Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 5 Friends Part 2. Oblivious

Hop back in the Tardis and let's get back to the more recent dinner with Bill a few years back, which I never really got to in the previous section. At this time, I was working in Mountainview and Bill was teaching at San Jose State; so, we met up for dinner somewhere in Sunnyvale, before I headed home to the Sacramento area. Bill was telling me about a mutual friend who I hadn't seen in decades. That mutual friend was Elliott. He was married and a doctor now. He and his wife were practicing medicine in Burlington, North Carolina.  

Elliott and I were not really close except for when we put together the underground newspaper, I will tell you about shortly. But first, my conversation with Bill. This conversation finally gave me an opportunity to clarify some of the inconsistencies in my memories of Elliott.

Elliott was very bright and also a football player. In fact, he went to college on a football scholarship. He was just as likely to hang out with nerds as with jocks or the in-crowd. Most people liked him, but everyone considered him a bit peculiar. It was probably his peculiarity that I identified with most. Like me, he was not an angry person, but he clearly had an underlying resentment toward our community and its authority figures. I just had no idea why. I mean, son of a doctor, well liked, excelled at both athletics and academics. Why would this guy be angry?

Another thing that really puzzled me about Elliott was where he lived. It was across town from where I lived, but it was a similar neighborhood and just as run down a house. This made no sense because Elliott's father was a doctor. He should have had a house in the nicer part of town where all the other doctors lived.

I asked Bill if he could explain this. Bill leaned across the table towards me and whispered, "Didn't you know, Joe?" There was a pause. I obviously didn't know. I also didn't know why he was whispering.

Bill, still whispering, continued, "Doctor Elliott treated black patients." Now I understood the whisper. We both knew what this meant and were both embarrassed to be reminded of this distasteful aspect of our hometown.

In the segregated South, a white doctor taking black patients was a taboo. It explains why Elliott's family had been ostracized from the white community. According to Bill, doctor Elliott was one of the true good guys who took his dedication to medicine and helping others seriously. He even took payment in chickens or whatever his patients could afford. You read about people like this, but this is the closest I had ever been to knowing one and ironically, I had been completely unaware. Once again I was oblivious.