America reaches out to Africa

America reaches out to Africa

fiction
edward w pritchard

For exercise sometimes I will ride my bike about the City of Akron rather than out in the scenic hills  South of town down around Clinton. Yesterday I was riding on North Arlington south towards Coventry where I stay when I decided to stop at a bus stop and temporarily load my bike on the front of a Metro bus and skip a bad part of Akron and get out of the hot Sun for a few minutes with a break from bike riding.

While I was waiting for the bus an older black man just younger than me came by the bus stop where I waited carrying a full sized folded mattress on his back. Making conversation I asked him where he was headed and he said "to the apartments on South Arlington near the WalMart" which is where I go for my prescriptions about six miles South of  where I was so I decided to help the man with the mattress since he had no friends with a truck and needed the mattress at his new place.

When the bus driver came rather than load my bike on the bus in the usual way I slipped the bus driver five bucks of the thirty dollars I had in my wallet and the driver let me and the old guy load the mattress in the fold down rack on the front of the bus where bikes usually ride. The old guy with the mattress paid his own metro senior fare of one dollar and it was lucky that he had exact change because the drivers do not make change.

Riding down Arlington near Lovers Lane where riots occurred back in 1968 and Urban shootings occasionally happen now as I petaled I got to thinking about slavery and reparations. It was hot out as I rode my bike as I remembered that hot Summer of 1968 and the riots here in Akron. My uncle the soldier who was tortured by the Nazi's in WW2 had once had a used appliance shop on Arlington near Lover's Lane where he sold used stoves and washers and dryers to the Black folks at Arlington and Lover's lane in the 1950's until he had to move to Phoenix for his health because of his bad lungs he got when tortured by the Nazi's in WW2. If he were alive I would like to ask my Uncle the tortured soldier about reparations for descendants of slaves. My uncle called the local blacks in Akron colored people I recall and when he moved to Phoenix him and his sons my cousins called the Mexican people "Mexs".

I was at football practice when the Akron riots occurred back in 1968. My Father who had served with Black soldiers in Guam in WW2 told me then that Black soldiers on Guam had rioted once because in 1944 some of the white soldiers didn't like seeing Black soldiers with the Guam "native girls" [Chamoru women].

In college I took a class called Black History in 1972. The only book I keep in my library now on black History per say is "Modern Black Nationalism " from Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan. The
definitive article on reparations in the book is " the new Afrikan  Case for Reparations "by Imari Obadele.

Sometimes as I ride my bike about Akron if I am near where the 1968 riots occurred I think about slavery and reparations as I ride.