Seating

  There was an Applebee's restaurant near Columbia Mall.  Some co-workers and I decided to go there for lunch during our lunch hour.  We had heard the food was really good.  It was only a couple of blocks from work, so we thought we could go there and get back easily.

 When we got there, we saw only a few cars in the parking lot.  This was going to be good.  The fewer cars meant faster service.  As we walked into the door of the restaurant, I saw several tables unoccupied.  The waitress informed us that they didn't have any tables open.  I asked her about all of the empty tables, and she said that there wasn't a server for those.  I guess I raised my voice, because she told us to leave.  Now, I was wondering if it was because we were white, and everyone in the restaurant was black.  It sure seemed that way.

 When I got home, I wrote a letter to the corporate headquarters of Applebee's explaining my concerns.  I suppose they were saving those empty tables for a large group that might have been eating there that day, but she could have told us that instead of the story about no server for those tables.  I felt it was a situation of discrimination.  By the way, I abhor discrimination by any means.  I was taught at an early age that we are all equal under God, and that it is wrong to think one race is better than another.  A couple of weeks later, I got a letter from the corporate headquarters apologizing for the lack of service and included a $25 gift certificate.  

 I gave the certificate to another coworker who hadn't been with our group.  I figured that somebody working there would know it was me from the time before, and my food could be compromised.  My friend told me later that the food was delicious.  I'm glad.  That restaurant closed a year or two later.  

KFC

  There was a restaurant in Orangeburg, SC that I loved to go to.  It was KFC.  For some reason, their chicken was better than others I had been to.  I always ordered the two-piece meal all dark.  I like the dark meat, because it seems to be juicier than the white meat.  Also, I would get a leg in the meal.  And, it would be cheaper than the white meat, because of the demand for white meat.  

 One Saturday, I was in Orangeburg to look around.  It was getting on toward lunchtime, so I headed for the KFC.  They didn't have the regular employees that I had seen in there before.  When I gave my order to the cashier, she told me that they were all out of chicken.  How could this be?  I saw chicken made in the back, but she told me again that they were all out of chicken.  I went away sad.

 As I was getting into my car to leave, I saw a man come in behind me.  He got chicken.  The guy behind him got chicken.  I got a little mad.  Was I being discriminated against because I was white and everybody else was black?  That's what I thought.  South Carolina State had a home football game that day.  Maybe these people had reserved chicken to be picked up.  If that was the case, they needed to put a sign on the door saying that only chicken for the game would be available.  

 I wrote their corporate headquarters, when I got back home.  It was the troublemaker in me.  I never heard back from them, and I never went to that KFC again.  They should have changed their name to KFNC (Kentucky Fried No Chicken).  That would have made more sense.

Bowman

  After I moved back to South Carolina from Texas, I got a provisional teaching license for high schools.  Unfortunately, I got it in April and expired in June, so it wasn't worth it.  I also was licensed for a year in North Carolina, but I didn't want to move.  I did find a private school that was looking for a Speech teacher.  It was in Bowman, SC and was called Bowman Academy.

 I knew about Bowman, because a good friend from college was from there.  Talula had told me all about her hometown and the cows that were on the street signs.  It was a small town in Orangeburg County, and around an hour from Columbia.  I made an appointment to go to see the school and talk to the principal.  When I got there, I found a two-story wooden structure that looked pretty old.  All of the windows were open, and they had big fans creating circulating air inside the building.  The doors of the classrooms were opened to create a kind of coolness.  No air conditioning.  I asked the principal what they did in the winter to keep warm, and he said they used space heaters.  Strike one.

 The principal seemed interested in me and my qualifications.  I didn't need a state teaching license, since this was a private school.  They had grades kindergarten through 12th grade in this one building.  Strike two.  But, I continued to seem interested.  Then came Strike three.  The principal informed me that I would have to live in Bowman, or at least Orangeburg County.  Why?  Because the teachers would have to be on call for the students, if they needed help in a project or counseling.  I really didn't think that a Speech teacher was as needy as a Science teacher.  As it turned out, the principal lived in Summerville, SC which was in Dorchester County which was a 45-minute drive to Bowman.  I probably shouldn't have said anything, but I asked him how he could live about the same distance from Bowman as I did.  He said he had an Assistant Principal who lived closer that he did.  I thought if a school was going to have that rule, everyone should follow it.  I declined their offer.

 I also heard about a drug counselor position that was open at South Carolina State University.  I had courses in counseling in seminary, and I was quite familiar with drugs.  They didn't hire me.  Probably because I might ask the students where I could find good drugs.  During the interview, they asked me if I had ever done drugs.  I was honest and said yes.  Strikes one, two AND three.  

Halloween

  When I was at Anderson College my sophomore year, our president invited the students to do trick or treat at his house for Halloween.  They gave out candy.  Our group of guys got as much as we could, and then we set out to go to other houses in the neighborhood.

 We weren't dressed up in scary clothes.  We just went as ourselves, which worked out to be "college students".  We knocked on the doors of all the houses in the neighborhood.  The people were surprised to see older people at their doors.  There weren't very many children that we could see, so we loaded up on candy.  I guess that the folks were glad to get rid of their candy, and we were very happy to help them out.  

 When we got back to our dorm, we emptied our bags on a bed and separated the candy by what we liked.  We all got our favorites and went back to our rooms.  Our haul was so great that we had enough candy to last us until the end of the semester.  That was the last time I ever did trick or treat on Halloween by going to others' houses.  It might be too dangerous now.

 We also found a way to get free food on weekends.  We would look for someone getting married and go to the reception. If anyone asked, were we friends of the bride or groom, we would usually say the groom.  We were in school with him or we worked with him.  No one would know the difference, and it was free.

Furman

  During my freshman year at Anderson College, I was torn between being in a play and declaring myself as someone going into a church related vocation.  I was a member of a group on campus that had several students aspiring to the ministry.  My father was a minister, so it was only right to follow in his footsteps.  I was also a member of the Baptist Student Union on campus.  It was a Christian organization, and the group was pretty large, since Anderson was a Baptist college.

 One of the sub-groups in the BSU was the Deputation Team.  We would go out to churches in the area on Sundays and do a service.  We had preachers, singers, other musicians, and people who gave their testimonies.  I was in the last group.  One place we were sent to was the First Baptist Church of Honea Path, SC.  I was to give my testimony about how I was a preacher's kid who did a lot of bad things growing up, and then I found a group of kids in a church youth group who changed my life to being better.  In my testimony, I said that preachers' kids are notoriously bad, because the pressure of representing that family caused them to rebel.  I always hated these words coming out of my father's mouth:  "Remember who you are."  Those words caused me to rebel.  Almost all of the kids I knew, who came from those homes, had rebelled.  It really was a rite of passage.  In my case, I had smoked, shoplifted, watched dirty movies, and dabbled in drugs.  

 After the service was over, the members of the church thanked us for coming.  They were most gracious except for one little old lady who approached me.  She told me that her preacher's kids were fine people.  Then she said, "They go to Furman."  She was very proud of that fact.  I told her that was nice while chuckling inside.  I hoped she was right, but I knew there were probably some skeletons in that family, too.  When one is a preacher's kid, you kind of live more than one life.  The goody two shoes that the church sees, and the other one that your friends see.  The other thing I heard a lot from my father was:  "Straighten up and fly right."  I flew a lot.