My Kind of Town

Like any other year, when the days shorten past Halloween, we leave the windows open at night in Sonora, and let cool air bounce through the house like music. (No one appreciates cool air like an Arizonan in November). Typically, we awaken to the sound of wrens in the carob tree out back or to early morning neighbors driving off to work. But this Wednesday morning was different. I had slept in, after watching election returns into the early morning, and awoke to the queer sound of easy laughter.

It was a man's laughter, maybe two men, distant and muffled. When I retrieved the paper off the driveway, the source of glee became apparent: two men with shovels landscaping about four houses down. But these were unlike any landcsapers I had ever seen before.

They were black!

I've lived on this street fifteen years and recall one working black man, who helped trade out our fridge, about six years ago. We see, on average, about one black human per year, invariably selling something pathetic that we dont want, door to door. In that same time, we encounter hundreds and hundreds of Anglo and Mexican-American laborers and blue collar service workers. So, to see two heavy black men digging up the neighbor's yard in North Phoenix was like spying an eskimo cutting our palm trees or a martian mowing the lawn. They were there all day, two amiable looking guys in their twenties, talking and laughing as they worked, as I passed them several times in the car. They were there from morning to nearly dusk - working each time I passed.

At first, I wasnt sure if this was Phoenix or Tara. But then it dawned on me that this might be a rebirth of the American Dream - at work, as it were. The emancipation of young black men, from self-defeating excuses and expectations. It's one thing to effectively secede from "The Man", but harder to opt out of American industry when "The Man" is suddenly black.

I wonder if that's a little piece of what I saw and heard on my street this morning, the day after Barack Obama made history. A couple guys who decided Tuesday night that now was their time. To take a chance in this new world, a bold chance on themselves, and shed their bonds of racial fatalism. For whatever reason they found themselves on "my" side of town, I'm delighted to report they both seemed pretty happy to be there.