I never thought of myself as suffering from Post Traumatic Stress, but I found out differently over the Labor Day weekend.
I grew up in the South during the late 60's and 70's. The Civil Rights movement had already changed many things and attitudes. But there were still battles being fought even though the war had been won.
After spending a wonderful day traveling from Seattle to Yakima by way of Rainier National Forest. Playing tourist around Yakima for most of the day. Then taking I-90 back to Seattle, we stopped off in North Bend because I was hungry. It was there I relived one of the worst experiences of my life.
When I was little boy, about 3 years old, I lived in Tallahassee, Florida. My mother and father were divorcing and, at the time, I was living with my father. He was pursuing a graduate degree and spent a lot of time researching, studying and writing for his dissertation. It also meant that he had very little money. As such we lived in the southern part of the city. In Tallahassee, as with most other cities, that meant we lived right next to the black neighborhoods.
At the time, I had no idea what that meant or what was going on around me. What I did know was that everyone was very nice and most had very dark tans. I used to wander around and play unsupervised quite a bit. In today’s world of paranoia about our neighbors that would be unheard of. Back then it was normal. Kids went outside to play and ran back home when they were called for.
During one of the times I was out wandering the neighborhood, I strayed further than normal. It would have been at least 1/4 mile into the black neighborhoods possibly up to a mile. I remember it being several blocks and farther than I had explored before. In one of the yards I saw a tree.
I remember it being a stark tree, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me because I don’t recall what the tree looked like at all. Instead I remember how the tree smelled. I remember that it had a rope tied to the trunk and thrown over one of its branches. I remember seeing a man twisting around at the end of the rope. Swaying with the whimsy of the wind. I don’t recall his features, I know he was black and I know he wasn’t someone I recognized. I remember the smell distinctly to this day.
I didn’t know what the smell was at the time. All I knew, at the time, was that it was the worst smell I had ever come across and it still is.
It was summer, which down south means that it was close if not over 100 degrees with a humidity near 100% as well. The body was already decomposing. No one dared touch it. The whites wanted to deliver a message and the blacks got the message. I don’t know what happened to the body.
After staring at it for what I remember as an eternity, I ran home like the Devil himself was hounding me. I didn’t tell my father what I had seen. I don’t remember why. I just know that I didn’t tell anyone about it until I was an adult. Its probably because anytime I think about it, that smell returns and my heart starts racing and my emotions start cycling through a turmoil of conflicting feelings. None of the pleasant.
I am now almost 40. Will be at the end of this month. All of those feelings I had came rushing back to me Labor Day night. My wife and I were returning from a day trip to Yakima. We dream of owning some land to settle down to and were exploring the Yakima area for possibilities. On the way back, I got hungry so we pulled off of I-90 at the North Bend exit to get a Whopper at the Burger King there.
It was around 10:00 PM or so and it looked like the only option was the drive-thru. So we ordered my burger, parked in the parking lot and ate outside. It was then that I noticed the teenagers hanging around the entrance to the McDonald’s across the the street. I didn’t think much of it, I grew up in small towns on the outskirts of the city and did that when I was a teenager with my friends.
Then I heard them shouting at a car that pulled into the entrance to go to the drive-thru of the McDonald’s. I couldn’t believe my ears and asked my wife to hold the conversation we were having. When she asked why, I told her that it sounded like one of the teens shouted out "White Power" to the car.
She scoffed and said I was hearing things until the car pulled out of the drive-thru and the teen again shouted "White Power" to the car. This time I was looking at them and the group of teens had their arms extended up in the air with their hands clenched into fists. The teen shouted "White Power" again while his buddies laughed.
I stood there, all of the emotions I felt when I was a child looking at the body came flooding back. Worst of all was that stench. The god awful smell of a corpse covered in its own urine and feces. Whose last hours upon the earth spent in fear so great that it drenched him in sour sweat. All left to rot for days. A smell, no matter how hard I try to forget, that keeps coming back to me whenever I am reminded of it.
After a 5-10 minutes of watching, it became clear that the group of teens had been doing this for a while as they continued to do this to certain cars but let cars with whites by without saying a word. My wife wanted to report it to the manager at McDonald’s. I pointed out to her that it could hardly have escaped his attention.
It was at that point that they started to walk across the street to the Burger King’s parking lot. The fear that spurred me to run home when I was 3 came on full force and I urged my wife back into the car and for us to leave as quickly as possible. As we drove off, I started to cry and kept mumbling, "I thought they were dead... I thought they were dead... I thought they were dead..."