It Happened One Summer

It was the last summer I would be living with my family, in the far south side of Chicago.

It seemed like one minute I was living in a large White segregated middle-and-working class community. The next, I was working in the ‘Speakeasy’, a lounge-club dive in the nightclub section near downtown. That whole area was packed with people of all types, races, and ethnicities.

In 1966 I was 18 and had never gone to school with a person of color or met anyone with a different skin tone than me—unless it was the olive-skinned Italians living several blocks away. Diversity was not on my radar or anyone else’s around me. My family did not talk about racial bias and I never knew about it then.

All that changed, as soon as I started working at the Speakeasy, with its house blues band and Black go-go dancers. I was underage, 3 years from legal in Chicago, and had a fake i.d.

I was working as a cocktail waitress, in an emergence of new experiences, including meeting all sorts of people from outside of my limited orbit. Soon I got to know the go-go dancers and tried to learn their sensual spellbinding moves. We made an agreement: when I didn’t have to serve a customer, I could take their place and dance to the band’s music instead of them. They were relieved and I was fulfilled.

One night when the house was packed, the band played a cover of "Hold On, I'm A-Comin", with a great beat to dance to. I had just finished serving cocktails to a large table of women. I jumped up on stage to dance my heart out and shake my booty to the groove. The women were standing, clapping, yelling, and throwing the biggest tips my way that I had ever seen—Big Spenders! I was excited when they beckoned me over. One of the women said they really enjoyed how I danced, and they would like me to join them at a party they alone were having off-premises. Holy crap, I thought, they must be lesbians! I was taken aback, blushed and politely declined their offer.

I saw our house blues musicians every night and got to know them. This led to them inviting me to after-hour parties, where we heard other blues musicians in nearby clubs, starting around 4 a.m. I heard the renowned group ‘Sam and Dave’ that way, besides gifted local blues bands. The connection between Mississippi Delta blues to electrified Chicago blues was alive and well, and I was a fan!

I became comfortable with being one of the few White people in this after-hours scene. I dated a Black musician a few times. One of our dates was to his friend’s apartment in the gritty south side, where we smoked pot and talked with about ten others. I was the only White person and one of the few women there. Later I wondered at my having no fear in the situations I found myself in, even though I had quickly gained street smarts and intuitive antennae. Besides, when you’re on an exciting and joyful adventure, who or what is there to be afraid of?

At the end of summer I quit my job, ready to drive to Los Angeles to be a freshman at the University of Southern California (USC). Only a small number of people of color were students, and the majority were athletes. I didn’t run in their elite circles so my exposure was limited, just brief conversations in my classes. I met and got to know Middle Easterners though and dated Nass for a year. I was taken aback by the extremely conservative outlook of many of the mostly rich, privileged White students I met. They looked at me like I was from another planet. It dawned on me: I was their diversity, and I think they were mine too!

My roommate, Mary Kay, was polite and pleasant, but I could hardly have been paired with anyone more different than me. Her father was a Rear Admiral in the Navy, and her brother was a Green Beret in Viet Nam. I was against the War. And she didn’t like to dance or go out much. We didn’t have a clue how to connect--until we took the time to talk about everything under the sun and really listen. We became friends after all.

These experiences made me confident that I would be meeting and enjoying a variety of new people as my life continued. Writer Anais Nin captured my feelings from that Summer of ‘66 when I saw her quote years later:

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”