A Taste for More, page 13
“Is this some government holiday?” I asked.
“No holiday. Just a lot of trouble last night,” the white attendant said.
“What kind of trouble?” I asked.
“The police shot a couple Negro boys last night. It’s been all over the news. Some witnesses say the boys were unarmed, but I say, why were they running if they hadn’t done anything? Now the Negroes over there are upset and threatening to riot. Be careful, miss.”
I didn’t know what “Negroes” he was referring to, since I was a Negro and I wasn’t planning to riot. Besides, Mr. Ben would be the one rioting if he knew I hadn’t opened yet. The gas station attendant’s report didn’t concern me. I wanted to get to work, finish my shift, and go home.
The sun was rising as I parked in the alley. There was no breeze and the heavy, humid air suggested another sweltering day. The phone was ringing as I walked in the door. It was Mr. Ben. He and Miss Nellie had gone to their upstate cabin for the week, but he said the news made the city sound like a war zone, and he was cutting their vacation short. I told him not to worry, but he said they were coming back anyway. I called Clark to tell him about my conversation at the gas station, but the line was busy. I turned on the radio and searched for a news station. Then I completed my usual tasks of starting a pot of coffee, rolling out my biscuit dough, and sweeping away the discarded forty-ounce malt liquor cans, potato chip bags, and candy wrappers the vestibule attracted like a magnet.
Business was heavier than usual and everyone had their own version of the story. Eva had the most details. She said some teenagers started fighting at the skating rink over on Brown Street. The police were overly aggressive when they came to break up the fight and shot an unarmed young black man. The crowd turned on the police, rocking police cars and throwing stones. The story got distorted the more times it was told, and according to whose version you believed, there were hundreds of violent teens roaming the streets or there were hundreds of armed police threatening to shoot on sight.
Milwaukee was becoming a tale of two cities. Everyone knew what had happened a few weeks earlier in Detroit, Tulsa, Tampa, and Newark. Those cities had seen days of rioting and looting, with arrests in the hundreds and loss of life. Milwaukee’s black population was smaller and supposedly less militant than in those cities. City leaders kept saying Milwaukee’s problems weren’t that bad and riots wouldn’t happen here.
The morning sun had disappeared behind ashen gray clouds. The window air unit was noisy and not doing much cooling. Clark called around ten o’clock, concerned about what he’d read in the paper. I told him people were talking but things were okay. He showed up an hour later, after taking Lana to Aunt Lizzie’s. Turns out civil unrest rumors are good for business, because the café was extra-busy. There was a nervous energy in the air. Mr. Carter came in and turned the pinochle corner into the dominoes corner and we put the jukebox on free play. Sylvia called in, so Clark ended up waiting tables. To keep up, I shortened the menu to burgers, chili dogs, grilled cheese, and fries. We ran out of ground beef, fries, and bread and finally put the closed sign up at six o’clock.
While we were cleaning, the turmoil arrived on our street. Clark rushed in from taking out the garbage, saying it smelled like smoke outside. We began hearing continuous sirens and sporadic gunshots. We quickly finished cleaning and locked up. We left, but were only able to drive three blocks before running into a roadblock. Streets surrounding the café were closed to traffic. The officer stated, “The mayor has declared a state of emergency and a dusk-to-dawn curfew.”
“But we’re going home,” I said as a fire truck whizzed by.
“You’ll be safer going back where you were,” the officer stated. “We’ll send a squad car to escort you as soon as one is available.”
We returned to the café, called Aunt Lizzie and gave her an update. Mr. Ben called for the twentieth time. I assured him we were fine and he didn’t need to come to the café, and probably couldn’t get through the roadblock anyway. Clark and I sat in the last booth and ate the dinners we had planned to take home, feeling like hostages.
I had lived and worked on Fourth Street for years and never been scared. But this was different. After eating, we went upstairs to my old room. Mr. Ben hadn’t rented it out. We took the café radio and listened to the news reports in disbelief. Then we heard glass shatter and ran downstairs. Someone had thrown a brick through the front window. The riot was no longer just talk, or something on television or the radio. Clark sent me back upstairs and took up guard in the last booth. He left the door unlocked, saying “no use in allowing them to break the lock.” About an hour later, two young men tried the door and came in. They were met with the cocking of a Remington semiautomatic shotgun, something I didn’t even know Clark had.
