I was in my early 20s when I started working as a carpenter’s helper for various contractors around Nashville. The standard pay for a helper was paid $5/hr. But they liked my energy and work ethic and I usually got $6/hr. I got a job working with a framing crew and we worked alongside a crew of masons from East Tennessee. Their foreman was a boisterous good ol’ boy with curly red hair named Buck. He was big and muscular and took a liking to me for some reason. Even though my hair was short at the time he called me “Flower Child” due to the peace sign tattoo I had on my right arm. When I heard that one of the guys on his crew was married to his own sister I asked Buck about it. He had no shame admitting it was true and was very nonchalant about it. I asked him how they could do something like that and he just smiled. “We have ways around the law.” While curious about the legal aspect, I was talking about it morally. I just let it go.

Another day Buck just happened to casually mention that there were no good black people. He had black guys on his crew who couldn’t challenge him. But he wasn’t my boss and I was free to speak out and I couldn’t let that one slide. So I confronted him loudly so both crews could hear. “Are you telling me, in the whole world there isn’t one good black person?” Everyone was waiting to hear his response. He thought for a minute and then said, “Well…maybe Ray Charles.” Then he added, “But he is blind and doesn’t know he’s black.” I looked at him to see if he was joking and it was clear he wasn’t. Later that afternoon a brutal brawl broke out between Buck one of his black workers who also a big muscular guy. They were trading violent punches with each other before the crew split them up. The black guy was told he was fired as me stormed off to his truck. But I think he had already quit in his mind and wanted to give Buck a thumping before he left. I had mixed feelings. On one hand a felt bad the guy got fired because of me. But on the other hand I was glad I exposed Buck for his racist view and he suffered a consequence for it.

Towards the end of the job Buck approached me, “Hey Flower Child. Are you right wing or left wing?” I didn’t know how to respond as I didn’t know the difference. I remember when I was young and asked my dad the difference between a democrat and a republican. He told me that the democrats believed in supporting the working man and the poor, while the republicans believed in supporting the rich, would eventually trickle down to the poor. But I didn’t know what wing either of them were. So I just responded, “Somewhere in the middle I guess.” Buck just huffed, “Then you are going to die with all the left wingers when the right wing takes over. We are in training and when society breaks down we are taking control.” Then I reminded him that I said I was in the middle. He just glared at me and scowled, “If you ain’t right, you ain’t living.” A chill went down my spine. There was an awkward pause. Then suddenly his demeanor changed and he smile at me. “Do you want to come to our training camp this weekend? Admittedly, I was curious. But I was a Yankee that he called Flower Child and I liked black people. So I politely declined.