{"id":4,"date":"2015-09-01T15:11:59","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T15:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adammarton.com\/robertmarton\/?p=4"},"modified":"2015-09-01T19:44:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T19:44:20","slug":"departure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/?p=4","title":{"rendered":"Departure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Departure\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Robert J. Marton<\/strong><\/p>\n

Drive up Main Street on this snowy evening, you find it lonely and almost abandoned.<\/p>\n

It is only eight o\u2019clock, but you see mostly-darkened storefronts, a few snow-covered parked cars, and no pedestrians.<\/p>\n

Even the bus station that never closes seems abandoned.\u00a0A dim light creates shadows from unoccupied benches in the waiting area. Somewhere there must be an attendant. Maybe he\u2019s asleep in the back, but not visible at a quick glance.<\/p>\n

The jewelry store, furniture store and bank –side by side by side–are closed for the day.<\/p>\n

Even the movie theater is dark. This is a stay-at-home-and-watch-television night rather than one to venture out.<\/p>\n

Curbside petunias in large pots peek through their snowy white cover. They were just beginning to come out of their winter doldrums only to suffer the shock of another blast.<\/p>\n

This late February storm is not unusual or unexpected. But not welcome either. It was warmer last week –sunny and into the 60\u2019s one day– a teasing promise of spring. But there is lots of winter left.<\/p>\n

The snow grows in intensity.<\/p>\n

One light shines in the middle of the block.\u00a0\u00a0 Thomas Carroll sits at his desk in the Mayefield Messenger office, facing the street through large plate glass storefront windows.\u00a0 The rest of the staff \u2013such as it is\u2014has long left for home, but it is Monday night and, as he does almost every week on Monday night, Thomas toils away, writing last minute stories, editing final copy, and getting his \u2013actually his uncle\u2019s\u2014weekly paper ready for the presses.<\/p>\n

Thomas (not Tom, or Thom or Tommy) \u2013 27, journalism school grad, aspirations of doing important work, feels stuck as a reporter on his uncle\u2019s paper.\u00a0 If he waits long enough for his uncle to die, the Messenger may be his some day \u2013 enough of a carrot to keep him planted, not nearly enough to stop him from dreaming.<\/p>\n

This is a quiet place, not loud and frantic as one usually associates with a newspaper office.\u00a0 There\u2019s no printing press here \u2013 the Messenger contracts out its typesetting and printing to a shop twenty miles away.\u00a0 During a normal day, the only sounds in the office are the clicking of electric typewriter keys, ringing telephones, voices interviewing sources for news stories or taking classified advertisements over the phone, and the rustling of paper as copy is handed from reporter to editor.\u00a0 None of these sounds is heard tonight.<\/p>\n

Instead of the work he should be doing, Thomas watches the snow cover sidewalk and pavement.\u00a0 He dreams of leaving this place.\u00a0 Mayefield: named for the Maye family that used to own the mill at the end of Main Street.\u00a0 The \u201cfield\u201d in Mayefield?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 Just a suffix to make it a place name.\u00a0 Thomas is a \u201cMaye.\u201d He is a native, part of the town\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

His model as a young reporter is George Willard, the unifying presence in Sherwood Anderson\u2019s 1923 novel, Winesburg<\/i>, Ohio<\/i>.\u00a0 Like George, Thomas is acquainted with his town as few others are.\u00a0 He knows the proper and respectable citizens, many of whom make frequent appearances in the Messenger, announcing their births, graduations, engagements, marriages (but never their divorces) and eventually their deaths.\u00a0 No achievement is too small to get noted in the Messenger.\u00a0 It is all about names \u2013 get as many names as possible into the paper each week.\u00a0 People want to read about themselves, their children and their neighbors.\u00a0 Is a story really news when readers already know about it?\u00a0 Little that goes into the Messenger actually qualifies as news \u2013 in this small town, it takes only hours or days for any real news to circulate mouth by mouth.\u00a0 The weekly newspaper merely becomes the official record of what people already know.<\/p>\n

Thomas also knows the less proper residents, the townspeople who live on the outskirts in shanties and shacks, or the few who barely survive in the alleyways or on the riverbank.\u00a0 Where are they on this desolate night?\u00a0 Have they found shelter from the storm?\u00a0 As hard as he tries, he can\u2019t tell their stories in the Messenger.\u00a0 The owner and publisher, his Uncle Hyatt, is interested in two things \u2013 subscribers and advertisers.\u00a0 And the downtrodden are neither.<\/p>\n

