Pro Commerce

Black 2

The second time I lived in a black world was when I was business manager of a black church and when I built a park  for Street people.

  Just as in the previous blog, borrowing and lending was a key part of the social contract.

The most significant difference from my earlier experience was being invited to parties.  The parties began after midnight and ran on until daybreak. The language at the parties was very heavy black dialect, almost incomprehensible to me, and certainly incomprehensible to someone from outside the black community.

Having built a park, open on one side to a quiet alley, I saw another phenomenon.  Several times a day a car would drive up, call to a friend in the park, give him an order for some object ( TV, car part etc) and drive off.   The next day, the car would return and the object would be handed to the driver.  It was a drive up theft service, in plain view, and very entrepreneurial.

Black 1

Not many white people have lived in an American black world. I have, twice.

The first time was as an enlisted man in the Army, in Virginia, during Jim Crow.

There were three unusual aspects of life among the black soldiers.

First, whenever I travelled, by car, with a black soldier and his family, we confronted the nightmare of never finding a bathroom for the kids.... other than military bases.

Second, there was a very extensive borrowing and lending service among the black soldiers that began a few days after  payday. Nearly everyone spent their money (often on booze and gambling) and borrowed  from someone else until the next payday.

Third, the entire base operated on a hidden exchange system run by black soldiers. If my company wanted two large turkeys for Thanksgiving, we traded two Jeep tires to another company.

I love the scene.  I also ran the projector on Friday nights when the all black crowd watched black and white porn.

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