What Last Night Means to Me

After watching the world-wide outpouring of joy and excitement, I felt like I was part of something bigger… something bigger than just an election in a foreign country (our neighbour to the south), but maybe something about hope, the possible and “living” dreams.

I decided that I should jot down my feelings so that many years from now I can look back…

In Modern history we have always had those pivotal moments where monumental change has occurred. Other Generations had surprise harbour attacks, the assignation of presidents, Henderson’s goal in 72. I am very grateful to have lived thru a few moments myself, that have shaped my generation such as: the tearing down of a wall, the death of a pope, the attack on the big apple… and last night, when America, a nation who’s people I had lost a lot of respect for over the past eight years, elected the face of the possible: a Black man to it’s highest office.

Growing up in small town Ontario I could never fully appreciate the destructive harshness of racism. I am sure it was there, Canada certainly isn’t innocent in this area; however I don’t recall ever witnessing first hand systemic racism, at least not the same way I saw it while visiting the States.

I think the first time I saw how racism can blur the dreams of an individual and be the glaucoma of their vision of hope, was when my Grandfather took me on a road trip thru Middle America. We were somewhere in Kentucky and about to go to a minor league baseball game and decided to grab a bite to eat at a traditional blue collar greasy spoon. The restaurant was Crackerbarrel, and as we walked in the sign by the entrance said “Please sit yourself”.
So we took note of the place and it wasn’t very busy, an elderly couple sitting in the front portion and in the back there were a few tables that were filled with what looked like an extended family, since everyone was loud and talking to each other. It was obvious from their baseball caps, form fingers and other attire that they were going to the same baseball game we were.
My Grandpa loves to chat with the locals when we went on road trips and he saw this as a great opportunity to get to know the people, and maybe chat a bit about the game we were going to.
Within seconds of sitting down we had befriended the people sitting in the back, when they found out we were from Canada, they invited us to bring our table to be flush with theirs. As we got talking to them, I was struck with how open and inviting they were. We talked about how their cousin was playing in the game we were going to see and how this is a family tradition for them before each game. They were genuinely curious about Ontario and to my surprise knew a lot about our Nation’s history, more than I would give most Americans credit for. They told us stories about how they had relatives who used the Underground Railway to escape the South and eventually settled in Canada.

We had been sitting for a while before our waitress came to give us menus. She said she had not seen us come in and asked if we were with the family we were now sitting with. I said no but that we had just met them.

The waitress then asked if we would be more comfortable moving to another table that might be more suited for two people. My grandfather politely declined and asked to see the Breakfast menu, as while on road trips we eat ‘breaky’ 3 times a day. It’s a Stewart thing.

She handed us the menus and again asked if we didn’t want to move. And again we politely declined and she walked away.
She returned a moment latter with our coffees and I could see she was very uncomfortable speaking to us.
In a very hushed voiced she said she had set up a very nice table on the other side of the restaurant.
We looked over to the other side of the restaurant which was now empty as the elderly couple were now settling their bill at the cashier. Now my grandpa said in a very firm voice that we were “Just Fine” where we were seated and that we wanted to have two breakfast specials.
She looked at us as if we were really hurting her feelings, but I just couldn’t understand what was wrong with her.
The family we were sitting with were silent when she was at our table and then resumed talking cheerily the moment she left. I must say I was really enjoying our conversation with our new American friends until we were very rudely interrupted by a middle aged man with the worst comb-over.
He was obviously the manager of the Cracker Barrel as it said so on his Smiling Faced Name tag. He started to really creep me out as he just stood there for a few seconds staring at us before he said anything.

Finally he said “Is there a problem here?”

And Grandpa said “No problem here, we are just waiting for our meals”

And finally it dawned on me what was going on. He asked us the same question the waitress had asked us and our response was the same.. We did not want to move to the other side of the restaurant.

As he was standing there asking us to move tables, I noticed that the restaurant was now starting to get more people walking in… and the people without any prompting were either walking to the back of the restaurant or to the front.

The white patrons went to the front and the black patrons were sitting in our section.

What struck me most was not that the waitress or the manager was asking us to move to the white section of the restaurant but that the Black families were silent the entire time. If I had been them I would have said something, I would have thrown a fit, I would have caused a scene… but for them this was their reality, this was what they lived with everyday.

~~~ After last night’s election I can really appreciate just how important this is in the history of our southern neighbour. I hope that the family I met that evening will now know a new reality and a new possible.