Mayefield was a mill town during colonial days. Now a town of 10,000, it is mainly home a few farmers and commuters to the nation\u2019s capital and the bustling Atlantic port.\u00a0 The race track on the edge of town brings thousands of fans to Mayefield\u2019s perimeter, but few to the town itself \u2013except for the undesirable track workers who are responsible (or blamed) for most of Mayefield\u2019s petty crime.\u00a0 The nexus of the town is the crossing of the major north-south highway (on its way to Florida or Maine) and Main Street, which continues west to the site of the abandoned mill and the stone houses (some stately, some dilapidated) which formerly housed mill workers.<\/p>\n

The Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and Baptist churches, the mainstays of respectable worship are on Main Street. Other denominations (who are these Church of Christ people, anyway?) are relegated to outlying streets.\u00a0 Mayefield has no synagogues \u2013 the few Jews in town travel to the cities to worship.<\/p>\n

Just north of Main Street, a trickling branch of a major river flows quietly on its way to the ocean.\u00a0 To the south, seven residential streets of orderly homes are laid out in rows\u2013 homes for white families only, except two blocks on the furthermost street which has a slightly higher elevation, called the Hill, more commonly known as \u201ccolored town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Race is a topic often discussed in Mayefield these days — central to the town\u2019s identity at this time in history and to its future.\u00a0 It is 1969:\u00a0 the year after Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were shot and killed, and the year after major American cities, including those nearby, burned.\u00a0 The previous year had been a year of hatred and death.\u00a0 Will this year be different?<\/p>\n

Back to Main Street, which continues to be blanketed by snow on this evening.<\/p>\n

Thomas is supposed to be writing the obituary of Harold Long.\u00a0 Harold died last weekend on an abandoned tractor factory site outside of town.\u00a0 No one seems sure why he was even there.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t his property.\u00a0 Rumor has it Harold was looking for scrap metal or anything else he could steal and sell, something he was known to do. He was found crumbled and burned at the foot of a utility pole, his right hand and arm black and charred.\u00a0 Police surmise he had been climbing the pole and made contact with live electrical wires.\u00a0 An accident?\u00a0 Suicide?\u00a0 For the obituary in the Messenger, it\u2019s not really important.\u00a0 What matters is Harold was a Mayefield native, 63 years old, married to Mildred for 32 years, had no children, was a member of St. Andrew\u2019s Episcopal Church, and will be buried at Oak Lane cemetery on Friday.\u00a0 The Messenger doesn\u2019t care about causes, just effects.\u00a0 No opinions, no nuances.\u00a0 Report the facts (as inoffensively as possible) and move on.<\/p>\n

Thomas knew Harold his whole life.\u00a0 Writing the obituary was too depressing.\u00a0 It could wait until later.<\/p>\n

He also has sport stories to write \u2013 stories about meaningless high school basketball games and wrestling matches — where jamming in the names of as many local players as possible takes precedence over plays or scores.\u00a0 Also awaiting his attention is a report on last week\u2019s Lion\u2019s Club meeting, an announcement of an upcoming elementary school pageant, birth announcements, engagements and weddings. These and more, waiting for him to create the words that will make them unique, while sounding just like everything else he has written.<\/p>\n

These too will have to wait.<\/p>\n

He becomes mesmerized by the falling snow.\u00a0\u00a0 What a beautiful sight, he thinks, watching the cascading flakes in the streetlight.\u00a0 But it is disconcerting to think about snow or winter.\u00a0 The florist shop across the street just put out a spring and Easter window display.<\/p>\n

In a little over a month it will be Easter, an early Easter this year.<\/p>\n

It is way too soon to think about Easter, especially after last year.<\/p>\n

Could it have really been a year?<\/p>\n

Mayefield has had a traditional Easter parade for generations. Easter morning was a time for church services, including a nondenominational sunrise service on the river bank, family breakfasts and Easter egg hunts.\u00a0 But the afternoon belonged to the parade: Young and old alike promenaded up Main Street in their Easter finery; the women and girls in colorful dresses and hats (everyone wore hats \u2013 the traditional Easter bonnet), either bought or made for the occasion.\u00a0 Men and boys were less gaily attired, but dressed up just the same.<\/p>\n

Families paraded together.\u00a0 Lovers \u2013young and not so young\u2014walked side by side.\u00a0 All to be seen and admired (at least they thought so) by the spectators on the crowded sidewalks.<\/p>\n

