For years the gas station at the corner of Gregory and Jackson was an abandoned eye sore. I drove by it every day on my way to pick my kids up from school. It had broken windows and litter would collect around it.About a year ago I got a call at work. A water main had broken and school was cancelled. I took off from work and went to pick up my son and four year old daughter, Zoe.
Zoe wasn't too happy about leaving school early. It was a nice spring day and the kids usually worked in the school's garden in the afternoon. Zoe was not happy about leaving. On the drive away from the school she had a melt down. She took her seat belt off and began throwing a tantrum. I pulled into the old abandoned gas station and parked to wait out her tantrum. They usually last about 5 minutes and are followed by a two hour nap.
While Zoe was screaming in the back seat and I was trying to calmly wait the tantrum out, a man walked over a knocked on my window. He was dressed OK, had short hair and gold rimmed glasses and looked harmless enough.
I rolled down my window a little. The man leaned down, introduced himself as "junior" and asked me if I wanted some "stuff." I told him no, that I was just sitting here trying to calm my daughter down. He then said "do you like black women? I can fix you up." I told him no, that I was married and didn't need to be fixed up.
Junior then straightened up and said "you don't like black people do you?" I pointed out that I had just picked my children up from the school down the street and that my son was the only white kid in his class. At this point junior looked shocked and said "what, you send you kids to that school?" Junior then went on to philosophize about how blacks and whites needed to try and integrate more. Junior said, "Thats really good, black and white kids need to go to school together. If different races would come together more the world would be better and we wouldn't have all this racism."
Junior then gave me his number and told me to call him if I ever needed anything. I drove home wondering if I should call the police or not. In the end I didn't, for good or bad.
Well, now that old run down gas station has been replaced with a shiny new convenience store called "The Food Shop". As Bill O'Reilly would say "no one runs around asking for some M-Fing iced tea."
So if you are ever in that part of town and need some gas or a soda, give the Food Shop a try. And if you see junior, tell him I said hi.
