and White girl walking down the street holding hands or anything like that.  I'm guessing that the Blacks represented less than 10% of us when I first arrived in Berlin but, as I said, their numbers increased to almost 50% before I left. I had the feeling that I was getting out of there just in time, and I seem to remember hearing that there was indeed some trouble after I left.  Of course there was some trouble like that in a lot of places in those days.

I only knew my Black friend Henry during the summer of '73, which was the last year I tried bear hunting with dogs.  The bear season was short, and I spent all summer trying to get my dogs in shape for it.  We were allowed to chase bears with dogs in the off season, we just weren't allowed to shoot them.  Henry lived way off in the swamp, and he had some problem bears hanging around that had lost their fear of humans.  A mutual acquaintance put us in touch with each other.  I told Henry that I couldn't shoot the bears for him, but that putting my dogs on them might teach them some respect.  My dogs were well trained by the time it was shooting season, but so were the bears, and I never did shoot one.  Henry had agreed to set up an ambush where the bears usually crossed the road when being chased, but he never showed up.  Henry didn't have a telephone, but I learned from a friend of his that he wasn't feeling good that morning, and that he went to the hospital shortly thereafter.  I never did see him again, I think he either died or went Down Below to be with his relatives.  Henry and I never talked about race, just about bears and war stories.  He was a veteran of World War I, so he was no spring chicken by the time I met him.

I made that comment about the North Side last night to be a smart aleck, but then I got to thinking, "What do they say about the North Side?"  What I came up with was that the North Side had a reputation of being kind of fancy-pantsy, while the South Side was thought of as being kind of Polacky.  Although the Loop straddles both sides, In think it should be included with the North Side for this purpose.  In my part of the country, it's the waterfront property that is fancy-pantsy while everything else is Polacky.  Fancy-pantsy people are bound to get along better with other fancy-pantsy people than they do with Polacky people, and vice-versa, no matter what race they are.  Don't you think?