So many people participated in the parade, Thomas often wondered how there was anyone left to watch.\u00a0 How does someone make that decision \u2013 be in the parade or watch the parade?<\/p>\n

Each Easter afternoon, Main Street was closed to car traffic as the colorful throng assembled in front of the movie theater beginning at 12:30.\u00a0 At one o\u2019clock, the march began up four blocks to Light\u2019s department store, where selected town officials and dignitaries sat in judgment, deciding who was the best dressed family (the big prize and always controversial), as well as best dressed woman, man, girl, boy and \u2013in years past\u2014even pets.\u00a0 Pets were banned starting in 1962 when the mayor\u2019s daughter stepped in the gooey aftermath of a cocker spaniel who showed a lack of parade etiquette by depositing a big one right in the middle of the merry marchers.<\/p>\n

There were prizes for the most original and most colorful outfits, but these prizes were considered less desirable, almost clownish.\u00a0 The respectable townspeople wanted to be stylish, fashionable and subdued, never garish or \u201ccolorful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich or poor, it didn\u2019t really matter.\u00a0 On Easter, they all shared the same experience, although it was obvious from the quality of their outfits who could afford the finest clothes.\u00a0 And it\u2019s no wonder the moneyed folks usually won the prizes.<\/p>\n

Every year, a rag-tag band, with a vocalist, played:<\/p>\n

In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it
\nYou’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade<\/i><\/p>\n


\n<\/i>The Mayefield Easter Parade was a celebration \u2013 a celebration of town spirit, of community, of tradition.<\/p>\n

It was a celebration of white folks enjoying the company of other white folks in a safe and secure environment.<\/p>\n

For many years, it was an all-white affair.<\/p>\n

It is not that blacks (called Negroes, or colored, or worse in those days) were forbidden to participate in the Easter parade.\u00a0 They just weren\u2019t invited, and until the mid 1960\u2019s, that was enough to keep them out.\u00a0 Blacks \u2013most young people\u2014always viewed the parade from a distance, from alleyways or behind trees or in clusters separated from the white spectators, and they were usually dressed in their Easter clothes \u2013 girls in colorful dresses and white shoes and bonnets; boys in suits and pressed shirts and ties.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t attempt to parade.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1960\u2019s, some of the blacks decided they wanted a piece of the action, not only in the Easter parade but also in Mayefield life in general. There had been a sit-in at the drug store lunch counter.\u00a0 It was a fairly quiet demonstration: No shouting, no retaliation, just ten or twelve blacks who requested service, were refused, and then sat down on the floor so no one else could be served.\u00a0 The police came, and stood around and watched and joked with bystanders.\u00a0 After about an hour, the demonstrators got bored and left. Thomas wrote a story on the incident, but his uncle wouldn\u2019t publish it.\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s news about a bunch of niggers lying around?\u201d\u00a0 Uncle Hyatt just laughed and tore up Thomas\u2019s copy.\u00a0 \u201cWe can go up to the Hill and see that any time.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few blacks strutted along side the paraders on Easter in 1966, not really part of the parade but close enough to make the white ladies in their pretty dresses uncomfortable.\u00a0 The mayor told the police to move them along, which they did without much of an incident.\u00a0 There was no violence or arrests.<\/p>\n

The band played:<\/p>\n

I’ll be all in clover and when they look you over
\nI’ll be the proudest fellow in the Easter parade<\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The same thing happened the following year: just more blacks marching along and even more on the sidewalks \u2013intermingling with the white spectators.\u00a0 There was some pushing and shoving when the police tried to disperse them.\u00a0 A small group of white teenage boys tried to \u201chelp\u201d the police by punching and kicking some black kids, who had the audacity to punch and kick back. Again, Thomas wrote an article, again Hyatt rejected it.\u00a0 \u201cWrite about the Easter Parade, damnit,\u201d Hyatt boomed, \u201cnot about the racial stuff.\u00a0 Nobody wants to read that crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not going to happen again.\u201d\u00a0 Mayor Moore was adamant.\u00a0 One of the largest crowds ever attended the town council meeting a month prior to Easter in 1968.\u00a0 The mayor huffed and puffed:\u00a0 \u201cUndesirables will not ruin our town.\u00a0 We will stop them before they start making trouble. The good colored people in the Hill don\u2019t want trouble.\u00a0 They understand how to get along.\u00a0 They can have their own parade.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have to ruin ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the decision was made.\u00a0 Mayefield would have two Easter parades, one on Main Street and one on Eighth Street on the Hill.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t officially stated one was for whites and the other for blacks, but everyone understood it.<\/p>\n