“Peace, man, peace,” they said as they raised their hands and walked backward. “We didn’t know you were a brother. You need to identify yourself on your window.” Black business owners were spray-painting the words soul brother on their windows and doors as a notice to looters. Looters claimed to be targeting white-owned businesses, but their rage was pretty random. They took cameras from Lawson’s studio, ravaged the florist shop, and cleared out Mr. Peterson’s furniture store—all black-owned businesses. Looters took televisions, radios, and entire bedroom sets. A couch and recliner sat at the bus stop a few blocks away for weeks. Even street signs were torn down.
Around midnight, a police officer came to get us. The drive home was surreal. Police cars, vans, and paddy wagons lined the smoke-filled, glass-littered streets. However, as soon as we passed Thirty-fifth Street, nothing looked amiss. It then became apparent that we were burning our own neighborhoods. I understood the frustration, but I didn’t see how this was making anything better. I blamed it on the freeway. People didn’t destroy things they owned.
The curfew remained in place for four days and folks gradually emerged to pick up the pieces. Mr. Ben was hurt and didn’t understand why the café had been attacked. “My family has been in this spot for decades and we’ve always been fair to your people. When other businesses wouldn’t serve colored, we did. I know many things in America aren’t right, but how does attacking your friends help? I don’t get it,” he said, shaking his head.
“You call it progress, but to us it’s slow. I’m grateful to work here, but what good is it if I still can’t live where I want? You wouldn’t believe what we had to go through to get our house. Or how many younger white guys Clark has trained, so they can become his boss. We don’t just want to be workers—last hired, first fired. We want to be managers and owners. We can shop in stores now, but they follow us around. Laws are changing, but it’s been one hundred years and sometimes it’s a small straw that breaks the camel’s back,” I said as I patted his shoulder. “Everyone around here knows you’re a fair man. Don’t take it personally.”
“It feels personal when I have to spend money to replace windows and pay higher insurance premiums. It’s a damn shame. And Nellie is a nervous wreck. She doesn’t even want me to come down here. Most old-timers aren’t reopening. Maybe I’m out of place here.”
After the riot, Mr. Peterson never reopened his furniture store, two bank branches closed, and many buildings stayed boarded up. I tried to talk her out of it, but Eva moved her shop too. She said her clients didn’t feel comfortable, and her insurance almost doubled. Sunshine Foods, which took up a half block, closed, and its boarded-up windows were covered in graffiti. As established businesses closed, a thrift resale shop, two pawnshops, four barbershops, three liquor stores, and six storefront churches opened within a five-block radius. Mighty Sounds, a new record shop, opened across the street. But their customers were primarily teens spending their allowance on the latest 45s, not potential café customers. Our business fell dramatically and Mr. Ben cut café hours.
To commemorate the ninety-day riot anniversary, a TV news reporter was doing an eyewitness report. She stopped in front of the café as Mr. Ben was painting the new door. They spoke outside a few minutes, then he brought her inside. “Talk to my new restaurant manager, if you’d like additional information,” he said, pointing to me with his liver-spotted hand. “I’ll be retiring soon and Mrs. Gibson runs everything around here.”
In less than ten years, I’d gone from stocking shelves for sixty-five cents an hour to managing a restaurant. My promotion was due to regrettable circumstances, but Mama always said God works in mysterious ways. I was proud of my new position, but couldn’t help wondering if I had been promoted to captain of the Titanic.
CHAPTER 20
Being a manager had its privileges. I made the schedule and ended my shift at three o’clock so I could pick Lana up from school every day. I got rid of those tacky aprons that made the café workers look like cooks in the big house. I changed the uniform to black pants or skirt and any white top as long as the name tag was visible. The post-riot rebound we expected never came, so we closed on Sundays and at three o’clock on Saturdays. And even though Mr. Ben gave me a twenty-cents an hour raise, with the cut in hours, my check was almost the same as it had been before I was promoted. But since I got home earlier, I began baking wedding cakes again.
Clark found a part-time job at a Sears warehouse shortly after the riot. It was seasonal, with full-time hours and a lot of overtime during the three months before Christmas, then he’d return to part-time.
After the riot, the buses ran less frequently on Saturdays. Clark would drop me off, take Lana to Aunt Lizzie’s, then visit his mother and come back and hang out with me until closing time. I was usually alone in the café since Sylvia quit after the riots. She said her family felt the area was too dangerous. Business was slow, so I didn’t replace her. If we had a little rush, Clark would come help me. He could balance four plates as well as I could, was a quick dishwasher, and didn’t mind clearing tables. I’ve heard people say they couldn’t work with their spouse, but it was actually kind of fun working together.
We still had an occasional argument, mostly about Lana. But our roles had reversed. He was usually the good cop and I was the bad one. Especially since she was experiencing a growth spurt. Her breasts were budding. The dirt that I thought was in her armpits, was sprouting hairs, and I was now “Mother” instead of “Mommy.” I tried to keep a tight rein on her free time, but Clark said girls from the strictest homes were usually the wildest ones, and to give her some space.
As difficult as 1967 had been, 1968 was just as bad. Vince Lombardi resigned, signaling the end of the Packers dynasty. The assassination of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy sent shock waves coast-to-coast. Near Fourth Street, there were marches to oppose the closing of three schools near the café, marches for open housing, and marches to protest the war, which culminated in a bonfire of young men burning draft cards. There were rumors that Diana Ross was leaving the Supremes, then Nixon was elected.
The only place to go was up, and the 1970s brought positive changes. The city had professional baseball again and our NBA team won a championship. A black-owned bank opened, the first black woman was elected judge, and suburban neighborhoods were integrating. Business picked up and I got a few raises, which was a good thing, since Lana needed braces and her tastes and activities were becoming more expensive.
By 1972, Fourth Street was bustling again. The community was now black and proud, and Fourth Street became the center of all things cool. The small neighborhood taverns were for “older folks,” a demographic I now belonged to, since I was over thirty. The younger, hip crowd went to nightclubs in and around Fourth Street, with disco balls and lighted dance floors. Sam’s Shoes’ biggest sellers were platforms. Soul Man Style opened in the old dry cleaner’s. The store featured bell-bottoms, velour jackets and vests, silk shirts with butterfly collars, and wide-brimmed hats, so everyone could walk around looking like Sweet Sweetback or Priest from Super Fly.
Mighty Sounds carried the latest records and 8-track tapes. WISE radio station broadcasted live from the store on Saturday afternoons and whenever they had live interviews, business boomed, since fans often hung out in the café. I had met Al Green, Betty Wright, B.B. King, and Linda Ronstadt. Aretha Franklin raved about my sweet potato pie. Millie Jackson was my favorite. She asked for extra banana pudding to take home, and when she teased Mr. Ben, I’d never seen him turn so red. Even Lana didn’t protest having to come to the café the day Jermaine Jackson was scheduled to come to Mighty Sounds. He was promoting his first solo album and the owner had agreed to let Lana come in the back door to meet him. I took Lana to the record shop to wait for Jermaine’s appearance. Of all people, I saw Winston behind the counter. I walked up behind him and tapped his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’re a Jermaine fan?” I asked.
“Margo, it’s good to see you. And this must be lovely Lana,” he said as he shook her hand. “Your mother has told me so much about you, but she didn’t tell me how pretty you are.” His slick hair was gone and in its place he had a three-inch Afro. He was wearing a Nehru jacket and large medallion chain.
“Honey, this is an old friend of mine, Mr. Dupree. He’s—What are you doing here?”
“One of my groups signed with Motown. They’re opening for Jermaine on a few dates, and they’re taking publicity shots today. He should be here in an hour or so. Would you and Lana like to hang around?”
“Can we, Mother? Please?”
“I can’t leave the café that long, dear. We’ll come back when Jermaine arrives.”