But most blacks didn\u2019t want their own parade.\u00a0 Most of them didn\u2019t want to waste their time marching around in fancy clothes at all.\u00a0 Those who were interested in the parade were doing so under the guise of civil rights \u2013 separate but equal did not accomplish their goals.\u00a0 So, the Hill parade didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

As Easter approached, the town council was uneasy that its solution was not going to keep blacks off the Main Street parade route.\u00a0 So, more preparations were made. Police leaves were cancelled for Sunday, which meant all eight officers would be in uniform and on duty.\u00a0 The state police were notified and would also be on patrol.<\/p>\n

But a momentum was building that was not going to be halted by a few extra policemen or by the stubbornness of the status quo.\u00a0 It was inevitable blacks and whites were going to exist together eventually, like it or not, and many of the black citizens of Mayefield realized it even if few of the whites did.\u00a0\u00a0 To make it happen took courage, and in the case of the Mayefield Easter Parade, it took the courage of one person, a young black man named Leroy Matthews, who grew that day from being a \u201cgood boy\u201d to become a criminal in his hometown as well as the man he professed to be.<\/p>\n

Last September, Leroy Matthews had gone away to state college in an urban part of the state. An enthusiastic, earnest young man, he was one of the few from Hill community to advance to college after graduation.\u00a0 At Mayefield High, he was among the top students in his class and winner of the Citizenship Award.\u00a0 He was known as \u201ca good boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he visited home Easter weekend, he had earned eight months of higher education and a new, bold attitude which said, \u201cI am a man.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was to return to college the day after Easter, but that return trip was delayed.<\/p>\n

Leroy spent Sunday night and part of the following week in the Mayefield town jail, charged with disorderly conduct (the police wanted to charge him with inciting a riot, but they couldn\u2019t justify it based on minor cuts and bruises, a smashed window and a few dented automobiles.)<\/p>\n

Mainly, Leroy was guilty of ruining the Easter Parade for the fine white people of Mayefield.<\/p>\n

On the warm Saturday evening before Easter, Leroy and other young people of the Hill took up their usual place on a corner of Eighth Street across from the St. James United Methodist Church \u2013 the \u201ccolored\u201d Methodist church, not to be confused with the First United Methodist on Main Street.\u00a0 This was their hangout, a place to see and be seen, to smoke cigarettes, and drink beer when they could find someone to buy it for them, to shoot some baskets at the playground next door.\u00a0\u00a0 But this evening was not about smoking or drinking or playing games.\u00a0 Leroy set into motion the plan he brought home with him from college \u2013 march boldly right into the parade: ignore the hostile stares, the police, the rednecks looking to fight some coloreds.<\/p>\n

In college, Leroy had read both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.\u00a0 This was not a time for the pacifist MLK approach.\u00a0 This was a time for Malcolm, whom he quoted to his young friends on the street corner:<\/p>\n

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”<\/p>\n

Leroy delivered this message on the same street corner the next morning as the families of the Hill arrived at church for Easter services.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a man, you take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later that morning as parade preparations were being made on Main Street, several dozen blacks, of all ages, assembled for their own march \u2013 a march of unity up Eighth Street to Main, then down the six blocks to join the white Easter paraders.<\/p>\n

Thomas watched the blacks walk noisily past the Messenger office.\u00a0 With camera and notebook in hand, he followed the crowd, observing the scene closely as nervous bystanders and police stared in silence.<\/p>\n

He began to compose his news article even before Leroy and friends joined the official parade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Easter Parade Riot\u201d was the banner headline he composed, which later was modified by his uncle to a tamer, one-column \u201cYouths Disturb Parade.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cYouths\u201d being code for \u201cblack kids,\u201d as if it were only young people who decided they deserved equal rights on that Easter Sunday.\u00a0 Blacks of all ages turned out. There were black children and teenagers; families, and extended families with grandmothers and aunts and cousins.<\/p>\n

Black children ran around, singing, screaming, dancing, pushing, shoving and breaking up the orderliness of lines \u2013 matching stride-for-stride the singing, screaming, dancing, pushing, and shoving of their white counterparts.<\/p>\n