“It’ll be too crowded to try to get in then,” Winston said. “Why don’t you let her stay? I’ll keep an eye on her, and I’ll walk her back across the street when we’re done.”
I’d never seen Lana that excited about anything, so I agreed. I rushed back to the café, where the Jermaine Jackson excitement was translating into a busy day for us. The radio broadcast went on longer than scheduled and we had one of our busiest days ever. Winston delivered Lana as promised. She had albums, signed pictures, and stars in her eyes. She ate, then went to the back room and called everyone she knew to tell them she’d met Jermaine Jackson.
After we’d closed and were cleaning, Mr. Ben said, “I’m tired.”
“Take a break,” Clark said. “Me and Margo can finish up.”
“Not that kind of tired,” he stated. “I’ve been in this business almost fifty years. I looked forward to coming in, talking with, and serving customers. It never felt like work. Today was one of the most profitable days we’ve ever had, but I’m not enjoying it anymore. Everyone seems so young and I feel out of place. Maybe it’s time for me to retire.”
Clark and I made eye contact, but we didn’t speak. Mr. Ben would get in melancholy moods and reminisce about the good old days, but within an hour, all was forgotten. This time he surprised us.
“I guess I was holding on because I wanted to keep the café in the family. I was proud to continue my grandfather’s legacy. He came to this country with nothing and built this business. It may not be much to some, but I’ve taken care of my family and tried to do right by customers and staff. Maybe I should have sold out to Miss Yates when she offered. I wanted to pass the café to my children. But Ben Jr. isn’t interested and has been urging me to sell ever since the riots. My daughter’s been bugging me to retire and move near my grandkids in Arizona. These winters are getting harder and harder on Nellie.”
The phone rang and while Mr. Ben explained why he wasn’t home yet, Clark and I finished cleaning, double-checked the locks, and sat in a booth to wait for him. We always walked out together and followed Mr. Ben to the bank to make the deposit before going our separate ways. As Mr. Ben grabbed his keys, he said, “You two are practically running this place. Why don’t you buy me out?”
“I never thought about owning a restaurant,” I said.
“We don’t have that kind of money,” Clark said. “We had to practically give blood to get a home mortgage.”
“You’re a veteran,” Mr. Ben said. “The Small Business Administration has programs to help veterans. And there’s plenty of money for minority businesses. I can get Ben Jr. to investigate it. That is, if you’re interested.”
“We’ll discuss it and get back to you,” Clark said.
“Great. Nellie and the kids will be thrilled.”
“This is great,” Clark said on the way home. “How many people get to take over an established business? It’s about time Uncle Sam repaid me for freezing my behind off in Korea. Well, what do you think?”
“Sounds like a great opportunity, but what happens when your seasonal Sears hours kick in?” I asked.
“What if they do? I’ll tell them I have a job and the best boss ever: me. I can think of several things we can do to wring more money out of that place. Other than more paperwork, I don’t see how it will be much different from what we’ve already been doing. Except we’ll be in charge—for real.”
“What should we call it?” I asked.
“Let’s keep the same name. We don’t need to broadcast the ownership change or do a grand opening. Folks will be thinking we got lots of money and either want to borrow money or rob us. Do you want to do it?” he asked.
“I do, if you do.”
We reviewed everything from bank statements to roof repair receipts with Mr. Ben and worked out a deal.
All that money for minorities never materialized. Turns out the SBA doesn’t lend. They guarantee bank loans. We went downtown to First Bank, the largest bank in town. We assumed our eighty-five-thousand-dollar loan would be chicken feed for them. We completed mountains of paperwork and waited three weeks before we got a denial letter. We went to Fidelity Bank, but they wouldn’t even give us an application. They explained that since we would be new business owners, we wouldn’t qualify. New businesses were considered risky. That seemed dumb to me. How do you become an old business if you couldn’t get started as a new business? Ben Jr. suggested we go to his bank. He said his father had banked there for thirty years, so they couldn’t claim they were worried about financing a new business. But when we met with the loan officer, he said they didn’t make loans on property in that census tract anymore, but they would consider it if Mr. Ben or Ben Jr. cosigned.