So much was discussed later it seems impossible it was all over in such a short time.\u00a0 At first, the blacks politely went to the rear of the line (a symbolic gesture of peace?) but the white marchers in front of them seemed paralyzed with surprise and fear, so they pushed forward.\u00a0 They came to parade, not to stand around.\u00a0 People were pushed aside; children \u2013black and white– were knocked down. White teens shoved and black teens shoved back.<\/p>\n

A few white teenagers showed up with baseball bats.\u00a0 Were they expecting this?<\/p>\n

Bats met black heads.\u00a0 A rock flew from Leroy\u2019s black hands into a white face.\u00a0 He punched.\u00a0 He kicked.\u00a0 When a white man confronted him, Leroy threw him out of the way and shattered a store window.<\/p>\n

Women and children screamed.<\/p>\n

Chaos in black and white, tinged with the Easter colors of pink, lavender, yellow, blue, and green, as well as the red of rage and blood.<\/p>\n

Incongruously, the band played as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening:<\/p>\n

Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet
\nAnd of the girl I’m taking to the Easter parade<\/p>\n

It was over within half an hour.\u00a0 Mayefield and state police moved in with batons swinging, mainly at blacks. At one point, a few young blacks surrounded officers and shouted and threw objects at them. Two officers were taken to local doctors\u2019 offices and treated for eye and leg injuries.\u00a0 Eventually the police gained control as brawlers\u2014black and white\u2014fled the scene.\u00a0 The police wisely decided to shut down the parade and order everyone off Main Street.<\/p>\n

Five young black men, Leroy included, and one white man were arrested.\u00a0 Many more from both races could have been taken in, but those six represented the capacity of the Mayefield jail, and the state policemen were not about to litter their jail with the remnants of a small town racial incident.<\/p>\n

Leroy saw the inside of a jail for the first time in his life.\u00a0 It was small and dingy.\u00a0 He shared the cramped cell with one other black prisoner, a young man of 16 who cried and called out for his mother.\u00a0 Overall, it was a noisy and demeaning experience.<\/p>\n

Thomas did not get to write the story he really wanted to \u2013an article detailing the anger and violence he observed that Easter Sunday\u2014but his uncle had to publish some account.\u00a0 After all, a newspaper is expected to print news, no matter how unsavory or embarrassing.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t go overboard,\u201d Uncle Hyatt told him.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t want to give these coloreds credibility.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want it to look like they did something noble.\u00a0 They\u2019re thugs.\u00a0 Criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah Mencken, the Messenger\u2019s editor did not want to use any photos with the story:\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s what they<\/i> want\u201d (\u201cthey\u201d being another euphemistic, almost polite, code word).\u00a0 \u201cThey<\/i> want publicity.\u00a0 The next thing you know that Martin Luther King will be here, having his own colored parade up Main Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miss Mencken, as she insisted almost everyone call her, had been the Messenger\u2019s reporter and editor, and Hyatt\u2019s personal secretary (and lover?) since the old lawyer gained ownership of the Messenger as payment for a legal debt in the 1930\u2019s. Thomas and most other people in town called her \u201cMiss Mencken\u201d to her face but privately almost everyone referred to her as \u201cMiss Munchkin\u201d as a play on her name and a reference to her diminutive size.<\/p>\n

In the end, Thomas convinced Hyatt and Sarah they had an obligation to report the news with both words and pictures, without going overboard or aiding any political cause.\u00a0 So he wrote it straight and bland, almost as if it were an account of a Rotary Club dinner.\u00a0 The lead paragraph, which was heavily edited by Miss Munchkin, read:<\/p>\n

A melee erupted at the beginning of Mayefield\u2019s family-themed Easter parade on Sunday afternoon, with several police agencies responding to break up fights between unruly teens. The violence came amid an increased police presence after minor incidents in past years and the rejection of a separate parade in the Mayefield Hill community.<\/p>\n

The story went on to describe the property damage and personal injuries. The racial aspect of the incident was downplayed, although it couldn\u2019t be ignored:<\/p>\n

Six people were arrested, mostly teenagers, and charged with disorderly conduct. Authorities determined late yesterday that several of those involved were affiliated with radical outside groups.<\/p>\n

Thomas never did find out who the \u201coutside groups\u201d were, but the police insisted they had evidence to that effect.<\/p>\n

The police identified all six arrested, but the focus was on Leroy.\u00a0 Was he considered the outside influence by virtue of attending college?\u00a0 There was much disappointment in his behavior.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I could take the Citizenship Award away from him,\u201d decried John Phelps, his former high school principal.\u00a0 \u201cHe was such a good boy. College ruined him.\u00a0 Pumped him full of hurtful ideas.\u00a0 Now look at him: in jail, has a record, he\u2019ll never amount to anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

As reported in the Messenger, town officials reacted strongly to the idea this could happen again:<\/p>\n

Officials said the violence signaled a change in the traditional town event, which they said has gradually attracted a different crowd over the years. <\/i><\/p>\n

Robert B. Williams, a spokesman for the Mayefield Police Department, said organizers must consider increased security measures next year, such as entry points where searches are conducted.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cOfficials planning these events must realize this is not the Mayefield of 1940s and 1950s,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThere is a new criminal element in the town.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>The uproar and indignation lasted for several weeks.\u00a0 Young white men, with baseball bats and probably other more-lethal weapons, drove frequently through the Hill.\u00a0 Black teens seldom congregated at the corner by the church, and when they did, they kept a watchful eye for pick-up trucks.\u00a0 Rumors of continued violence were widespread, but the police did not report any new incidents.\u00a0 More than anything else, Mayefield became a town of smoldering anxiety.<\/p>\n

The five young black men arrested were charged with disorderly conduct and released on Tuesday morning after a short hearing at the courthouse.\u00a0 Leroy was fined $500, which was paid by someone \u2013he never did find out by whom.\u00a0 After a short visit home, during which his mother and grandmother cried, his father warned him to stay out of trouble in the future, and his younger brother and friends continually high-fived him, he took the bus back to college.\u00a0 He was a changed person in several ways: in some respects he was a now a man, a man with conviction and a man with a conviction.<\/p>\n

The racial tensions carried over through the spring and into summer. There were some minor demonstrations at the town swimming pool that summer.\u00a0 A few blacks tried to gain admission, were rejected, demonstrated at the gates, and were pretty much ignored by the white swimmers walking past them.\u00a0 In an attempt to avoid further demonstrations, the town agreed to integrate the pool every Monday.\u00a0 Of course, only blacks showed up to swim on \u201cBlack Mondays,\u201d and the town drained and cleaned the pool every Monday night for the white swimmers who returned on Tuesdays. It was two more years before the pool became fully integrated.<\/p>\n

The Messenger did not run a story on the partial integration of the town pool that summer.<\/p>\n

As he considers all of this on this snowy evening, Thomas is again reminded Easter is only a few weeks away.\u00a0 There has been little talk about this year\u2019s parade. If the parade committee has met, it hasn\u2019t called in its usual \u201cnews\u201d to the Messenger.\u00a0 Thomas suspects Easter parades may be a thing of the past in Mayefield.\u00a0 Maybe that is the best way to beat integration \u2013 blacks can\u2019t participate in events which don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

Thomas feels depressed again just thinking about his lost opportunity \u2013the Messenger\u2019s lost opportunity- to fully chronicle a significant event.\u00a0 The fight for equal rights is an important story, and he could be reporting from the battle lines.\u00a0 An Easter parade by itself isn\u2019t very significant, but as a metaphor for inclusion in the American Dream, it becomes a part of history.\u00a0 And the story of Leroy Matthews \u2013local boy who fought for his manhood on hometown streets\u2014is one Thomas encounters only rarely.\u00a0 But the Easter parade riot and Leroy\u2019s hour of leadership passed almost as nonevents.\u00a0 If there is news and no one prints or reads it, does it really happen?<\/p>\n

Again, Thomas knows he has to leave Mayefield to truly become a man.\u00a0 Getting out is his dream.\u00a0 Like his hero George Willard, departure is his goal.\u00a0 \u201cDeparture\u201d is the name of the final story in Winesburg<\/i>, Ohio<\/i>, in which George finally leaves town to strike out on his own.\u00a0 But Thomas lacks the energy to leave. The here and now cements him to this place.<\/p>\n

He will go, he knows.\u00a0 But not now.\u00a0 Not this week.\u00a0 Not this night.<\/p>\n

He has much work to do.\u00a0 There are still many stories to write for this week\u2019s issue, but they will have to wait until tomorrow.<\/p>\n

The snow continues to fall.<\/p>\n

The street is empty.<\/p>\n

The only footprints miring the beauty of the night are Thomas\u2019 as he slowly walks home.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Robert J. Marton)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Departure\u00a0 by Robert J. Marton Drive up Main Street on this snowy evening, you find it lonely and almost abandoned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.robertmarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}